Children Who Remember

Previous Lives
A Question ofReincarnation
REVISED EDITION

by
IAN STEVENSON,

M.D.

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

j~ffmon, North Carolina, and Lo11do11

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Stevenson, Ian.
Children who remember previous lives : a question of
reincarnation I by Ian Stevenson.- Rev. ed.
p.
cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
r::::::::.,
ISBN 0-7864-0913-4 (softcover: 50# alkaline paper) ~
1. Reincarnation -Case studies. 2. Children Psychic ability-Case studies. I. Title.
BL515.S747 2001
133.9'01'35-dc21
00-41570

Brirish Library cataloguing data are available

2001 Ian Stevenson. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
tvithout permission in writing from the publisher.
Cover Image: 2000 Corbis Images

Manufaccured in the United States of America

Mcfarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Box 6JJ, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com

For Margaret

Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface to the Revised Edition
Preface to the First Edition
A Guide for Readers Wishing More Details
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

An Introduction to the Study of Reincarnation

The Belief in Reincarnation
Types of Evidence for Reincarnation
Fourteen Typical Cases of Children Who Remember
Previous Lives
Characteristics of Typical Cases of the Reincarnation Type
Methods of Research
The Analysis and Interpretation of the Cases
Variations in the Cases of Different Cultures
The Explanatory Value of the Idea of Reincarnation
Some Further Questions and Topics Related to Children
Who Remember Previous Lives
Speculations About Processes Possibly Related to
Reincarnation

IX

1
3
7

9
29
41

56
94
129
146
169
181

207

233

Appendix: Citations to Detailed Reports of Cited Cases

255

Chapter Notes
References
Index

261

315

335
VII

Acknowledgments
In my books containing derailed case reporrs, I have already rhanked
many persons who have ably and selflessly assisred my invesrigarions. I will
nor repear all rheir names here, bur insread will confine my rhanks ro chose
persons who have helped me in rhe field work of recent years and in rhe
prepararion of chis book.
For special assistance in my recent field work I should like ro rhank Rica
Casrren (Finland), Daw Hnin Aye (Burma), Nicholas Ibekwe (Nigeria), Tissa
Jayawardene (Sri Lanka), Majd Mu'akkasah (Lebanon), Sarwam Pasricha
(India), Godwin Samarararne (Sri Lanka), Nasib Sirorasa (Thailand), and U
Win Maung (Burma). Can Polar (Turkey) has sent me information about
cases in his country.
Several colleagues and friends have generously read and given me helpful comments ro improve one or several chapters, and for rhis invaluable aid
I wish ro thank Carlos Alvarado, John Beloff, Stuarr Edelsrein, Brian Goodwin, Nicholas McClean-Rice, George Owen, and James Whearley. They have
removed numerous faults, and at least some of those rhar remain may be due
ro my not having followed their advice on all points.
My former and present research assistants have also greatly improved
the book with their suggestions. For chis help I thank Carolee Werner, Susan
Adams, and Emily Williams Cook, the lase with special gratitude, because
she read rhrough the entire book rwice.
Thanks are due also, and warmly given, to Elizaberh Byrd and Patricia
Esres for typing - and much retyping - of high quality.
Elsevier Science Publishers (Biomedical Division) gave permission for
a quotation from one of their journals. The National Technical Information
Sc:rvice of the United States Department of Commerce authorized citation
of a passage from a monograph by L. L. Vasiliev.
IX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I drafted much of the book during a sabbatical leave at Darwin College, Cambridge University, and I cordially thank the master and fellows of
Darwin College for providing me with this opportunity.
My wife, Margaret, generously gave up much time that we could have
spent pleasantly together so that I could finish this book, and I dedicate it
affectionately to her.
Finally, I acknowledge gratefully the support of my research by the
Bernstein Brothers Parapsychology and Health Foundation.

Preface to the

Revised Edition
Happy is the author who can claim advances in his subject when he
revises a book written only a little more than a decade earlier. I claim such
happiness for several reasons.
The first advance derives from the publication of replication studies.
Until the 1980s I worked almost alone on the investigation of the children
who claim to remember previous lives. I had the blessing of unusually competent and diligent interpreters and assistants, but they could not conduct
and publish independent investigations. Soon after the publication of the first
edition of this work other investigators began to publish reports of these
cases independently of me. More than that, in different ways these new investigators have undertaken imaginative projects that have advanced the research
beyond what I accomplished. Much of the additional text and many of the
added references in this edition derive from their work. I am thinking here
(in alphabetical order) of Erlendur Haraldsson, Ji.irgen Keil, Antonia Mills,
Satwant Pasricha, and Jim Tucker. As they have traveled more, I have traveled less. I have slowed my own investigations to spare time for writing. I
investigated the cases that I summarize in chapter 4 many years ago. This is
true even of the two cases that I added to the twelve included in the first edition of this work. I advise readers who wish to study reports of recently
investigated cases to study the publications of my colleagues.
The second noteworthy development is the publication in 1997 of my
two-volume monograph on the cases whose subjects had pertinent birthmarks and birth defects. This work includes many cases that I had studied
before the publication of the first edition of this book. I had held back case
reports with these features in order to present their evidence all together.

PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION

Having done that, I can include in this edition additional information about
birthmarks and birch defects.
This edition also contains the results of numerous analyses of rhe data
(from a large number of cases) rhar my colleagues and I have made since rhe
first edition was published.
Apart from the new material, I have rried wherever I could ro improve
the clarity of the text and bring it and rhe references up ro dare.
.
Attentive readers may note rhat I give scant references to recent publ~
cations in neuroscience. I have not failed to follow developments in this
important field, which has greatly advanced with the infusion of funds it
received during rhe "decade of rhe brain." I remain skeptical, however, that
the reductionist approach of nearly all neuroscientists will contribute to
understanding the mind-brain problem. I believe rhat only rhe recognition
of the experiences now called paranormal will do char. I look forward eagerly
to the "decade of the mind."
One political development since rhe first edition of chis book deserves
comment. The country long known as Burma has been governed by a military dictatorship for almost four decades. In 1989 rhe government changed
the name of the country to Myanmar. Some other place names were also
~han?ed; for example, Rangoon became Yangon. My investigations of cases
m this country occurred between 1970 and 1987, when rhe country was called
Burma, and I have generally retained that name in chis book.
Readers should understand that rhe names of subjects and deceased
persons me d h" b
d
ntione m t is ook are a mix of real names and pseu onyms.
~erson~ wishing more information about particular cases can often find these
m derailed case reports to which rhe Appendix provides a directory; if these
reports prove insuffic"ie
d

c
c

nt, rea ers may wnre me ror more inrormanon.

M.a~y of the persons whose assistance I gratefully acknowledged in rhe
first edmon have conri
d
h 1
h
b
.
.
nue to e p me selflessly. A few persons ave een
especially important indeed
1 h

h
l
k
'
essenna mt e task of revis10n. I w1s to r 1an
two colleagues who kindl
d h
. .
h l fi 1
. .
Y rea t rough the revis10n and offered e p u
comments f~r Its improvement; they are Emily Williams Kelly (formerly
Cook~ and Jim Tucker. Dawn Hum also read the full text; she gave special
attent10~ t~ the refe~ences and much other help. Patricia Estes retyped rhe
book wnh mexhaumble patience and awesome accuracy. In doing rhis she
was greatly helped by Irene Dunn.
As .I was ~orking on this revision Margaret, my wife, asked me why I
had dedicated It co her. Those who know Margaret know the answer to this
question.

Preface to the

First Edition
This book aims at presenting for the general reader an account of my
research on cases suggestive of reincarnation. It does not provide derailed evidence for reincarnation. Rather, it offers a summary of the way I have conducted my research, of the more important results obtained, and of my
present conclusions.
In order to familiarize readers with the types of cases from which the
evidence derives, I have included summaries of twelve typical cases. These,
however, are unfleshed skeletons compared with the derailed case reports
that I have published elsewhere, in which I have tried to marshal all the evidence bearing on the cases reported. (I have now published sixty-five derailed
case reports and have more than 100 in various stages of preparation for
future publication.) I should regard disapprovingly anyone who, solely from
reading this book, moved from skepticism - or ignorance - concerning reincarnation to a serried conviction char ir occurs. I shall be content if I have
succeeded in making rhe idea of reincarnation plausible to persons who have
nor thought it was; if some of them then think ir worth their while to examine the evidence in my detailed case reports, I shall have accomplished more
than I set out to do.
I have also drastically abbreviated my discussion of rhe interpretation
of the evidence, although I have tried to give a balanced exposition of its
strengths and weaknesses. I hope that rhc brevity of this part of the book
will induce readers to study my longer deployment of arguments in orhcr
books.
In addition to providing an outline of my methods and principal results,
this book will perhaps serve several other purposes. First, I hope that it will

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

help to correct some common misconceptions about reincarnation. For many

Westerners the idea of reincarnation seems remote and bizarre. They often
associate it with, and only with, Hinduism and Buddhism and the Hindu
and Buddhist ideas concerning retributive karma 1* and rebirth in nonhuman
animal bodies. I shall take some pains to show that the cases I have studied
rarely furnish evidence supporting these ideas. Moreover, many of the numerous peoples other than Hindus and Buddhists who believe in reincarnation
do not link it with concepts of reward, punishment, or rebirth in nonhuman animal bodies. A belief that reincarnation must happen in a particular
way can impede useful thought about the subject almost as much as can
total rejection of the idea; some correspondents who write me with dogmatic
assurance about how reincarnation occurs seem to have almost as much to
unlearn as those who insist that reincarnation is impossible.
I have a second, subsidiary motive for writing this book: my hope that
it will elicit reports of new cases that we can investigate. I am convinced that
cases of the reincarnation type are underreported, particularly in the West.
Correspondents sometimes tell me that a child of their family seemed to
speak about a previous life when he 2 was about three years old, but by the
time the correspondent writes, the child is often already ten or fifteen years
of age, or even older. Some persons repentantly mention that when the child
~as yo~nger they ignored him or even derided him for talking about a previous life. Later, the child forgot what he had seemed to remember earlier.
1
If . and my successors can study cases among young children of the West
while the cases are still active, as we have been doing in Asia and other parts
of the world for many years, our research should make more rapid progress .
. It may seem contradictory, just after inviting readers to send me information about new cases, to mention that I wish also in this book to discourage a deliberate searching for memories of previous lives - whether through
the use of drug
d'

s, me itat1on, or hypnosis. Unfortunately, some hypnousts

have stated
that anyon e can recover memories
of previous

b y means 0 f
.
lives
hypnosis, and great therapeutic benefits from this are claimed or hinted at.
I.shall try to que~ch misguided and sometimes shamefully exploited enthu~iasm for h!pnosis, especially when it is proposed as a sure means of elicitmg memones of previous lives.
The cases that seem to me most deserving of our attention have nearly
all occurred outside areas of Western culture, that is, among the peoples of
Asia, West Africa, and the tribal groups of northwestern North America.
There are reasons for this geographical disproportion, and although we have
little understanding of them, I have offered some speculations about it. Here
*See Chapter Notes, beginning on page 261.

Preface to the First Edition

I wish to offer two related comments. First, not all cases come from the areas
where most occur; some excellent ones have occurred in Europe and North
America (among nontribal peoples). Second, cases suggestive of reincarnation show significant similarities in their main features to phenomena that
have been carefully studied in the West for more than a century: apparitions,
telepathic impressions, telepathic dreams, and lucid dreams. Here and there
throughout this book I have drawn attention to these parallels. I hope these
allusions will help to make the cases that I mainly discuss seem less remote
and exotic, and therefore more credible, than they might otherwise appear
to be.

A Guide for Readers

Wishing More Details
This book is wrirren for the layperson. Bue which one? One who moves
rapidly may read it without examining a single note or reference. Such a
reader may resent paying one-sixth of the cost of a book for notes char do
nor interest him. I would also like, however, to arrracc readers whose study
of chis book will not slake their thirst for knowledge, bur increase it. I hope
chat these readers will find che extensive notes and references useful. They
are all placed at the end of the book.

How to Find a Reference to a Source

Mose of the references are given in the Chapter Notes. When I have not
provided a note about an author whose name I mention in the text, rhe reader
wishing a reference to the author's work should turn to the list of References,
where I have listed published sources alphabetically by author.

Detailed Case Reports

Readers who wish to read a derailed report of a case will find a citation
to the report (if one has been published) in the list of cases given in the Appendix; che cases are listed there by the first or given names of chc persons who
say they have had a previous life (or, in a very few instances, who are said by
other persons to have had a previous life). I refer co these persons as chc subjects of the cases.
7

CHAPTER 1

An Introduction to
the Study of Reincarnation
It may disappoint some readers to learn that this book is not about
reincarnation directly; instead, it is about children who claim to remember
previous lives. From studying the experiences of such children some understanding about reincarnation may eventually come. Before that can happen,
however, we must become confident that reincarnation offers the best explanation for these children's apparent memories.
When I refer to these memories, I shall at times omit qualifying adjectives, such as "apparent" or "purported"; but I do this only to make reading
easier and with no intention of begging the main question that the cases of
these children present. From the perspective of the child subject of a case, however, the memories that he experiences of a former life seem just as real - just
as much true memories - as memories he may have of events since he was
born. The verified statements he makes about the other life derive from
memories of some kind. 1 Those who observe him need to decide whether
they are memories of a life that he lived in a former incarnation or ones that
he acquired in some other way. If readers remember this point, they should
not find the title of this book misleading.
I have another reason for saying little about reincarnation itself.
Although I shall be drawing on the information of more than 2,500 cases,~
this is a minuscule number compared with the billions of human beings who
have lived. It would be rash to generalize from so few cases, even if we were
sure they are all best interpreted as instances of reincarnation (which we cannot be); furthermore, although the cases show considerable uniformities, we
cannot say that they are representative of the lives of ordinary people. Indeed,
when I later describe the recurrent features of the cases, readers will quickly
9

10

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

realize that the lives apparently remembered are not ordinary ones. This is
only partly due to the haphazard methods I have had to use, fiwtc de mieux,
in collecting cases. The cases are also unrepresentative because remembering a previous life is an unusual experience chat occurs to only a few persons
for reasons that we are, at most, just beginning to understand.
Although I am not writing directly about reincarnation, the central
issue of my research and of this book is whether or not reincarnation occurs,
at least sometimes. This amounts to asking whether a human personality (or
a component of it) may survive death, and later - perhaps after an interv~l
passed in some nonphysical realm- become associated with another physical body. Reincarnation is not the only conceivable way in which a human
personality might survive death. It is not the form of survival that most
Christians and Moslems expect. Nor is it the only form of survival that scientific investigators of this possibility have envisaged .3
Most scientists today do not believe that any survival of human personality after death does or can occur. 4 Nearly all scientists who do believe
in a life after death derive their conviction in the matter from faith in a particular religious teaching. Most of them would deny that the question ~f
human survival after death could be studied scientifically. Nevertheless, lD
the late nineteenth century a handful of scientists and scholars in England
began to discuss the possibility of obtaining evidence of survival after death
through the collection and analysis of data with methods customary in other
branches of science. They and their successors have obtained a variety of such
~ata. The cases discussed in this book represent only one block of information t~at anyone studying the subject of survival after death should rry to
appraise. 5
In the two paragraphs above I referred to human personality. The Oxford
0
Enolish
Dictionarv
define s th e worcl" persona l"ny ,, as: "Th e qua l ny,

J
c h arac ter '

or fact of being a perso

d"
f

l
.
n as 1stmct rom a th mg .... Personal existence, actua
existence as a person th c
f
h
b

.
.
' e race o t ere emg or havmg been sue a person,

Th
l"

I J
k
at qua ny or assemblage of qualmes w 11c 1 ma es a
:
pers~n. wh.at ~e ts, as distinct from other persons." The first part of the
definmon indicates the crux of this matter. Are human beings things, or are
they more than that? If they have "something more" than a thing has, can
that "something more," whatever it is, survive death? The persistence of a
person's stream of consciousness after death can be known directly only to
that person. Other persons who outlive him can obtain only indirect evidence
of his survival. What criteria should they adopt for deciding that a particular person has survived death? What is meant, in the definition above, by "personal identity?" Philosophers have much debated what constitutes a person's
6
identity. Most seem to agree that, each life being unique, the memories of
Personal tdenrny

1. An fntrodttction to the Study of Reincarnation

II

ir. will be unique; therefore, evidence of rhe persistence of memories will provide .rhe best - and perhaps the only- indication rhar a particular person has
survived the death of his body.
Thus, the search for evidence that someone has survived death has usually involved studying indicia of the continuation of that person's memories.
The information examined must, however, extend beyond mere imaaed
.
f
b
memones o past events; we can have such memories on a video rape, yet we
would nor say rhar rhe rape and its electronic player were personalities. The
concept of personality should also include feelings and purposes and ar least
some degree of consciousness. We could allow for a temporary lapse of consciousness after death, just as we do when we sleep and awake to another day;
bur I do not think we should regard anyone as having survived death if he
did nor resume what we call consciousness, even though the kind of consciousness that he had after death might differ greatly from that familiar to
us when alive.
The evidence of survival after death deriving from children who remember previous lives differs in one important respect from some of the other
types of evidence of survival, such as rhar obtained from some apparitions
of rhe dead. An apparition may suggest that a person who is dead has somehow survived death and become able to communicate evidence of his identity to living persons, whereas a child who claims to remember a previous
life is a living person who claims to have had an earlier life in which he died.
In some respects it is easier to work forward from a dead person to a stillliving one than ir is to work backward from a living person to the dead one
whose life rhe child claims to have lived. I shall next cry to explain why I
think chis.
So far as the evidence goes, dead persons - at least up to the stage where
any evidence of their discarnate existence can be obtained - may undergo
comparatively little change of personalicy 7 solely as a result of dying. In contrast, the association of a discarnace personal icy with a new physical body
would entail major adaptations as it becomes housed in a new and smaller
physical frame with still-rudimentary sensory and cognitive organs. Moreover, this new body might be born in a different family, to which the personality would need to adapt. and this new environment would inevitably
lead to further modifications. By rhe rime a child could communicate memories of a previous life, the different ingredients of his personality would
have blended, more or less, and become difficult for an investigator to distinguish from each other. This makes rhe evidence for the survival of a deceased
person char we derive from such children less easy to evaluate - at least as to
the deceased person's identity- than that provided by, for example, an
apparition of a deceased person as he was at the rime of his death. There are

12

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

several rival interpretations to consider in appraising an apparition, but at

least the figure seen is often - although not always - that of a whole person
and a recognizable one. 8 It is not the same with children who remember previous lives. From the information they furnish, which often comes in fragments only, an investigator must decide whether the pieces he can put together
credibly evoke a particular deceased person and no one else. I shall return
later to the important topic of criteria for identifying a particular person.
The evidence for reincarnation that we have suggests that living human
beings (and perhaps nonhuman animals also) have minds, or souls if you like,
that animate them when they are living and that survive after they die Most
biologists will stigmatize this suggestion as vitalism 9 and declare it to have
been discredited decades ago. However, new evidence - and even examination of older, neglected evidence-may restore the credit ofvitalism. I do
not think scientists in other disciplines need lose anything except some of
their assumptions - such as that a person is nothing but a physical body if they examine open-mindedly the evidence we have of life after death.
Reincarnation, at least as I conceive it, does not nullify what we know about
evolution and genetics. It suggests, however, that there may be two streams
0
~ ev~lution - the biological one and a personal one - and that during terrestnal. lives these streams may interact. How they might do this we can bar~ly
envisage at present, although in a later chapter I put forward some tentative
speculations about processes that may occur.
The idea of reincarnation offers a contribution to the understanding of
the. un.iqueness of individual persons. Geneticists use the word "phenotype"
to mdicat
person produced by the interaction of a persons
' gene s
. e ~ he iivmg
and his environment (the only elements involved that most geneticists now
acknowledge) Most b'io1ogists
recogmze
the uniqueness

of eac h p h enotype even

those
of
on
('d

l)
.
an d t he
. fl
e-egg i ent1ca twms. They believe that genetics
rn
of environment w111 u lttmately

. this
. umqueness.

Al mos t
. uences
.
explam
mfintte possibilities exist 10r
c

.

h

vanattons m genettc compos1t10n: t ese inc I u de

the random distrib ution
o f ch romosomes .mto gametes (the male an d 1ema
c
le
cells that unite whe n concepuon
occurs), the recombmat10n

f
o genes am on g
c~romosomes, a~d occasional mutations of genes. Environments also vary
widely. Even twms have somewhat different environments, and someone
once remarked that not even conjoined (Siamese) twins have precisely the
same environment, because one of them has to go through a door first. 10
Ideas that seem to have general validity, however, may prove insufficient
wh~n tested against all relevant observations. Some persons have unique
atmbutes that we cannot now explain satisfactorily as due solely to a combination of genetic variation and environmental influences. Reincarnation
deserves consideration as a third factor in play.

1. An Introduction to the Study of Reincarnation

13

If we are, through the shuffling of our genes, the products of "chance

and necessity," to use Jacques Monad's phrase, we can expect no solution to
the problem of the inequalities in the conditions of different persons at birth.
And we can draw little comfort from the analogy of being dealt a hand at
cards with the opportunity to play it well or badly; a person born blind cannot even see the cards in his hand. The belief in reincarnation provides no
quick reparation for congenital blindness. The research that this book reviews
may, however, ultimately offer a better understanding of why a particular
person is born blind than any other explanation now available. The important question to be answered is not that of why any person is born blind; it
is that of why a particular person is born blind when others are not. Just to
ask this question assumes that there is a person associated with a body during life; and that we can distinguish the person (or personality) from the
body.
Furthermore, if reincarnation occurs, the congenitally blind person can
rationally hope ultimately to enjoy vision - in another life. Critics of the evidence for reincarnation have sometimes pointed to its element of hopefulness with the dismissing suggestion that such evidence as we have derives only
from wishful thinking. This objection wrongly assumes that what we desire
must be false. We might be more easily persuaded to believe what we wish
to believe than the contrary; nevertheless, what we wish to believe may be
true. Our inquiry into the truth or falseness of an idea should proceed without regard to whether it fortifies or undermines our wishes.
Apart from this, the cases that I have studied include some for which
informants have given testimony opposing their own beliefs and wishes. This
occurs sometimes when a case develops in a family whose members do not
believe in reincarnation, or who would rather not accept the claims of their
child to remember a particular previous life. This also is a topic to which I
shall return later.
In the remainder of this chapter I shall define some terms that I shall
use, or usages that I have adopted, with which many readers will be unfamiliar. Along the way I shall digress to present some cases illustrating the occurrence of telepathy in everyday life; knowledge of such cases will assist the
reader to appraise the cases of children who claim to remember previous lives.
I shall then briefly outline the later chapters of the book.

Terms Used in Psychical Research

The cases I describe in this book fall within the branch of science called
psychical research and often parapsychology. These are not satisfactory terms

14

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

for the study of phenomena that we cannot account for by our present understanding of the known sensory organs and muscular activity of h:imans (a~d
perhaps other animals). The word "parapsychology," which was first used (in
Germany) in the late nineteenth century, is especially unsatisfactory. It
emphasizes the relationships of this branch of science to psychology, wher~as
most of the scientists working in rhe field now realize that its links wnh
physics and biology are just as important as those with psychology. Also, the
word implies (or has come to suggest) phenomena rhar do not show the same
lawfulness that psychologists like ro think rhe phenomena they study show.
Scientists working in this field believe that they also study lawful phenon:ena, but ones that may follow laws other than those currently accepted 10
physics and physiology. The recurrence of similar features in many cases
occurring far apart from each other provides some support for this beli~f.
The word "parapsychology" has another disadvantage. It rends to isolate the phenomena under investigation - and also rhe scientists who study
them-from other endeavors in science. Ir has not always been this way.
Modern science is a recent and parochial activity. Ir arose in the West around
A.O. l600. Up to that time, in Europe (and still today throughout most of
the world nor counted as the West) the phenomena now considered paranor~al were accepted without question. I do not mean that they were not
considered unusual or that individual reports of such phenomena were never
doubted. I mean only that they were nor treated with the general skepticism
~award them that later developed among scientists in the West and, following them, among many other educated Westerners. For example, Descartes
referred casually to the communication of thoughts between rwo persons
separated by a lo cl'

. ng istance, and Bacon, another founder of modern science,

p~ohpohsed expe~1menrs in what he called "binding of though rs" and also ones
WH t ethrowingofd'
d h .
"
.
"
h
r11
ice to stu Yt e mfluence of imagmar1on on t e ou
come. Even up to the d f h

d
en
t e nmereenrh century, scientists rnreresre 10
wh at we now call psy h' l
h
ica
research
associated on equal terms wn psy.
d
c
ch o log1sts an attended h
.
11
11 d
t e same professional meetings (then usua Y ca e
.

d
d
t
congresses). How they and th
e1r successors came to be 1lleg1t1mate an sen
.
.
rnto exile may form a chapt
of science

n
er int h e h'tstones
that wt11 b e wntte

in the future. Here I wish only to add that most scientists working in this
field look forward with hope and expectation to the ultimate reunion of their
branch of science with the rest of it. When that happens, words rhar are now
current may be superseded.
In the meantime, however, we must make the best use we can of the
words our predecessors adopted for phenomena that are still li rrle understood,
but that undeniably occur. I shall therefore define a few terms rhar rhe reader
12
will meet in this book. We speak of an experience or an event as przrtmornuzf

l. An lntroductio11 to the Study of Reincarnation

15

when we cannot account for it by any known sensory or muscular process. We

u.sually now refer to paranormal sensory experiences as extrasensory perceptions, bur I myself prefer to speak of them as paranormal cognitions or - better yet - as instances ofparanonnal awareness. Paranormal sensory experiences
~onrr~st \;'ith normal meam ofcormmmication, by which we mean all the ways
1~ which mformation reaches our minds through the recognized senses, parncularly from reading, other visual perception, and hearing.
Extrasensory perception may occur through telepathy or clairvoyance.
The word "telepathy" refers to communication between two minds and has
come to replace the older terms "thought-reading" and "thought-transference." The word "clairvoyance" refers to extrasensory perception (usually of
an object) without the mediation of another person's mind. 13 Telepathy and
clairvoyance are processes of obtaining knowledge about contemporary
events. Extrasensory perception also subsumes two other modalities: that of
precognition (sometimes called paranormal foreknowledge), which refers to
noninferential knowledge of the future, and that of retrocognition, which
refers to paranormal knowledge of the past.
We refer to a person who has an experience of extrasensory perception - whether spontaneously or during the course of an experiment - as
the percipient or the subject. And we call the person about whom the percipient obtains information the agent or, sometimes, the target person. The word
"agent" is not satisfactory; it suggests that the person concerned is an active,
willing participant in the experience, and although he sometimes is, he may
also be passive and unaware of any communication that occurs.
A few persons claim to obtain communications that appear to have
originated in the minds of deceased persons who are conceived of as still living in a discarnate state. The persons who do this are called mediums or sensitives, and the discarnate persons who purport to give information through
them are called communicators. I shall occasionally refer to such mediumistic

comm1111 icatiom.
In some places I shall use the words "psychic" and "psychical" as approximately synonymous with "paranormal" and "para psychological." I shall use
these terms especially in considering the possible influence of presumed discarnate persons on living persons or living embryos.
Investigators have srndied paranormal phenomena in two ways. They
have tried ro observe the phenomena as they occur spontaneously or obtain
reports from other persons who have observed them, and they have tried to
elicit them under experimental conditions. By means of experiments scientists can control circumstances and vary them so that when they interpret
their results they can often confidently exclude explanations other than that
of some paranormal process. These opportunities are nearly always lacking

16

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

in the study of spontaneous cases. Occasionally, investigators can themselves

observe some phenomenon as it occurs, but most of the time they must construct as accurate a picture as possible of events that happened before they
reached the scene. This is an unsatisfactory situation. However, scientists
working in this field cannot forego the study of spontaneous cases without
impoverishing the subject by depriving it of its most important phenomena.
Most spontaneous paranormal experiences are concerned with critical events
in people's lives, such as death, and these events almost never occur in a laboratory. The cases about which I am writing in this book illustrate this point,
but so do most other spontaneous cases. It would be helpful to study reincarnation with the rigor that an experimental situation permits, but wrong
to abandon the study because we cannot do this. I believe it is better to learn
what is probable about important matters than to be certain about trivial ones.
Here I should say that as a reader of this book you will have to decide if you have not already done so - whether you believe that though ts can be
communicated between persons (and other knowledge acquired) without
the known sensory organs. You should do this because telepathy (perhaps
combined with clairvoyance) is an important alternative interpretation for
the cases with which this book is concerned. To look ahead a little, there are
about half a dozen possible interpretations of the cases, each of which may,
for a few cases, prove the best explanation. For the majority of the stronger
cases, h.owever, we need consider only three interpretations: serious flaws in
the testimony

.
' t e1epat hYan d c1a1rvoyance
on the part of the su b Ject,
an d reincarnation. Readers who do not believe in paranormal cognition (telepathy
and clairvoyance) may find themselves with an uncomfortably limited choice.
1 0
.f ! u have not yet made up your mind concerning the existence of such
capacmes as telepath
d 1
.
bl
.
.
. Yan c a1rvoyance, and 1f your temperament resem es
c
.
mme,
. you will wish to de c1d e arter
exammmg
t h e ev1d ence an d not on the
baSIS of what. your relat'ives, ne1g
hb ors, and professors te 11 you to t h in
k
Ample materials are avail abl e 10r
c

k
f
your assistance. A sausfactory stoc o re 11able

. books on the subJ. ect can fill b oo k shelves on three sides

o f a me d 1 umsize room. Books that are not reliable could fill shelves on all the walls of all
the ro~ms of a ducal mansion- Blenheim Palace, for example - but a few
sound mtroductory texts and outlines can prevent anyone from wasting time
with these. 14

A Digression to Illustrate Telepathy and Apparitions

For me the most important evidence of telepathy derives from unusual
experiences that occur from time to time in everyday life, and I shall present

1. An Introduction to the Study of Reincarnation

17

a few examples of these so that readers may test their own attitudes toward
reports of such events.
The first experience that I shall cite occurred to a man who was a Confederate army soldier captured at the battle of Shiloh in 1862. While a prison~r of war at Camp Douglas, on the outskirts of Chicago, he had a vision,
which he later described as follows:
<?n the next day (April 16th) ... I proceeded to my nest and reclined alongside of my friend Wilkes, in a posture rhar gave me a command of one-half of
r?e building. I made some remarks ro him upon the card-playing groups oppoSlte, when, suddenly, I felt a gentle stroke on the back of my neck, and, in an
instant, I was unconscious. The next moment I had a vivid view of rhe village
ofTremeirchion [in Wales], and the grassy slopes of rhe hills of Hiraddog, and
I seemed to be hovering over the rook woods of Brynbella. I glided to rhe bedchamber of my Aunt Mary. My aunt was in bed, and seemed sick unto death.
I took a position by the side of the bed, and saw myself, with head bent down,
listening to her parting words, which sounded regretful, as though conscience
smote her for nor having been so kind as she might have been, or had wished
to be. I heard the boy say, "I believe you, aunt. It is neither your fault, nor mine.
You were good and kind co me, and I knew you wished to be kinder; but things
were so ordered char you had co be what you were. I also dearly wished to love
you, but I was afraid to speak of ic, lest you would check me, or say something
chat would offend me. I feel our parting was in chis spirit. There is no need of
regrets. You have done your duty co me, and you had children of your own,
who required all your care. What has happened co me since, was decreed should
happen. Farewell."
I put forth my hand and felt the clasp of the long, chin hands of the soresick woman, I heard a murmur of farewell, and immediately I woke.
It appeared to me chat I had but closed my eyes. I was still in the same
reclining attitude, the groups opposite were still engaged in their card games,
Wilkes was in che same position. Nothing had changed.
I asked, "What has happened?"
"What could happen?" said he. "What makes you ask? It is but a moment
ago you were speaking to me."
"Oh, I thought I had been asleep a long time."
On the next day, the 17th April, 1862, my Aunt Mary died at Fynnon
Beuno [her home in Wales]!

I should explain that the aunt of whose death the soldier became aware
had taken him in as a child, when he had been orphaned and homeless. She
had done this from a sense of duty, even though already overburdened by the
responsibilities of her own family. That she had not, nevertheless, been able
to give the boy much love appears to have been a subject of regret on both
sides and a theme of the soldier's experience in saying farewell to her as she
died.

18

CHILDREN WHO RE\1D.1BER PREVIOUS LIVES

In the next case the percipient was a young Scotsman who was traveling
in Sweden in 1799. Setting our from Gothenburg for Norway, he and his
party traveled all day and into the night before finally arriving at about I :00
A.M. on December 19 at an inn, where they decided to stop for the rest of
the night. In his journal he wrote:
Dec. 19 ... Tired with the cold of yesterday, I was glad ro cake ad vantage of a
hot bath before I turned in. And here a most remarkable thing happened to
me-so remarkable chat I muse cell the story from the beginning. After I left
the High School, I went with G ___ , my most intimate friend, ro arrend the
classes in the University [of Edinburgh]. There was no diviniry class, bur we
frequently in our walks discussed and speculated upon many grave subjects a~ong ochers, on the immortality of the soul, and on a fu rure srate. This quesuon, a~d the possibility, I will nor say of ghosrs walking, bur of rhe dead
appearing to the living, were subjects of much speculation; and we acrually
committed the folly of drawing up an agreement, written with our blood, to
the effect, that whichever of us died the first should appear ro rhe ocher, and
thus solve any doubts we had entertained of the "life afrer death.,, After we had
finished our class at the college, G ___ went co India, having gor an appointment there in the civil service. He seldom wrote to me, and after rhe lapse of
a fe':years I had almost forgorren him; moreover, his family having lirrle connecnon wit
h Ed'm b urg h , I seldom saw or heard anything of rhem, or o f I11 m
through them, so that all the old schoolboy intimacy had died out, and I had
neha.rly forgotten his existence. I had taken, as I have said, a warm. barh; and
w
rhe comfort of the heat, after r I1e l are 1reezmg
c

I
h d1le lying in it an d enjoying
I~ underg~ne, I turned my head round, looking cowards rhe chair on which
~d deposited my cloches, as I was about co gee up our of the b~uh. On rhe
chair sat G
I k'
- 00 mg calmly ar me. How I got out of the bath I know not,
buc on recovering
Ir
Th

my senses 10und myself sprawling on rhe floor.

e appan
non, or whatever

. . it was, rhat h ad taken the likeness

of G ___ , h a d d'1sap d Th e v1s1on
peare
d
d

pro uce such a shock that I had no 111cl111anon

to cal k a b our
It, or co speak about i
.

d
t even to Stuart [a traveling companion]; bur rhe 1mpress1on IC ma e upon me
. .
db .
was too v1v1d to be easily forgotten; and so scrongly was
I aft
ecte y IC, thac I h
h
.
.
.
I d
19 h D
b
ave ere wncren down rhe whole history, w1th t 1e ate,
t
ecem er and ll h
.
N
d b Ih dr I '
a t e parnculars, as they are now fresh before n1e.
o

Iy ro n""Iy
ou t a ra len aslee p, an d t h ac rhe appearance presenred so d 1sr111cr
eyes was a dream I
r
d I d
. .
' can not ror a moment doubt; yet for years I ha 1a no
commun1cat1on
with
G
h

JI I
.
.
- n o r ad there been anyrh111g ro rcca 11111 to rny
reco II ecnon;
nothmg had ta ken pace
l

J
}
.
during
our Swedish
craves
e1t
1er connected w1th G
.
.
.
.
h I d'
0
. - - . r Wit n 1a, or w1th any rh111g relanng co h11n, or co any
mem l.Jer o f his family I rec 0 ll ecre d qu1c
kl y enough our old d1scuss1on,

an d r I1e

bargam we had made I could not d'1sc h arge firom my mmd

r 1e 1mpress1on r h at
G- - must have died ' and th at h'is appearance co me was ro l)C rece1vel.
:I h Y
me as proof of a future scare; yec all the while I felt convinced that rhe whol~
was a dream' and
'cl an cl so unfading was the impression, chat
. so pa'm ~u II Y v1v1
I could not bring myself to talk of ir, or to make the slightest allusion ro ir. I

I. An Introduction to the Study of Reincarnation

19

~nis?ed dressing; and as we had agreed ro make an early start, I was ready by
six oclock, the hour of our early breakfast.
.
Many years larer, the percipienr, in publishing an accounr of his experience, added rhe following information:
Soon after my return to Edinburgh, there arrived a lerrer from India announci1:g G _ _ 's death! and staring char he had died on rhe I 9rh of December!!
Smgular coincidence! yer when one reflects on rhe vase number of dreams which
night afrer night pass through our brains, rhe number of coincidences between
rhe vision and the event are perhaps fewer and less remarkable than a fair calculation of chances would warrant us ro expect.

I give rhe next case in the words of a man (a Russian) who, as a child,
was apparendy seen as an apparirion by his morher.
I was then twelve years old and had just passed into my second year of high
school; I wenr ro rhe corrage not far from Pskov. My morher, who had a severe
liver ailment, had gone wirh her husband (my farher) for treatment ro Karlsbad (now Karlovy Vary), leaving me, my sister and brother in the charge of her
younger sisters. We, the children, were given a greater rhan usual freedom of
action and used it. Once, in the evening, we decided ro recreate one of rhe
adventures of rhe children of Captain Grant, who had saved themselves from
a flood by climbing a tree. We chose a big willow leaning over rhe warer on rhe
bank of the river. I was to play Paganel and became so engrossed in chis pare
rhar, just like him, I fell off the rree into the water and, unable to swim, began
drowning. Only grabbing a branch, I managed ro reach rhe steep bank, with
great difficulty. In silent horror, my brother and sister were wirnessing this
evenr from rhe rree. We were particularly worried by rhe inevirabiliry of rhe
punishment. We could nor conceal from our aunrs chis advenrure: I was completely wet and my brand new high school cap wirh its white peak - the object
of pride and love - had been carried away by the current. Ar home, our young
aunts, sympathizing, decided nor co report to Karlsbad of the event (rhey also
were uneasy about ir). They made us promise rhar we would nor repeat it. You
can imagine the amazement and confusion - both ours and our aunrs' - when
the moment she arrived, our mother described this incident in all derails,
pointed our rhe willow, mentioned the cap which had been carried to rhe dam,
ere. She had dreamed of all chis in Karls bad and, waking up in rears, and disarray, asked her husband immediately ro cable home asking whether everything
was all right with rhe children. Father admirred char he had nor senr a cable
but, in order ro calm rhe sick woman, dozed for half an hour in the reception
room of the horel and returned saying rhar he had cabled.

For rhe nexr case, I again quore rhe words of a person direcrly concerned
in it. Here is his accounr of how his sisrer became aware, while a long distance away, of an accident he had:

20

CHILDREN WHO Rf.MEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

As a 19 year old [German] student, I had a serious accident during a military

exercise near Wiirzburg and barely escaped certain death. Riding on the narrow edge of a steep ravine through which a road led, I fell with my rearing and
tumbling horse down into the path of a mounted battery and came co lie almost
beneath the wheel of one of the guns. The latter, pulled by six horses, came to
a stop just in time and I escaped, having suffered no more than fright. This
accident happened in the morning hours of a beautiful spring day. In the
evening of the same day, I received a telegram from my father who inquired
about my well being. It was the first and only rime in my life that I received
such a query. My oldest sister, to whom I had always been particularly close,
had occasioned chis telegraphic inquiry, because she had suddenly cold my p~r
encs that she knew with certainty that I had suffered an accident. My family
lived in Coburg at the rime. This is a case of spontaneous telepathy in which
at a time of mortal danger, and as I contemplated certain death, I transmitted
my thoughts, while my sister, who was particularly close co me, acted as the
receiver.
Armchair critics sometimes say of reports such as those I have ci red that
they all derive from woolly-minded persons who have no credibility. No one
can reasonably say this of the persons concerned in these cases. I did not mention their names earlier, because I did not wish any reader to accept the
authenticity of the cases from the mere dropping of names. However, I will
now tell you that the reporters of these experiences were, in order: H. M.
Stanley, the African explorer and "discoverer" of Dr. Livingstone; Lord
Brougham, a notable British orator and statesman who was Lord Chancel~o; in t~e Wh~g govern~ent. of 1830; L. L. Vasili~v, who became pro.fessor
physiology m the University of Leningrad; and Hans Berger, the discoverer of electroencephalography. is
Berger's experience affected him so much that he dropped an intention
he had had ofb

h. i c
ecommg an astronomer and decided instead to devote ts ue
to. the study of the relationship between the mind and the physical world,
wtth consequences for which we should all be grateful. The experiences of
the. ~ther. pers~ns concerned deeply affected them also, in different ways.
Vasiltev Cited his experience in one of his books on parapsychology (to which
he made notable contributions), and his childhood experience with telepathy seems to have been a factor in his later undertaking research in parapsychology. However, I mainly wish to emphasize that the persons who had
these experiences deserve to be listened to thoughtfully when they recount
them, because they have earned our respect through their competence in
unrelated activi ties. 16
Skeptics have also suggested that apparitions of the dead coincide by
chance with the deaths of the persons perceived. The early psychical
researchers paid much attention to this objection, and they refuted it with a

1. An Introduction to the Study ofReincarnation

21

careful appraisal of the likelihood that an apparition of a person might be

seen at the moment of his death by chance. 17
Even if it were not wrong, the argument of chance coincidence could
only be brought against instances in which a person was identified in a dream
or apparition at the moment of his death without specific details of the death.
When such details occur - as they do in many instances - and are outside
the percipient's normal powers of inference, we are considering a unique
perception, at a long distance, of a unique event. To illustrate this point I
shall present another case. The percipient was Agnes Paquet, whose brother,
Edmund Dunn, drowned in the harbor of Chicago in 1889. She made the
following statement:
I arose about the usual hour on the morning of the accident, probably about
six o'clock. I had slept well throughout the night, had no dreams or sudden
awakenings. I awoke feeling gloomy and depressed, which feeling I could not
shake off. After breakfast my husband went to his work, and, at the proper time,
the children were gotten ready and sent to school, leaving me alone in the
house. Soon after this I decided to steep and drink some tea, hoping it would
relieve me of the gloomy feelings aforementioned. I went into the pantry, took
down the tea canister, and as I turned around my brother Edmund - or his
exact image- stood before me and only a few feet away. The apparition stood
with back toward me, or, rather, partially so, and was in the act of falling forward - away from me - seemingly impelled by two ropes or a loop of rope
drawing against his legs. The vision lasted but a moment, disappearing over a
low railing or bulwark, but was very distinct. I dropped the tea, clasped my
hands to my face, and exclaimed, "My God! Ed. is drowned."
At about half-past ten a.m. my husband received a telegram from Chicago,
announcing the drowning of my brother. When he arrived home he said to me,
"Ed. is sick in hospital at Chicago; I have just received a telegram," to which
I replied, "Ed. is drowned; I saw him go overboard." I then gave him a minute
description of what I had seen. I stated that my brother, as I saw him, was bareheaded, had on a heavy, blue sailor's shirt, no coat, and that he went over the
rail or bulwark. I noticed that his pants' legs were rolled up enough to show
che white lining inside. I also described the appearance of the boat at the point
where my brother went overboard.
I am not nervous, and neither before nor since have I had any experience
in the least degree similar to that above related.
My brother was not subject to fainting or vertigo.

Agnes Paquet's husband, Peter, provided the following corroboration of

his wife's experience and his brother-in-law's death:
At about 10.30 o'clock a.m., October 24th, 1889, I received a telegram from
Chicago, announcing the drowning of my brother-in-law, Edmund Dunn, at
3 o'clock that morning. I went directly home, and, wishing to break the force
of the sad news I had to convey to my wife, I said to her: "Ed. is sick in hospital

22

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

at Chicago; I have just received a telegram." To which she replied: "Ed. is

drowned; I saw him go overboard." She then described to me rhe appearance
and dress of her brother as described in her statement; also rhc appearance of
the boat, &c.
I started at once for Chicago, and when I arrived there I found rhe appearance of that part of the vessel described by my wife to be cxacdy as. she had
described it, though she had never seen the vessel; and the crew verified my
wife's description of her brother's dress, &c., except that they thought that he
had his hat on at the time of the accident. They said rhar Mr. Dunn had purchased a pair of pants a few days before the accident occurred, and as they were
a trifle long before, wrinkling at the knees, he had worn them rolled up, showing the white lining as seen by my wife.
.
The captain of rhe rug, who was at rhe wheel at the rime o~ ~cc_ident,
seemed reticent. He thought my brother-in-law was taken with a farn.nng fir
or vertigo and fell over backward; bur a sailor (Frank Yemonr) cold a fnend of
that he (Yemont) stood on the bow of rhe vessel that was b c111g

rnd
mine
row ed .
saw the accident. He stated that my brother-in-law was caught in rhe row-li~e
and thrown overboard, as described by my wife. I chink char the captain, in }us
statement, wished to avoid responsibility, as he had no righ r to order a
fireman - my brother-in-law's occupation - to handle rhe cow-line
My brother-in-law was never, to my knowledge, subject ro fainting or verrigo.18
.To stat~ the obvious, one can die only once in a lifetime. Therefore, the
precise details of how one dies are always unique. Some deaths resemble others, a~d we can sometimes predict, in a general way, how a particular person will die. Ocher deaths, however, have unusual features, and I place that
of Edmund Dunn in this category. His kind of death - from drowning when
his foot got cau~ht in a tow-line - cannot have happened to more than a few
people at any time, and it can only have happened once to him. 1') We cann~t reaso~ably argue that his sister just happened by chance to have a vision
wlth derails corresponding to those of her brother's death at about rhe time
he did die in the manner she described. It makes more sense to conclude that
she somehow became aware (at a long distance) of the derails of his death.
If we cannot state exactly how she did this, we should nor for that reason
deny that she did. "Rarities and reports that seem incredible arc not co be
suppressed or denied to the memory of men."20
Confronted with cases like Agnes Paquec's, some critics have suggested
char we cannot trust the accounts of such experiences because they were usually written down after the percipient obtained knowledge of the corresponding events and often only many years later, when foul ty memories
could have blurred details and permitted a forgetting of discrepancies. This
is an objection char we must take seriously in the appraisal of these cases (and
of rhe children's cases with which this book is mainly concerned). We do not

1. An Introduction to the Study ofReincarnation

23

kno:v when H. M. Stanley first wrote down his account of his experience,
~ut It could only have been many years after he had it; and it was nor published, so far as I know, until 1909, after Stanley's death. There are, nevertheless, a substantial number of cases in which a percipient (or someone else)
made a written record of a seemingly paranormal dream or vision before
normally obtaining information about the corresponding events. Lord
Brougham's case gives us a good example of this type, because he recorded
in his diary the vision of his friend that he had in Sweden before he learned
of the friend's death in India.
I shall describe another case of this type, one that I investigated myself.
In it the percipient, Georgina Feakes, had a vision of her cousin, Owen
Howison, who had been killed in action during World War II. Georgina
Feakes already knew about Owen Howison's death at the time of her vision,
and indeed, his mother, Beatrice Howison (Georgina Feakes's aunt), had
asked her whether she had had any visions of Owen. (Georgina Feakes had
some reputation in her family for having such experiences.) These circumstances prepared Georgina Feakes to have a vision of her cousin, but not for
the one she had. In this vision, she saw him rake a blue flower out of his shirr
and then replace it; he repeated this unusual action and then vanished. This
action of bringing a flower our of a shirr and then hiding it again made no
sense to Georgina Feakes, but she described what she had seen to her aunt.
The latter replied that Georgina Feakes's vision closely marched an incident
in her son's life. He and his family had lived in Cape Town, and once when
he had been climbing on nearby Table Mountain he had illegally plucked a
protected blue flower, which he had brought to his mother. He had carried
it home inside his shirr. Ir then happened that just as he was showing the
flower to his mother, two unexpected visitors arrived separately and knocked
on the door. Each rime this happened, Owen Howison quickly put the flower
back in his shirt. Georgina Feakes had no normal knowledge of this incident. It may or may not be interpreted as evidence of Owen Howison's survival of death; Georgina Feakes might have obtained her information about
the episode by telepathy from Beatrice Howison. (Other details of the case
nor germane to my present point make me think this unlikely.) However, I
have cited the case here not ro press its interpretation as evidence of Owen
Howison's survival after death, but because I obtained copies of letters chat
Georgina Feakes wrote ro Beatrice Howison concerning her vision and the
related events. These showed that Georgina Feakes had written to Beatrice
Howison about her experience before Beatrice Howison had told Georgina
Feakes to what events it corresponded. The letters did not contain all the
derails of Georgina Feakes's experience as she later described it to me, but
corroborated enough of them to warrant my including the case in the group

24

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

for which we can say that faults of memory did not lead the informants ta
believe that a perception matched an apparently corresponding event mor~
than it did. 21
No case, including Georgina Feakes's, is perfect. One may argue that
Beatrice Howison somehow told Georgina Feakes about the incident of
Owen's putting the blue flower in his shirt and that subsequently she and
Georgina Peakes forgot that she had done this. One can also suppose that
Beatrice Howison had docilely conformed her memory of the event so that
it seemed to correspond more than it really did with Georgina Feakes's vision.
Individual spontaneous cases always remain assailable by persons of skeptical inclinations, and this is why some psychical researchers invest their efforts
in experiments, which they believe to be less vulnerable to criticism.
How common are experiences like the six cases I have just cited? We do
not know, but we do know that in Great Britain and the United States several surveys have shown that between 10 and 17 percent of respondents (fro111
the general population) believe that they have had at least one experience of
perceiving an apparition (not always visually). 22 Many more persons report
having had other types of paranormal experiences, such as impressions of
unusual events, occurring at a distance, of which they had no normal awareness. We know that when we investigate such experiences, many of them do
not stand up to scrutiny; their authenticity weakens when inquiries reveal
flaws of observation or memory regarding either the percipient's experience,
the. related events, or both. 23 In another large block of cases, persons who
believe
cannot prov1 d e sur11c1ent
ir.
. they have had a paranorma1commumcat10n
det~il about it for an adequate appraisal. And in still other cases, a strong
desire or some oth
1c

fh
.
'
er norma ractor, may best account for a conv1ct1on o avmg had a paranormal communication. For example, hope and expectation
may well explain them
f h
.

'd
'd
.
a1onry o t e experiences in which a w1 ow or WI ower believes that she h h c l
or e as re t the presence of a deceased spouse, seen
the spouse, or seemed to h
h

f
h
ave some ot er type of commumcat10n rom t e
24
spouse. Some of these

1
experiences may have elements of paranorma com. .
.
muntcat10n, but it is rare to find sat c
'd
f h' 25
.
.
1s1actory ev1 ence o t is.
. The .fo:ego.mg difficulties lead students of psychical research to emphasize the d1stmction between authenticity and paranormality. By authenticity
we mean the accuracy of reports of a case that we receive from the persons
experiencing it (or from those who have investigated it) measured against the
imagined ((case as it really happened." In practice, we almost never know
exactly what happened; but we can sometimes detect or infer inaccuracies,
omissions, and embellishments in the reports, and these may lead us to rank
a case low in authenticity. However, we can rank a case high in authenticity and still say that it provides no evidence of paranormal communication.

1. An Introduction to the Study of Reincarnation

25

An obvious example of this occurs when two people sitting in the same room
together seem spontaneously to think of the same person or topic at the same
time. Their description of the experience may be highly accurate, but their
sensory contact with each other makes it impossible to show that they were
communicating without their senses; they may have been, but we cannot
demonstrate this or ask anyone else to believe that they were.
Many authentic cases are therefore valueless with regard to evidence of
a paranormal process. However, even if we were to make a generous allowance
for cases having a normal explanation and deduct 95 percent of those initially
reported to investigators, an impressive number of genuine paranormal experiences would remain. Moreover, paranormal experiences of different types
show remarkable uniformities from case to case. As far back as the eighteenth
century, enough was known of these uniformities so that Immanuel Kant, who
had a keen interest in psychical phenomena, wrote of them:
The same ignorance makes me unwilling to deny utterly the truth in divers
ghost stories, because I have rhe curious reservation that, although I doubt
each one taken by itself, when they are considered as a group I have some belief
in them. 26

What uniformities do we find in them "considered as a group?" We find

in case after case two main themes: love and death. The persons who are concerned in the experiences nearly always love each other. (They are often
members of the same family, but the links can be marital as well as biological, so we are not concerned with a genetic factor here.) And the communication exchanged between them has usually to do with death or with some
life-threatening illness or injury. 27 (The six cases I have cited are typical in
both these features.) The cases of the children who remember previous lives
likewise show many similarities to each other, and I shall describe later how
the themes of love and death figure prominently in them also.
I hope that the foregoing digression about telepathic experiences in
everyday life will suffice to prepare the reader to consider later whether telepathy provides an adequate explanation for the cases of the children who claim
to remember previous lives. I shall now resume my notes on terminology and
explain some terms that I have adopted in reporting and discussing these
cases.

Terms Used in Describing Cases of the Reincarnation Type

I use the phrase "previous personality" to designate some aspects of the
deceased person of whom the child having memories of a previous life is
presumed to be the reincarnation. The word "personality" in this phrase

26

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

may seem inappropriate to some readers. The deceased person in question

was more than a personality; he also had a physical body that died. Many
would say that was the end of him, bur the cases I have investigated suggest
that something of the person may have persisted after his death and later
become associated with a new physical body. For the interval between death
and presumed rebirth we can no longer describe whatever parts of him survived as a "person," because his physical body is dead; but we can, I think,
describe these elements as a "personality" or a "discarnate personality." I
have, therefore, used the word "personality" to designate both a deceased person of whom the child is said to be the reincarnation and those aspects of
that person that may have survived death and contributed to the new person (and personality) of the child.
I am not opposed to using the word "soul" in reference to the hypothetical elements of a person that may survive death and reincarnate. However, as this word carries for many readers connotations of particular religious
views, I generally avoid it and prefer to use the word "personality" in referring to these potentially surviving elements. The word "mind" also occurs
in my vocabulary, particularly when I refer to whatever a person experiences
directly that is private to him.
Two other terms need defining: solved cases and unsolved cases. I refer to
cases in which my associates and I are satisfied that the child's statements refer
to one deceased person, and only one, as solved, and cases for which we cannot find any such person as unsolved.
.The ~ubjects of these cases usually have two types of memories of the
previous lives they seem to remember. First, they have imaged memories.
~hese are.memories of events, often represented to the subjects - it seems l~ke the vis.ual r~p~esenrations of ordinary memories that we all have of earlier events In this life. I also include under imaged memories the information
the sub3' ect may have

even
. ab our names o f persons an d p Iaces, somet1n1es
dates and ages, that is nor ordinarily inwardly represented to him in imaged
form ' although it may be. Th ese memones
differ

f rom t h e seconc.:l type,

which I designate behavioral memories.
Th.e ~oncept of ~hat I call behavioral memory is so important to the cases
and their mterpretanon that I shall explain in some detail what I mean by
this term. Psychologists have studied the frequent occurrence of behavior,
such as a habit or a seemingly irrational reaction to a situation, although the
person showing it has no memory of how he developed the behavior.
Posthypnotic suggestions provide a particularly useful method for investigating this separation of behavior from memories of its origins. A posthypnotic suggestion is one given by a hypnotist to a subject, in which the
hypnotist tells the subject to perform a certain action after he comes our of

1. An fntrod11ctio11 to the Study of Reincarnation

27

hypnosis; bur when the hypnotist gives this suggestion, he often gives a second. one at ~he sa~e time, and this is that the subject will forget that the hypnotISt h.as given him the first suggestion. For example, the hypnotist may tell
the subject that after the subject comes out of hypnosis he (the hypnotist)
will drop his handkerchief on the floor, and that as soon as the hypnotist does
this the subject is to open his umbrella. The hypnotist further tells the subject that he will not remember that he has been told to open the umbrella
on this signal. Then he brings the subject our of hypnosis. After a suitable
interval the hypnotist casually drops his handkerchief on the floor. The subject may startle a little and seem puzzled, but he proceeds to get his umbrella
and open it in the room. The hypnotist asks him why he is doing this, and
the subject tries to explain his behavior. He says that the ceiling of the house
seems a little leaky, a storm might come up, and he would need the open
umbrella if water leaked into the room, or he may say that he wanted to make
quite sure that his umbrella was working properly. He has completely forgotten that his behavior of opening the umbrella in the room really derives
from the hypnotist's earlier instruction. Thus, the subject performs an action
28
without consciously knowing why he is doing it.
Our ordinary behavior does not derive from posthypnotic suggestions,
and I only mentioned them here to emphasize that we can develop patterns
of behavior, and even make them fully automatic, while forgetting the events
from which they derive. We can walk, but few of us remember our first
stumblings as we learned to do so. A skilled pianist may learn a piece of music
so well that he can play it while carrying on a conversation with another person, yet he may forger most or even all the derails of the practice by which
he earlier learned the piece. We can also have unpleasant behavioral memories without imaged memories of their origin. For example, a strong fear or
phobia often persists long after the frightening event that caused it has been
forgotten. I think most psychologists and psychiatrists agree that we bring
many behavioral memories from childhood into adulthood while forgetting
how we acquire them. ~ 9 I am only adding the suggestion that we may similarly bring behavioral memories from a previous life.
In order to complete the list of memories - additional to imaged and
behavioral ones - that we may bring over from one life to another, I should
mention two other types of memories.
The first is a memory of a skill without the memory of how one acquired
it. In more formal language we may call these subliminal cognitive memories. In a later chapter I shall discuss, as examples of these, foreign languages
that one has learned - early in life or perhaps in a previous life - without
remembering how one learned chem or even, in some instances, that one had
once learned chem.

28

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

The second type of memory is biological or perhaps I should say car_

poreal. I refer here to birthmarks, birth defects, and other physical features
of a person chat correspond to wounds, marks, or other physical features on
a deceased person of whose life the subject having them also (usually) has
imaged memories. This type of memory provides some of the strongest evj_
dence chat we have for interpreting the cases as having a paranormal process.
The subject's physical features can be seen and often photographed, and. We
can often obtain printed records, such as autopsy reports, that give us objective evidence of the wounds or other physical features of the concerned
deceased person.
For the remaining chapters of this book I have adopted the following
plan. In the next chapter I show that a belief in reincarnation is widespread
throughout the world, and I discuss how people may come to hold the belief.
I also mention that the different peoples who believe in reincarnation often
have widely varying beliefs about it: for example, about who can reincarnate
and under what circumstances.
I follow the chapter about the belief in reincarnation with one (chapto justify a belief in it. In
th~s chapter I explain why I reject as of little value nearly all types of alleged
evidence of reincarnation, except that provided by young children who claim
to rememb

l'ives. Next I present in chapter 4 summaries

o f iourc
. er previous
teen typical cases of children who have remembered previous lives. Then (in
chapter 5) I survey some of the recurrent characteristics of cases of this type.
.
In chapters 6 and 7 I present an account of my methods of investigating and analyzing the cases.

te~ 3) about the types of evidence that are used

In. chapter 8 I return to the variations in the cases in different cultures

and, wnh further ex
l
f h
. .
.
. 1
c
amp es o t ese variations ' discuss poss1b e reasons ror
t h em.
In the last three h
. l
c apters-espec1a ly chapter 11- I become more spec.
u1at1ve. In chapter 9 I di

f
.
h0 I
.
scuss a variety o presently unsolved problems m psyc . ogy, ~sychiatry, and medicine, to the solution of which the idea of
remcarnanon
may co n cn'b ute. I h ave, I hope, increased the plaus1'b'l'
f
.
1 tty o

these ~OnJe~tures .by referring (for each topic I discuss) to examples of actual
cases m which reincarnation seems to have had some explanatory value. In
cha~ter 10.1 offer some answers to questions that are frequently raised in con~ect10n with these cases'. And finally, in chapter 11, I give some of my conjectures about processes mvolved in reincarnation, if it occurs. Here I have
ventur.ed- contrary to my earlier assertion_ to say something about rein:arnanon. I have, however, tried to keep what I say, if not firmly grounded
m the data of the cases that I have studied, at least within sight of the data.

CHAPTER 2

The Belief in Reincarnation

Many persons believe they have lived before being born into what we
may call the present life. To those who have this belief, it does not seem strange
at all. They would agree with Voltaire, who wrote: "It is not more surprising
to be born twice than once." 1 Yet persons unfamiliar with the idea of reincarnation often find it unreasonable and even absurd. They, however, may form
a minority of all the inhabitants of the earth; believers in reincarnation possibly outnumber chose who reject the idea or have never heard of it.
Many Westerners mistakenly think chat only the inhabitants of Southeast Asia believe in reincarnation. This error probably arose because the Hindus and Buddhists of that region recorded the belief in their ancient religious
scriptures and they emphasize it in their modern teachings. Their doctrines
have diffused into the West in translations, through the efforts of their missionaries, and in not-always-reliable popular distillates.
The inhabitants of many ocher parts of the world, however, also believe
in reincarnation. Large groups of Shiite Moslems of western Asia believe in
it. So do many inhabitants of West Africa and East Africa who have been
formally but incompletely converted to Islam and Christianity. A large
minority of the inhabitants of Brazil believe in reincarnation; their belief
appears to derive from ideas about it brought by Africans to Brazil, where
they became emulsified with concepts of spiritualism imported from France
in the nineteenth century.
Another substantial number of persons who believe in reincarnation
live in northwestern North America. The native tribes of that region have
preserved the belief in reincarnation (which forms a part of their traditional
religion) despite some erosion of it through the efforts of Christian missionaries and educators, both of whom have, from different points of view,
inculcated a belief in "one life" on earth.

29

30

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

Numerous other peoples also believe in reincarnation, but I shall mention only a few additional examples. Anthropologists (of the twentieth century) have reported the belief among the Trobriand Islanders, the tribes of
central Australia, and the Ainu of northern Japan. 2
The widespread occurrence of belief in reincarnation led Schopenhauer
to remark: "Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should
be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world completely dominated
by the outrageous and incredible delusion that a man's birth is his beginning
and that he is created out of nothing." 3
Belief in reincarnation has spread in the West since Schopenhauer's
time. By the end of the twentieth century, many Europeans had lapsed from
the disbelief that he deplored. A survey conducted in 1968 showed that 18
percent of persons in eight countries of West Europe believed in reincarnation. A similar survey in North America showed that 20 percent of Americans and 26 percent of Canadians questioned said that they believed in
reincarnation. In later surveys in the United States, 23 percent of the respondents reported in 1982 and 26 percent of those reported in the early 1990s
said they believed in reincarnation. Similarly, in a later survey in Europe
(reported in 1986) 21 percent of the respondents affirmed a belief in reincarnation. In the European surveys of the early 1990s the percentage of persons believing in reincarnation had increased still further. For example, in
France it was 28 percent, in Austria 29 percent, and in Great Britain 29 percent.4

It would be incorrect to say that all the peoples of industrially unde:elo~ed cou~tries not influenced by Christianity or orthodox Islam believe
m r~mcarnat~o.n. A few have remained impervious to these teachings and have
retained tradmonal religions that do not include this belief. These few exception~, however, subtract little from the generalization that nearly everyone
outside th.e range of orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Science the last be1~g a secular religion for many persons - believes in reincarnation.
I shall ~ons1der ~ext h.ow. this may have happened.
Did the belief anse m one place and then diffuse to other parts of the
world, rather as we suppose the ancestor of the Indo-European languages to
have spread out from one fairly small region? If this happened, it would
explain the occurrence of the belief in some far-separated areas of the world
that communicated with each other in historical times or earlier. For example, traders and other travelers have linked South Asia and West Asia for at
least two millennia and possibly much longer. We can trace the belief in reincarnation in India at least to the period of the later Vedas, which were writ5
ten about 1000 B.C. The Indologist Norman Brown suggested that the
authors of the accounts of walking on water recorded in the Bible may have

2. The Belief in Reincarnation

31

borr~wed

and adapted them from earlier narrations or legends of Buddhism.

If r.h1s. happened, it follows that the Indians could also have exported their
?el1ef 111 re111carnation to western Asia and Europe. Apollonius, a Greek born
111 Tyana (n~w in southern Anatolia, Turkey), traveled in rhe first century
A.O. to India and there engaged in a philosophical discussion with a sage,
larchus. A modern Indian would find nothing surprising in the almost casual
references to reincarnation that are recorded from their conversation. 6 The
beliefs in reincarnation held by people living in different parts of Asia may
have had a common origin. 7 As I shall explain later, the peoples of South Asia
and those of West Asia (who believe in reincarnation) now have different concepts about some important derails of reincarnation; but this does not preclude a common ancestry for the central idea.
If, however, we try to show that all the other peoples who believe in
reincarnation also derived their ideas on the subject from central or southern Asia, we encounter serious difficulties. How shall we account, on this
hypothesis, for the belief in reincarnation among the Inuit (Eskimo) and the
other tribes of northwestern North America? Their ancestors migrated from
Asia to America thousands of years ago, and it is generally believed that
afterward there was no important contact (in protohistorical times) between
Asia and America. It is barely possible that an Inuit in northern Canada and
a villager of the Ganges Valley acquired their beliefs in reincarnation from
the same source. 8 It is even less likely that the belief in reincarnation spread
from South Asia to West Africa or to central Australia.
If, however, the belief did not diffuse to other regions from one central
place of origin, it must have arisen in different parts of the world independently and, no doubt, at differenr times. This leads us to ask how such an
idea might arise in the first place.
The belief in survival of personality after death diminishes the grief of
mourners and the fear of those who await their turn to die. Yet the idea of
reincarnation is not necessary for such solace: it could be obtained from simply believing in a prolonged or eternal sojourn in some paradisal realm where
we would live after death. We need to ask, therefore, what would generate
the more specific belief that aspects of a person who had survived death could
enter into a new physical body and start another terrestrial life.
A desire by grieving relatives for the return of loved ones from death
may promote the conviction that they have reincarnated among them; bur
this explanation seems less than fully satisfactory when the presumed rebirth
occurs in a family completely different from that of the deceased person,
which I find co be almost the rule for cases that I investigated in India,
Lebanon, Turkey, and Sri Lanka. Bereaved persons hearing of a child born
in another family who claims to have belonged to theirs may derive some

32

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

comfort from this information, if they accept the claim; but it is unlikely that
the reassurance provided by such cases could alone support the extensive
edifice of belief in reincarnation that, for example, the Hindus and Buddhists
of South Asia have erected.
The easiest way to acquire any belief is to accept as true what one's parents tell one, and their task of inculcating a belief becomes easier when they
can draw on the support of scriptural authority, as Hindus and Buddhists
can. (Some Christians use the Bible with similar authority in arguments
against reincarnation.) Most children in South Asia grow up believing in reincarnation as something entirely natural, and they may discover with surprise
that peoples of other countries do not share their belief.
Religious tradition, however, does not require a written embodiment.
No scripture imposes it on the Tlingit of Alaska, because they have none.
The Alevis of south-central Turkey also seem to have no written authority
for their belief in reincarnation. 9 The Igbo of Nigeria offer still another example of a people having a robust belief in reincarnation that has been transmitted without a written book of reference. 10
However, understanding how a belief in reincarnation may pass from
generation to generation - through scripture or oral tradition - does not
explain how it arose in the first place. There are several possible ways for this
to happen.
One may reach a conviction about reincarnation through philosophical argument. A number of philosophers, including Plato, Schopenhauer' II
McTaggart, Broad, and Ducasse, 12 have taken the idea of reincarnation seriously and argued on its behalf.
In the Meno Plato described Socrates's demonstration of how a young

~as able to solve a geometrical problem when it was presented to him,

~eemmgly. fo~ the first time. Socrates attributed the boy's success to his havboy

mg a. sublimmal memory of the solution, which he had learned in a previous life, even though the boy had no imaged memories of such a life.
~ccording to ~lato, Socrates spoke dogmatically about the knowledge
we bnng from one incarnation to another:

T~e soul ~hen being immortal, having been ofren born, having beheld the
things which are here, the things which are in Hades, and all things, there is
nothing of which she has nor gained knowledge. No wonder, therefore, that
she is able to recollect, with regard to virtue as well as ro other things, what
formerly she knew. .. For inquiry and learning is reminiscence all .U

In a similar vein, McTaggart said that reincarnation might explain and that nothing else could - such common observations as the strong attractions some people have for others on first or slight acquaintance, and the

2. The Belief in Reincarnation

33

unusual aptitudes and interests they often show, contrary to the expectations
of their families.
Other philosophers, as I mentioned in chapter l, have concerned themselves with how we should define personal identity; in grappling with this
problem they have tried to answer the question of what criteria we should
have for saying that a particular person has survived death and been reincarnated.
I think it fair to say that philosophers have added only a little to the
evidence for reincarnation or to the belief in it. Someone balancing between
belief and disbelief might find himself tipped toward believing in reincarnation by philosophical arguments, such as those used by McTaggart and
Ducasse 14 ; but I do not think that these arguments alone would suffice to
establish a belief that did not already have roots. Nevertheless, some philosophers have contributed to removing the rubbish of unwarranted assumptions
that seem for many persons to make belief in reincarnation unreasonable.
Although we have no evidence on the matter, it seems to me likely that
the belief in reincarnation has originated sometimes, and perhaps often, from
the claim of someone to remember having lived before. News of such a person may travel from place to place, and an account of his claimed memories
may pass down several generations or more in time. Yet such diffusion must
have some outer limits. Traders notoriously narrate extraordinary tales of distant places, but the entertainment of their listeners does not require them to
present convincing evidence, and as the site for some unusual event becomes
more remote, listeners become less inclined to believe that it happened. We
cannot in any way account for the widespread belief in reincarnation among
the Inuit - from Greenland through northern Canada to Alaska - by supposing that hunters and sledders carried accounts of reincarnation cases from
15
settlement to settlement across vast distances of tundra and ice. Moreover,
when two neighboring peoples believe in reincarnation, this does not necessarily mean that one has proselytized the other. The ancestors of the
Athabaskan Indians (of northwestern Canada and central Alaska) and of the
Inuit appear to have migrated from Asia to the North American continent
at different times, and these peoples speak mutually unintelligible languages.
Although they formerly quarreled over territory, they otherwise appear to
have had little contact with each other, at lease of a rype thac would include
an exchange of ideas about the nature of man and his destiny after death.
Yet both the Athabaskan and the Inuit believe in reincarnation.
I conclude, therefore, chat persons of culcures having no written scriptures who believe in reincarnation may have reached their belief through
exposure to a person within their trading area who claimed to remember a
previous life. 16 This person could have lived in the same or a nearby village,

34

CHILDREN WHO REI'l.1EMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

and he could have lived a few generations back, so that the tradition of his
memories outlived the man himself. Perhaps many such persons have independently claimed to remember a previous life and thereby have established
the belief in reincarnation in different parts of the world.
Although the belief in reincarnation among different peoples was probably initiated by claims to remember previous lives, once the belief ~ecom~s
established it may persist for many years in the absence of supporr111g evidence. For example, although Hindus have believed in reincarnation for perhaps several thousand years, we find no trace of anything corresponding to
a modern case of the reincarnation type in India until the beginning of the
eighteenth century. And this case appears to have had no successors - certainly none known to me- unril the early years of the twentieth cenrury< 7
We should, however, remember that many cases may have occurred m
India before the 20th century without our having any record of them. I am
sure that the cases about which I learned in that century represent only a small
fraction of all that have occurred, and in former centuries our modern facilities for reporting and disseminating information about cases would be lacking. Moreover, the beliefs of Hinduism might have made memories of
previous lives seem normal and in no need of being recorded, or even noticed.
The Cathars of southwestern France provide another example of a group
having a strong belief in reincarnation, although we have received from them
alm
h" . h
l . .
ost not mg in t e way of cases. The Cathars were a heretical C 1 nstian
sect during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 18 In the middle of the thirteenth century the forces of King Louis IX of France and northern French
nobles effectively extirpated them. The records of the Cathars themselves
see~ largely to have been destroyed, and most of what we know about them
der~ves from records of their persecutors, the monks of the Inquisition. Here
again, however, the paucity of cases known to us does not mean that no others occurred.

It also

- b.
. seems probable th at a b eiie f m remcarnanon
n1ay b econ1e esta
lished without the eviden
h

c
"d
.
. . ce t at memories o a previous ue may prov1 e.
Otherwise, I find It difficult to explain the frequent belief in reincarnation
expressed at present by many persons in the West, especially young persons.
They may have had some exposure to the popular books about Asian religions and theosop~y, but these (for the most part) give assertions, not evidence, and the evidence from investigated cases has only recencly become
more widely available. Perhaps they reached a belief in reincarnation through
some process of intuition or self-conducted philosophical argument. Anyone, perhaps particularly a thoughtful child, may find incredible the orthodox Christian doctrine according to which God makes a new soul for each
new baby born. And if one rejects that assertion without dismissing the idea

2. The Beliefin Reincarnation

35

~fa sou~. ~ne m.ay ~asily suppose that each soul had some existence prior to

Its assoc1anon w1th Its (present) physical body and that it was, therefore, associated with an earlier physical body. "Whoever believes that man's birth is
his beginning," wrote Schopenhauer, "must also believe that his death is the
en d . " 19 Th e teac l.
1mg t h at we have only a single life, as I mentioned in the
last chapter, also offends many persons' sense of justice when they contemplate the different conditions at birth of different persons. From dissatisfaction with this teaching they might turn toward the idea of reincarnation.
If reincarnation occurs, intimations about it may derive from previous
lives that are not remembered in detail. 20 More than 2,000 years ago, the great
Indian sage Patanjali explained the almost universal fear of death as due to
a fear of undergoing another postmortem review of one's life, such as, according to Hinduism and some other traditions, each soul experiences at death.
The subliminal memory of this experience - unpleasant as it must be for
many persons - would generate fear of another death, since this, in turn,
would precipitate another (and possibly equally unpleasant) review of one's
actions. 21 22
The belief in reincarnation, like other beliefs, can rise and fall in acceptance within particular nations and cultures. If we consider the belief over
a long period of time, we can find one clear instance of its arising in a people and several of its disappearing among peoples who had held it for a long
time.
The Tibetans provide an example of the development of a belief in
reincarnation - or perhaps I should say a belief in a particular style of reincarnation - where none existed before. Buddhism reached and spread in
Tibet between the seventh and tenth centuries A.D. The version of Buddhism
imported into Tibet included rhe belief in reincarnation. But this, as derived
from India, did not have the features that the Tibetans developed and that
make their belief in reincarnation, and most of their cases of the reincarnation type, distinct from those of other peoples. I refer to the ideas that spiritually advanced monks (lamas) may acquire the ability to control their next
lives, and that after rebirth they may give indications of their previous identities. (Such persons are called tulkw among Tibetans.) These concepts developed in Tibet during the eleventh to fifteenth centuries A.O. They gradually
became codified, and to some extent hardened, into a system of succession
for the abborships of monasteries through reincarnation. Although the
Tibetan concept of reincarnation did not begin with the Dalai Lamas, they
and their associates of rhe Gelugpa, or "Yellow Har," school of Tibetan Buddhists adopted it. They have since developed it co the point where the ritual
procedures associated with the identification of each new Dalai Lama now
2
provide a model for similar discoveries of ocher senior lamas. ~

36

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

Among cases of peoples who had once believed in reincarnation but have
ceased to do so, the Moslems of India provide one of the most impressive
examples. We know that only a handful of the millions of Moslems living in
India have descended from the Moslem raiders and invaders who eventually
established the Mogul empire whose leaders dominated India for four centuries. The majority of Moslems in India today are descendants of Hindu
ancestors who converted to Islam. 24 The Ismailis, a Shiite sect that originated
in western Asia and spread into other parts of Asia and Africa, at one time
believed in reincarnation, but the modern Ismailis (of western Asia) do not. 25
The Celts of Great Britain believed in reincarnation, 26 as did the Vikings of
Scandinavia and Iceland27 ; the majority of their descendants (Christians for
the most part) do not.
We also know that at least some Christians of southern Europe believed
in reincarnation up to the sixth century. It did not then form part of official
instruction, but leaders of the church appear to have tolerated it as an acceptable concept until the Council of Constantinople in A.O. 553. 28 We may
debate whether the actions of this council as a whole, and those of a group
of clerics outside the council but associated with it, constituted a binding
official ban on the teaching of reincarnation. Yet certainly a decline in the
acceptability of the idea set in among orthodox Christians at about this time
and has persisted since.
I obtained evidence of a decline in the belief in reincarnation in my journeys to northwestern North America where I studied cases of the reincarnation type among the natives (Indi~ns and Inuit) of that area for many
years. In the late 1960s I conducted a small, informal survey of Inuit informants coneernmg
t heir
k nowledge of the idea of reincarnation among t h etr

own .people and their belief in it. I questioned 108 Inuits in this survey. Of
the sixty-six persons who were forty years or older, forty-seven (71 percent)
had heard of the bel'ie f m reincarnation

b ut o f t h e iortyc
among the Inutt;
two persons who were th'Irty-nme
years or younger, only t h irteen

(31 percent) had heard ~f this belief. I asked forty-seven of the informants who had
heard of the belief whether they believed that reincarnation does in fact
occur, an.d twenty-nine (62 percent) said that they believed it does. This is
a much higher percentage of believers than we find among persons of the conjoined forty-eight states, so the belief in reincarnation persisted rather
strongly among the l~uit at that time, even though many younger people had
not heard of the belief among their own people.29 I should mention, however, that some young persons among the tribes of northwestern North America still have a lively interest in reincarnation, and some mothers who were
under the age of thirty proved to be among my best informants for cases in
this region.

2. The Belief in Reincarnation

37

The. processes that promote skepticism about reincarnation probably

resemble m reverse those that stimulate a belief in it. After a Hindu had converted to Islam in India (say in the sixteenth century), the members of his
family might have mused nostalgically about the idea of reincarnation for one
or several generations, but then it would have begun to seem at first remote
and eventually ridiculous. If during this later period any child among the converts started saying that he remembered a previous life, he might have been
discouraged by derision or sterner measures, if these were needed. And if I
am correct in believing that the cases and the belief strengthen each other in
a circular way, the resulting loss of cases (by suppression) would have removed
empirical support for the doctrine among the new Moslems, who could then
have belittled the idea of reincarnation as a foolish superstition that the faithful in Islam had happily outgrown. As an eraser of credibility, remoteness in
time works as well as physical distance. The editor of the Norse poems about
the hero Helgi provides an example of this: "It was believed according to
ancient lore ... that folk were reborn; but this is now said to be old women's
lying tales. Helgi and Sigrun are said to have been reborn; he was then called
Helgi Haddingjaskati and she Kara Halfdanardottir, as is related in Kdru/joth;
and she was a Valkyrie." 30
When persons who know about cases suggestive of reincarnation that
they believe are authentic encounter aggressive skepticism, they may remain
silent but not completely abandon their previous convictions. Dissembling
their real beliefs, they may appear to have changed them when they have
not. I found evidence of this among the Tlingit and Inuit, whose traditional
religions now stand on the defensive against Christianity and Western science.
Not long after I began my investigations among the Indians and the
Inuit of northwestern North America (in the early 1960s), I met a nurse who
had worked among the Inuit for many years. I mentioned my research to her,
and she told me that the belief in reincarnation had already died out; I had
come, she said, twenty years too late. She was wrong. I found more than 170
cases of the reincarnation type among the Inuit and Indians of northwestern North America. Dr. Antonia Mills, who has continued these investigations in British Columbia, has found many more. The cases exist plentifully
but are revealed only to inquirers judged sympathetic.
The nurse I met is not the only nonnative from whom these cases
remained hidden. I met or corresponded with six professionally trained persons who had lived and worked among the Tlingit for periods Yarying
between a few months and several years. Four of them were anthropologists.
Tlingit bands had given two of them tribal names and thus shown that they
accepted these outsiders into the Tlingit group; I mention this to emphasize

38

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

how close these Western persons were to the natives of whose belief in reincarnation they remained {with one exception) completely ignorant. Of the
six, only one knew anything about the Tlingit belief in reincarnation; she
had also obtained some information about their cases, although she had not
investigated any. The remaining five knew nothing about ci thcr the belief or
the cases related to reincarnation among the Tlingit until I mentioned these
to them. They could have learned about these topics, as I did, if they had
asked about them, but why should their Tlingit friends have risked mockery by broaching the subject first?
In the foregoing discussions of the belief in reincarnation among
different peoples, I have considered only what I call the primary (or central)
belief in reincarnation: whether the personality (soul or mind) of a person
may, after the person's death, become associated with a new physical body.
Attached to this primary belief, however, we find a wide variety of subsidiary
beliefs about who reincarnates, how it occurs, and how causes in one life may
have effects in a later one. I think it important to study these secondary
beliefs about reincarnation separately from the primary belief, and I shall now
describe some of them.3 1
When Westerners who have mistakenly thought that only the people
of Southeast Asia believe in reincarnation learn for the first time about the
belief among other peoples, they are inclined to imagine that these other peoples must have concepts about reincarnation similar to those of the Hindus
and Buddhists. This is wrong. The Hindus and Buddhists believe char moral
conduct in one life influences the circumstances of a later life; this is the
essence. of th. e d octnne
o f karma. Many persons, however, b e l'1eve in
re1n
carnanon wnhout b e1ieving
in karma or m any concept l'k
1 e 1 t. A t l east t h ree
other
concepts
of
re

h
.
.
.
Incarnauon ave been or are held by persons w I10 b e l'1eve
m reincarnation J. ust as earnest ly as the Hmdus

d o.
and Budd l11sts
.
.The members of the Shiite Moslem sects of western Asia who believe
m reincarnation do not th'In k t h at w h at a person does 111
. one l'ue
c h
er
as any enect
on what happens to him in another. Instead they believe char a soul passes
through a succession of lives in different circumstances, and in each of the
lives he must strive for moral perfection. Whether he succeeds or fails in one
life has no effect on his condition in a later one. Ultimately, however, at the
Day of Judgment, the books of his actions are examined, the accounts of good
and bad deeds summed up, and, according to the reckoning, God assigns each
person to Heaven or Hell for eternity.32
The peoples of West Africa hold a belief in reincarnation that has almost
no connection with their moral values. I do not mean to imply that West
Africans have undeveloped moral concepts; on the contrary, they have an
elaborate system of moral codes and of sanctions for cheir enforcement. Their

2. The Belief in Reincarnation

39

concept of re~ncarnation, however, has few connections with these codes.

They regard life as basically pleasant and desirable. (This attitude contrasts
with the .life-negati_ng attitude of the Hindus and Buddhists.) Accordingly,
West Africans consider rhe afrer-dearh srare a limbo from which discarnare
~pirirs are eager ro rerurn for a new rerresrrial incarnation. They hope for an
improvement in srarus or circumstances in another incarnation, bur have no
~xpecrarion rhar rhis will come from meritorious conduct. They attach more
importance to wishes for improvement thar a person may express before he
dies.B
The Tlingit of sourheasrern Alaska hold similar beliefs. Like the West
Africans, rhey do nor believe rhar moral conduct in one life governs or even
has rhe slighresr effect on whar happens in rhe next one; rhey also believe rhar
wishes expressed in one life may shape conditions in rhe next one. Thus, we
sometimes find an older Tlingit man, who senses that he may soon die,
speaking about what he would like modified in himself in his next life. He
may say, for example, that he hopes to be srronger, better educated, and no
longer troubled with flar feer. 34
A fourth concept about the ways in which one life is ried to another
may be rhe most important; it is the only one for which we have some evidence, although nor much of that. I refer to the idea rhat a person (before
his death or in the discarnate srare) chooses rhe family of his next incarnation and rhereby indirectly selects also rhe conditions for starting it. When
I say rhere is evidence for rhis concept, I am thinking of a small number of
cases among the Tlingit, a few among Tibetan lamas, and occasional ones
among orher peoples in which a person has indicated before his death in what
family he would be reborn. The subject of such a case larer provides evidence
35
suggesting the success of rhe deceased person's imemion. All rhe cases wirh
what I call an announcing dream also suggest a choice on the part of the discarnare personality appearing in rhe dream. This is particularly rrue of rhe
peticionary types of announcing dreams thar are so common among the
Burmese. The discarnare personality communicates - and sometimes the
dreamer hears him say explicitly- rhar he has chosen a particular family, usually that of the dreamer, and wishes rheir agreemenr to his rebirth among
chem.
This idea rhac we can choose chc circumstances of our next incarnation
has a long history in Europe also. Ir occurred among some of rhe ancient
Greeks, and Plato expounded it. In The Republic, he described souls who are
about co be reborn as choosing rhe lives they will have after birth.'" According co chis belief, persons who have acquired wisdom in prior lives can choose
better future lives rhan chose who have squandered their previous lives and
learned nothing from chem. Plato did nor, however, suggest chat one's

40

CHILDREN WHO RE.MEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

conduct in a prior life influences the next life, except to the extent that the
wisdom needed for prudent selection of that life derives from previous efforts
to attain such wisdom.
Numerous other differences occur among the ideas that different peoples have concerning reincarnation. I shall return to this topic in chapter 8,
but I shall serve my readers best if I first describe the evidence bearing on
the question of whether reincarnation occurs.

CHAPTER

Types of Evidence
for Reincarnation
Many persons have had apparent memories of previous lives in a wide
variety of circumstances. All but one of these circumstances - the spontaneous experiences of very young children - seem to provide little of value as
evidence of any paranormal process. Nevertheless, in each of them a small
number of experiences have occurred that may derive from memories of previous lives. Consequently, I shall discuss them in this chapter while trying
to explain my preference for the cases of young children that occur spontaneously instead of those of adults that are induced or deliberately sought.

Past-Life Readings
I believe the weakest evidence for reincarnation comes from persons who
claim they can describe or "read" other persons' previous lives. Surely such
claims provide as good an example as we can find of beliefs sustained in the
absence of evidence. I suppose that those who pay for "past-life readings"
have confidence in what they are told, but I can find no support for such faith
in any results known to me. Without their almost invariable commercial
exploitation, past-life readings would evoke more laughter than sadness. The
"previous lives" depicted almost always occurred in the centers of history's
cyclones. Such events as the Crusades, the French Revolution, the American
Civil War, and, above all, Jesus Christ's crucifixion, figure repeatedly in the
readings of other persons' previous lives. I sometimes think that if all those
said to have watched the crucifixion of Jesus (in previous lives) had actually
done so, the Roman soldiers at that event would have had no place to stand.

41

42

CHILDREN WHO REMElvlBER PREVIOUS LIVES

I find it surprising that mosr persons who have had one pasr-life reading seem to have had no more. If they tested one "reader" against others, they
might quickly wish to have their money back. 1 I am almost afraid to say anything positive about past-life readings for fear of increasing gullibility in the
matter. I should, however, mention two instances known ro me in which
different sensitives independently gave the same (or similar) information
about the previous lives of a person when they had no opporrunicy of communicating with each other. I also know of two other instances in which a
sensitive described details of another person's previous life rhat corresponded
to spontaneous memories that person had already had. None of these
instances, however, necessarily offers evidence of reincarnation. At best, they
suggest telepathy between rhe sensitive and the person whose past life was
"read," although we should not deny the possibility that rhe sensi rive really
did discern information about the other person's previous life.

Hypnotic Regression
. Experiments with hypnotic regression to ostensible previous lives provide a level of evidence just perceptibly stronger - in a few instances - than
that from past-life readings. Yet to judge by my mail and by the stacks of
books generated by such experiments, many persons in the West have become
firmly convinced that hypnosis can cut a breach through our amnesia and
allow re.al memories of previous lives to pour out. If chey would stop to learn
something about hypnosis, they would soon feel less assurance
I shall not rashly attempt a definition of hypnosis, especially since some
expen.s now deny that hypnosis constitutes a special state of consciousness.
Ex~enmems have demonstrated that at least some of the phenomena of hypnosis can
c
l mducnon

b ut s1mp

1y wit
h
. occur with out t h e 10rma
of hypnosis,
a sufficient change in the subject's willingness to follow directions and
respond to suggestions. If he becomes adequately motivated to behave
differently he may p c
l

'
.
errorm menta and physical fears char at one ume were
~ho~ght to. r~quire hypnosis. In short, although hypnosis may al rer a subJeCt s cap~cmes, so may other types of psychological influence.
I thu~k, however, all students of hypnosis agree that during th.is state,
whatever Its nature may be, the hypnotized subject's attention becomes
remarkably concentrated and his mind freed of extraneous stimuli and
intruding irrelevant thoughts. In chis condition, he can focus on particular
scenes of the past with a vividness and clarity not often otherwise experienced. He may remember derails of his childhood that remain ordinarily forgotten, such as the day of the week of his tenth birthday and the teachers
and classmates in his grade school. 2

3. Types ofEvidence for Reincarnation

43

S~

far so good: But in the process of achieving this greater power of concentrat1on, the subject surrenders direction of his thoughts to the hypnotist
an~ ~hus bec_omes less able, or at least unwilling, to resist following the latter s mstrucnons. These instructions tell the subject that he should remember something, and when he cannot do so accurately, he often furnishes an
incorrect st~tement in order to please the hypnotise. Most subjects doing chis
do not realize that they are mixing truth and falsehood in what they tell che
hypnotist. 3
. , 1:- hypn~tized subject is likely to conform just as much to the hypnotists mscrucnons when told to return to a previous life as he does when told
to return to the age of five, and perhaps more so. 4 When the hypnotist says:
"You will go back before your birth to another time and place," the subject
tries to oblige. He will show equal pliancy even when the hypnotist phrases
his instructions less explicicly by saying, for example: "You will remember
the cause of rhese headaches somewhere in your past." In the peculiar condition of conformity that hypnosis induces, the subject is impelled - one
could almost say compelled - to furnish a plausible past of some kind; and
if he cannot present one from this life, he may construct one from an apparent previous life, even when he has never before had any memories of such
a life that he might use as ingredients. He may then reach for other materials in his mind, and he usually seizes on the rags of history chat even the lease
educated person has picked up from reading, radio, and television. If he
knows no history, and even if he does, he may engage in speaking fiction in
order not to disappoint the hypnotise.
In addition, the subject often employs a third common feature of hypnosis: heightened powers of dramatization. He links rhe various larenr items
of information in his mind and animates chem into a "previous personality."
This previous personality may show appropriate emotions and consistency
of character even when it is evoked at different times over many months.
With regard to the integration of ordinarily lacenr mental contents and
their dramatic presentation in a more or less coherent form, hypnosis has
much in common with dreams. This makes it somewhat surprising that some
persons who acrach no importance co their dreams uncritically accept as rrue
whatever they experience during hypnosis. Such folly probably derives from
rhe glamour char hypnotises, and rhe dramatic inductions of hypnosis, have
achieved. Stage hypnotises and ocher promoters of sensational claims connected with hypnosis have nourished the misconception that hypnosis is
an infallible means of recovering memories, although this is far from being
true.
One can sometimes show the most absurd anachronisms in the reports
of hypnotically induced "previous personalities." In one published example

44

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

the evoked "previous personality," who described himself as a courier for the
king of France in the time of the Crusades, claimed that he carried messages
between the court at Versailles and Bordeaux. In the time of the Crusades
(eleventh to thirteenth centuries), however, Versailles had no important connection with the government of France; it only achieved that status in the
seventeenth century. 5
Another hypnotized and regressed subject recounted a life in seventeenth-century England as James, Earl of Leicester (pronounced by him
"Lechester"). He described how "Lord Cromwell" had evicted him and his
family from their castle. In fact, the Earl of Leicester of this period was
Robert Sidney (1595-1677), not James; he was never evicted from his country seat (at Penshurst), and Oliver Cromwell was not known generally- if
at all- as Lord Cromwell, although he was Lord Protector.('
Anachronisms and other mistakes of the kind I have just mentioned
would embarrass the average high school student, but they demonstrate
another feature of hypnosis - the abeyance of ordinary critical faculties.
(Writers who publish such incorrect details without comment have no such
defense, since they presumably enjoy normal judgment when writing their
b~oks, but it seems that things too silly to be put in historical novels may
sttll be fobbed off as "previous lives.") The two examples I just gave also show,
~s do many other hypnotically induced "previous lives," a tendency the sub~ects have to assign themselves in these previous lives a role of historical
importance, or to locate themselves in relation to well-known people and
places.
We may overlook a number of inaccuracies in such cases, and perhaps
we sh~uld. This indulgence, however, would not remove all the obstacles to
accep~mg hypnotically induced "previous lives" as what they appear to be.
Th~ lives portrayed occurred in a past of imperfect records that are devoted
mainly to ~olitical leaders and perhaps a few other outstanding persons, such
as great amsts and scientists. Of almost any life before the middle of the nineteenth century~ we can say the following: If detailed records of this life needed for verification - exist, then the subject could, at least in principle,
have had access to them, and if the person concerned lived an obscure life,
we can proba~ly verify little or nothing about it. 7
.
In some Instances of ostensible regression to previous lives, the hypnot~st has afterward asked the hypnotized subject_ in the same or a later sess10n - to tell the source of the material embodied earlier in the evoked
"previous life." Some subjects questioned in this way have then remembered
and named a book or other source for some of the information included in
the "previous life. "8
Apart from the unjustified reputation of hypnosis as a means of eliciting

3. ljtpes ofEvidence for Reincarnation

45

accurate inf~rmation, the dramatizing powers of the mind that hypnosis

releases provide for the subject (and sometimes the observers) a convincing
appearance of realism. Two subjects whom I hypnotized myself illustrated
well the power of fantasies to present themselves as memories.
The first subject regressed easily to three different "previous lives." The
only one of these that contained any verifiable information was that of a
priest of the late seventeenth century in France, who figured marginally in
the religious controversies of that period. I happened to know that the subject had learned about this person through normal reading and conversation.
In another "previous life," the subject saw herself as an English sailor in the
sixteenth century. The ship ran onto rocks in a storm, and the sailor found
himself in the water, drowning. The enactment of the drowning by the subject included expressions of fear and difficulty in breathing. On one occasion when the subject seemed to relive this drowning, her physical condition
alarmed me so much that I quickly gave suggestions that she would imagine
another, more tranquil scene; she immediately did this and became calmer.
Although I am convinced that the subject who seemed to remember these
three lives had engaged in fantasy, using information that she had normally
obtained, she herself believed afterward that she had remembered and relived
actual previous lives. The apparent realism of the experiences outweighed
other considerations for her.
Another subject I hypnotized recalled a "previous life" in nineteenthcentury Amsterdam. She seemed at rimes to be making an effort to speak
Dutch, so I asked a Dutch-speaking colleague to attend a session; he quickly
learned that she could not speak the Durch language at all. (She knew a few
words of tourist German, and she had tried to work these into a semblance
of Durch.) Nor did she show knowledge of the main parts of Amsterdam with
which a resident of that city would have been familiar. Of relevance here,
however, is the intense impersonation of the Durch woman that the subject
showed during the hypnosis. I could easily regress her upwards and downwards within the life of the supposed previous personality. Placed at her
wedding day, the "previous personality" showed the joyful exuberance of a
bride. Advanced in years to the day of her husband's death, she burst into
tears and expressed an intense grief that moved all observers. (I had with me
at the time two colleagues, both experienced psychologists, and the subject's
expression of appropriate emotions impressed chem so much char I had
difficulty in persuading them to adopt my view that she was only enacting
fantasies.)
In fairness, however, I must add chat this subject did show a little knowledge about nineteenth-century Holland that she may not have acquired normally. For example, she correctly named a ship, Nederland, as being in the

46

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

harbor of Amsterdam in 1866. The previous life in this case may, therefore,
have been mostly fiction, but contained a few ingredients of fact, some of
them perhaps obtained paranormally.
Promoters of hypnosis as a means of recovering memories of previous
lives frequently cite improvements in the patients following the hypnotic sessions. For example, if a patient loses a long-standing phobia of water after
describing how he drowned in a "previous life," the patient and the hypnotist may both attribute the improvement to the recovery of the apparent
memory of the drowning. However, this exemplifies a common fallacy of psychotherapists: the unwarranted belief that a patient's improvement vindicates
the theory favored and the technique used. Improvements and recovery from
neuroses occur with a wide variety of therapists and techniques. The successful therapist should receive credit after others have failed, bur the credit
should go to the therapist (and the patient), not to the therapist's technique
or theory. As I shall explain lacer, children who claim to remember previous
lives (with verified derails) often have phobias appropriate to the mode of
death in the previous life they remember. However, such a phobia may manifest before the child speaks about the previous life and explains the origin
of the phobia; it may continue manifesting during the period when the child
t~lks about the traumatic origin of the phobia, and sometimes it still contmue.s long after the child has forgotten the imaged memories of the previous l~fe. These phobias provide no grounds for believing that recovering a
seemingly related memory of a previous life abolishes a phobia derived from
on~. Despite these reservations I do not mean to deny absolutely the beneficial ~ffect that remembering the traumatic events initiating a phobia may
sometimes have. (I continue this topic in chapter 5, especially in note 15.)
Al~hough I am skeptical about the results of most experiments with
hypnouc regr:ssion to previous lives, I do not reject all of them as worthless. In a few instances the subject has communicated obscure information
abo.ut a particular place in an earlier period of history, which it seems most
~nlikely he could have learned normally, so far as I could discover. I consider the case described in Bernstein's The Search far Bridey Murphy in this
9
small class. Moreover, in two cases that I have investigated, hypnotized and
regressed subjects proved able to speak foreign languages they had not learned
normally. This ability is called xenoglossy, which means "foreign tongue." They
spoke these languages responsively, that is, they engaged in a sensible conversational exchange with other persons speaking the same language . 10
The foolish implausibilities that disfigure most hypnotically induced
previous personalities should not influence us ro overlook one legitimate
question that these cases raise: Why does the subject of such an experiment,
given all the times and places that he might choose for his previous life,

3. Types ofEvidence for Reincarnation

47

select o~e time and place instead of others? Why, when requested to go back
to any time and place, should he choose to narrate a life in, say, seventeenthcentury Scotland instead of one in eighteenth-century France or nineteenthcentury Germany? If he had had a real previous life in seventeenth-century
Scotland, this could have influenced him to reconstruct a life of that place
and time instead of another one. Then, once committed to the erection of
such a previous life, he would draw on everything his now concentrated
memory could mobilize from his depots of normally acquired information.
During this process a few items of memories from the real previous life might
become dislodged and attracted, like iron filings in a magnetic field, to the
otherwise mainly fictional previous life. This could result in a kind of historical novel. 11 The subject I mentioned earlier who remembered a previous
life in Amsterdam may have illustrated this process. We can often see it
occurring in dreams. Some dreams contain obviously unrealistic elements that
are combined with accurate memories and - much more rarely- information obtained through extrasensory perception.
One might suppose that subjects who have spontaneously a few apparent memories of a previous life might mobilize additional details under hypnosis. I expected this myself and have attempted to use hypnosis with some
persons reporting spontaneous apparent memories of previous lives. Although
the apparent memories these persons had had might have derived from a previous life, they lacked sufficient detail, especially of proper names, to permit
any verifications. I hoped that during hypnosis the subjects might remember some (or more) proper names of people and places, so that we could verify the existence of the persons whose lives they seemed to remember.
I have conducted or initiated thirteen such experiments; in some I was
the hypnotist myself, in others I arranged for another hypnotist to conduct
the experiment. Not a single one of the experiments succeeded. Perhaps these
efforts failed because the subjects were all (with one exception) older children or adults by the time we undertook the experiments.12
These experiments should be repeated and extended with more young
subjects, say children about seven or eight years old. Children of this age enter
hypnosis easily, and, if they have memories of real previous lives, these may
lie closer to rhe surface of consciousness than they would later in life. In addition, one can usually obtain more definite knowledge concerning the exposure of young children to normal sources of information about the topics
figuring in the previous lives. In contrast, adults have had longer and more
abundant contacts with a variety of sources of information potentially available for use in fantasies about previous lives.

48

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

The Experience of Deja Vu

Some persons have had the experience of believing, on visiting a place
for the first time, that they have seen it before. Psychologists call this experience deja vu ("already seen"). In one survey 76 percent of the respondents
reported having had such an experience. 13
Some young subjects of cases of the reincarnation type experience deja
vu when they first go to the villages where they say they lived in a previous
life. All or much of the village seems familiar to such a child, al though he
may also remark on changes in doors, rooms, trees, or other features of the
local buildings and grounds that have been altered since the life he remembers.14 Perhaps other persons who have experience of deja vu, but who do
not have any imaged memories of a previous life, remember just the tip of
such a life, so to speak, and cannot bring further memories into consciousness.
Most cases of deja vu, however, probably require no such interpretation. Several other explanations account for many instances of this experience better than reincarnation does. 15 For example, some instances may be
due to the kind of noninferential knowledge of the future that we call precognition. Precognition sometimes occurs during dreams. Suppose that a
P~~son dreams of a place that he had never seen before, but that he will later
visit, although he does not know this at the time. He may then forget the
dr.eam, although residues of it may remain just below the threshold of consciousness. Experiments with memory have shown that "recognition is greater
than recall." This means that although we may try unsuccessfully to recall a
name, for example, we may recognize it if we see it in a list along with other
names. In the present example, the dreamer, when he actually visits the place
dreamed ~bout, may find that it seems familiar and may even think that he
?as seen it be~~'re, although he cannot explain why he thinks this. A few
mst~nces of deja vu seem to support this explanation. In these the person
havrng an experience of deja vu has later recalled a dream he had earlier
abour the place that seemed familiar.
Some deja vu experiences may have an even simpler explanation. The
scene that appears familiar may resemble one previously seen by the person
having the experience without his recognizing the similarity. Something like
this happens when we approach and even address by name a complete stranger
whom we have mistaken for someone we know. In the latter situation the
stranger quickly tells us we are wrong, if we do not realize the error ourselves
before he does so. A stretch of scenery, however, or an event in progress cannot speak and correct our errors; so when they appear familiar some persons
may persist in thinking incorrectly that they have "been there before."

3. Types ofEvidence for Reincarnation

49

1:-

neurological explanation has also been suggested for some deja vu

If the two hemispheres of the brain should function slightly out
of p~ase w1 th each other, information reaching consciousness through one
hemisphere would be recorded by that hemisphere as new while the other
side of the brain, a millisecond later, might register it as old. I know of no
experimental evidence that this can happen; and even if it could, it would
not e~plain those few instances of deja vu in which the person having the
experience showed knowledge of a place that he could not have obtained normally.16
experience~.

Dreams and Nightmares

Some persons have dreams in which they seem to see themselves in
another place and wearing clothes of a different epoch. Many such dreams
are recurrent and may have an unpleasant, nightmarish quality. Some of the
persons having such dreams say that they first started in childhood and have
recurred often thereafter. Sometimes the dreams diminish in frequency as the
person becomes older, and they may eventually cease altogether.
In the more valuable of such dreams - as I judge them - the dreamer
seems to experience a reliving of the events in the dream. He may not find
it easy to describe the difference between these unusual dreams and his ordinary ones. He will likely say, however, that his ordinary dreams seem disjointed, incongruous, and generally unrealistic, even though he may not
recognize these features until he awakens. In contrast, in the "previous life"
dreams the scenes are completely realistic and coherent. The details of the
surroundings are as vivid and as natural as waking perceptions are, and they
lack the bizarreness that objects and surroundings so often have in ordinary
dreams. If the dream is recurrent, each dream of the series is usually exactly
like all the others, with the dreamer always awakening at the same point often a crisis in the event enacted - of the dream. Finally, dreams of this type
become strongly fixed in the memory and do not fade away as do the majority of ordinary dreams. This fixation in memory may occur even in dreams
of this kind that do not recur, so it does not necessarily depend upon repetition.
Many persons have described such dreams to me. The majority of them
have no verifiable details, although a few correspond with other aspects of
the dreamer's personality, such as unusual fears or interests in particular
countries.
In one case an American girl, Alice Robertson (who was born in 1932),
suffered for many years (beginning in early childhood) from recurrent

50

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

nightmares, the vivid details of which never changed. In the nightmares she
was an adult woman dressed in an ankle-length garment and walking tranquilly along a road with a young girl whom she knew to be her daughter. Ir
was evening and the sun was approaching the horizon. Suddenly, she became
aware of a deafening roar, and the earth seemed to give way beneath her. At
this point she would awaken in terror, screaming. This would bring her
solicitous mother running to her side. The child - as Alice then was - would
try to explain to her mother that she had really lived the scene of the nightmare; bur her mother, the wife of an Episcopalian bishop, would assure her
that this could not be possible and that she had "only been dreaming." Eventually Alice gave up trying to persuade her mother that in her nightmares
she was remembering real events that she had once experienced. The nightmares, however, persisted, although in later life they gradually diminished
in frequency.
After Alice grew up, she identified the ankle-length garment that she
wore in the dream as a sari. This detail harmonized with a strong attraction
she felt for India. When she was a young woman, she saw a motion picture
about Darjeeling (in northeastern India), which produced in her a strong
~ense of deja vu. She then for the first time read something about Darjeelmg and learned that disastrous landslides had occurred there on a number
of occasions between 1890 and 1920. She thus became convinced that the
~revi~us life of her nightmares had occurred in Darjeeling. I could not verify this, because Alice could not give sufficient details of personal names and
plac.es to _rermit an attempt at this. She was one of the persons I mentioned
earlier wnh
who m an euort
a:
hypnosis
to e 1.iclt
a dd.inon
al
.
was ma d e wnh
memones
t h e h ypnosis
she merely relived the familiar
tern f ymg

. ' b ut d unng
expenence of the ni gh tmare Wlt
h our addmg
any new detai1s.
Anot~er American girl, Mary Magruder, had equally distressing nightmares, ~hich also began in her early childhood. In hers she seemed to be a
you.ng gul who was being chased by an (American) Indian during a raid by
Indians on a settlement 0 f w h.lte pioneers.

the dreams o f Alice R o b ertLike

son, those of Mary Magruder were vivid and the details similar at each recurrence. Howeve~, the dream did not always run to its full length. In some of
the dreams Indians were only chasing her; in others an Indian had actually
caught.her and wa~ holding her by the hair. At this point she would awaken,
screammg'. Somenmes she would say: "Mother, they are taking my curls."
Mary pamcularly noted that whereas her own hair was light and straight,
that of the young girl she seemed to be in the dream was brown and curly.
Although Mary appeared to be reliving a previous life in the nightmares,
she did not think much about the matter until a chance visit brought her
to a place in western Virginia where her ancestors had lived during the

3. 7Jpes ofEvidence far Reincarnation

51

eighteenth century. (She had grown up in the Midwest and had nor known
anything about chis region or her ancestors there before her visit to che area
in adulthood.) She then learned chat a part of the ancestral property of her
family was known as Burnt Cabin from its having been burned in an Indian
raid. I visited the area in order co learn more about the place at first hand.
A historical marker by the road four kilometers from the site of "Burnt
Cabin" records chat the last Indian raid in Virginia rook place near there in
1764. The present owner of the Burnt Cabin tract, who was a distant cousin
of Mary, confirmed to me the tradition char the site derived irs name from
an Indian raid, which he thought had occurred around 1745-50.
Mary could furnish no additional details about the possible previous life
of her nightmares, and chose that she did give remain unverified. So far as
they go, however, they are historically plausible.17
The memories of most of che children whose cases I have studied
occurred to chem in their ordinary waking scare. Some of chem, however,
have also had dreams or nightmares in which scenes of che remembered previous life appeared co chem. 18 Distortions may occur in such dreams, as they
often do in dreams having paranormally derived elements and, for rhac matter, in ordinary dreams also.
In one such case a Lebanese child, Arif Hamed, recalled a previous life
char ended when a large building scone fell off a balcony and struck the person whose life he remembered. This man had been sitting under the balcony
and died insrancly when che scone hit him on the head. According to Arif's
memories, some goats browsing in the area around the house provided the
last images seen by che man before he died. Arif had recurrent dreams of goats
climbing over piles of building scones and knocking some of chem over. I
have verified some of Arif's memories, although not chat goats were actually
in the area around the previous personality's house when he died. I think it
likely nevertheless that this detail is accurate; goats are common domestic animals in rural Lebanon. If it is accurate, it then became incorporated and distorted in Arif's recurrent dream, which seems to derive from the manner in
which the previous personality of this case died.
I do, therefore, think that some vivid and recurrent dreams may stem
from actual memories of previous lives. I do nor, however, know of any
method, or any discriminating derail, chat would justify our making a more
positive statement about dreams of chis type chat have no verified derails. The
quality of vividness in a dream may provide an indication of paranormaliry,
but no proof if it: a vivid dream is more likely to have a paranormal component than a nonvivid one, but most vivid dreams do not have chis component . 1' 1 And we must examine even those containing verified details with
regard to the possible origin in normal sources of the inform;Hion included.

52

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

I would particularly warn persons having such recurrent dreams against

interpreting them precipitately. Some such dreamers have rushed to encyclopedias and searched them for information about a person whose life
matches the scene or event of their dream. One of my correspondents had a
vivid dream in which she seemed elegantly dressed in the clothes worn in
Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century. An aristocratic man,
similarly well turned out, was paying court to her. I think it would have been
wiser for her to remain content with examining only the details in the dream
itself. Unfortunately, she did not do this and soon decided that she must have
been in her previous life the notorious dancer Lola Montez, the femme fatale
who cost King Ludwig I of Bavaria his throne. (Another of my correspondents also thought, for different reasons, that she was Lola Montez. Perhaps
I should have introduced these two correspondents to each other.)

Illnesses and Drugs

Some persons have had the experience of seeming to relive a portion of
a pr~vious life when under the influence of drugs, such as lysergic acid diethyla~ide. (LSD). We know from other experiences with this drug that it can
revive in the most powerful manner the memories of events of this life; I am
therefore prepared to believe that, if reincarnation occurs, LSD (and similar
drugs) may facilitate the recovery of memories of previous lives. I do not,
however, know of anyone who has recalled verified details of a previous life
h
h h.
20

t roug t eir use. Moreover, such memories as come into consciousness in

this way may undergo distortions similar to those of dreams.
. ~ysergic acid diethylamide may induce unpleasant side effects and compltcanons, sometimes serious ones. I think it a drug whose usefulness we have
not yet adequately studied and exploited, but I also think it potentially harmful when taken under unsuitable conditions, by which I mainly mean in the
absence of adequate medical supervision. Therefore, I am far from recom~endi~g that it be taken as a means of inducing possible memories of previous lives.
In a few persons, what seem to be memories of a previous life have
come into consciousness during a serious illness_ usually one with fever and
delirium. For example, a woman (interviewed by one of my associates) who
was stricken severely with the neurological disease known as Guillain-Barre
syndrome experienced vivid imagery both of earlier events in her (present)
life and of what seemed to her to be events in a previous one, perhaps in
France during the nineteenth century. These latter images were not derived,
so far as she could tell, from any events that she remembered having

3. Types ofEvidence for Reincarnation

53

experienced since her birth, although they were mixed with memories of
such events. In addition to being seriously ill, however, the patient was also
~nder ~he influence of medication, so it would be difficult to identify the
immediate physical cause of the unusual images she experienced.
Several of the child subjects of cases of the reincarnation type have had
an increase in memories of a previous life during an illness (usually with a
fever), and a few have made their first statements about the previous life during an illness. 21

Meditation
Some persons have seemed to recover memories of previous lives during meditation. The siddhis (spiritual and paranormal powers) said to be
acquired incidentally by spiritual aspirants in Hinduism and Buddhism
include the ability to remember previous lives. In some instances known
to me, apparent memories of previous lives have erupted suddenly and unexpectedly into consciousness during meditation, but I know of only one person
who has obtained verifiable memories in this way. This is Praromwan lmhanu
(a Buddhist nun of Thailand), who recovered, while meditating, some subsequently verified memories of the lives of two infants who had lived in places
far removed from where Pratomwan herself was born and lived.
Apparent memories of a previous life that occur spontaneously during
meditation may have value for the meditator, even though they are unverified
and contribute nothing to evidence. (Meditators are not usually seeking evidence.)
I think I should warn, however, against attaching importance to apparent memories of previous lives evoked during meditation, especially when the
meditator has deliberately set out to recover such memories. This merely
invites fantasies that appear deceptively as memories of a previous life. A person searching for memories of a previous life during meditation is in no better position than someone under the influence of a hypnotist; in both situations
there is a task to do and the likelihood of fulfilling the task with a fantasy.
Even without such deliberate elicitation, fantasies may emerge during
meditation and be mistaken for actual memories. We should remember that
many Western practitioners of meditation adopt some technique of Asian
provenance; few of them are naive with regard to the possibility of reincarnation, and nearly all know that meditation may lead to the emergence of
memories of previous lives. This makes them liable to interpret uncritically
as memories of previous lives any fantasies that happen to develop during
their meditation.

54

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

Strong Emotion
In a small number of cases known to me, adults have had apparent
memories of previous lives that occurred during periods of strong emotion,
such as grief. The case of Georg Neidhart seems to me the best example of
this type. When Georg Neidhart, who lived in Munich, Gerrnany, was still
a young man, his first wife and daughter both died within a short interval.
As a consequence, he fell into a depression that lasted several months. While
in this condition one day, he suddenly began to see inwardly a series of scenes
of what seemed to be a previous life. The scenes ordered themselves into a
sequence of events, about which he made notes. Subsequently, he verified
some of the details and found that others were plausible for the life of a man
who had lived in the part of Bavaria northeast of Munich during the twelfth
century. A few other cases of this type have come to my attention, although
none have been as strong evidentially as that of Georg Neidharr

Miscellaneous Waking Experiences ofAdults

Some adult persons have had occur to them spontaneously, during a nor-

m~l, waking state, "flashes" - or longer sequences - of what seem to be memones of previous lives. We cannot tell how common such experiences are
because reports of them so far have depended on voluntary submission of
accounts by the persons having them. These spontaneous "flashes" pose the
same .problems of analysis as do all the other types of evidence that I have
mennoned: they are oflittle value unless verified, and, even if verified, of little value unless we can exclude normal sources of information for their content.22

Spontaneous Experiences of Young Children

Apart from the dreams and nightmares, which often begin when the
subject is a young child, the subjects for all the types of evidence so far discussed have been adults. By the time a person reaches adulthood, his mind
has been filled with a wide variety of information from many sources. Much
of this information lies in obscure recesses of the mind, and its possessor may
not even be aware of having acquired it. Yet it remains available to be tapped
for fantasies about previous lives. Such mobilization of unconscious memory stores is particularly likely to occur when a deliberate effort is made to
evoke previous life memories. I have described how this can occur in cases

3. Types of Evidence for Reincarnation

55

of hypnotic regression and during meditation; it seems to occur sometimes

also when hallucinogenic drugs are taken.
The foregoing remarks will help readers to understand why I value so
highly the spontaneous utterances about previous lives made by young children. With rare exceptions, these children speak of their own volition; no
one has suggested to them that they should try to remember a previous life.
And at the young age when they usually first speak about the previous lives
their minds have not yet received through normal channels much information about deceased persons. Moreover, we can usually make a satisfactory
appraisal of the likelihood that they have obtained normally whatever information they communicate about such persons. For the past thirty years I have
concentrated my attention on the cases of these young children, and I feel
justified in devoting almost all the remainder of this book to them. In the
next chapter I shall present fourteen typical cases, the subjects of which were
all young children when they first spoke about previous lives.

CHAPTER

Fourteen Typical Cases

of Children Who
Retnetnber Previous Lives
I shall now describe, in the most summary fashion, fourteen representative cases of the reincarnation type. I have selected them from nine different
cultures in which I have studied these cases. To help correct the widely held
~elief that cases of this type occur only among Buddhists and Hind us, I have
included one case from the Tlingit tribe of Alaska, one from Lebanon, one
from England, one from Finland, one from Turkey, and four cases from the
conjoined United States.
In every case, the subject made statements about the life he claimed to
~emember while he was still a young child; in every case one or several adult
informants corroborated that he had made such statements at that age.
I have published detailed reports of nine of these cases elsewhere 1

The Case of Gopal Gupta

Gopal Gupta was born in Delhi, India, on August 26, 1956. His parents were members of the lower middle class with little education. They
noticed nothing unusual about Gopal's development in infancy and early
childhood.
Soon after Gopal began to speak (at the age of between two and two
and a half years), the family had a guest at their house, and Gopal's father
asked Gopal to remove a water glass that the guest had used. Gopal startled
everyone by saying: "I won't pick it up. I am a Sharma." (Sharmas are members

56

4. Fourteen Tjpical Cases of Children Who Remember Previous Lives

57

?f the. highest caste in India, the Brahmins.) He then had a temper tantrum
m which he broke some glasses. Gopal's father asked him to explain both his
rude conduct and his surprising explanation for it. He then related many
details about a previous life that he claimed to remember having lived in the
city of Mathura, which is about 160 kilometers south of Delhi.
Gopal said that in Mathura he had owned a company concerned with
medicines, and he gave its name as Sukh Shancharak. He said that he had
had a large house and many servants, that he had had a wife and two brothers, and that he had quarreled with one of the brothers, and rhe latter had
shot him.
Gopal's claim to have been a Brahmin in the previous life explained his
refusal to pick up the water glass, because Brahmins would not ordinarily
handle utensils that a member of a lower caste had already touched. His own
family were Banias, members of the businessmen's caste.
Gopal's parents had no connections with Mathura, and his utterances
about a life there stirred no memories in them. His mother did not wish to
encourage Gopal to talk about the previous life he was claiming to remember, and at first his father felt indifferent about the matter. From time to time,
however, he told friends about what Go pal had been saying. One of these
friends vaguely remembered having heard about a murder in Mathura that
corresponded to Gopal's statements, but this did not stimulate Gopal's father
to go to Mathura and verify what Gopal had been saying. Eventually, he went
to Mathura (in 1964) for a religious festival, and while there he found the
Sukh Shancharak Company and queried its sales manager about the accuracy of what Gopal had been saying. What he said impressed the manager,
because one of the owners of the company had shot and killed his brother
some years earlier. The deceased man, Shaktipal Sharma, had died a few
days after the shooting, on May 27, 1948.
The manager understandably told the Sharma family about the visit of
Gopal's father. Some of them then visited Gopal in Delhi and, after talking
with him, invited him to visit them in Mathura, which he did. At the times
of these meetings in Delhi and Mathura, Gopal recognized various persons
and places known to Shaktipal Sharma and made additional statements indicating considerable knowledge of his affairs. The Sharma family found particularly impressive Gopal's mention of an attempt by Shaktipal Sharma to
borrow money from his wife; he had wished to give this to his brother, who
was a partner in the company but a quarrelsome spendthrift. Shaktipal
Sharma hoped to mollify his demanding brother by giving him more money,
but his wife did not approve of appeasement, and she refused to lend her
husband the money. The brother became increasingly angry and then shot
Shaktipal. The details of these domestic quarrels were never published and

58

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

were probably never known to persons other than the family members concerned. (The murder itself was widely publicized.) Gopal's knowledge of
these matters, his other statements, and some of his recognitions of persons
known to Shaktipal Sharma convinced members of the Sharma family that
he was Shaktipal Sharma reborn.
Along with his statements about the previous life, Go pal showed behavior that a wealthy Brahmin might be expected to show bur that was inappropriate for his family. He did not hesitate to tell other family members that
he belonged to a caste superior to theirs. He was reluctant to do any housework and said that he had servants for that. He would not drink milk from
a cup anyone else had used.
Dr. Jamuna Prasad, who worked with me for many years on cases in
India, began the investigation of this case in 1965. I took up the investigation
in 1969, when I had interviews with members of both families concerned,
in Delhi and Mathura. I remained in touch with the case unril 1974.
Gopal never expressed a strong desire to go to Mathura, and after he
had been there in 1965, he never asked to return. For a few years after 1965,
he occasionally visited Shaktipal Sharma's two sisters, who lived in Delhi.
Then all contact between the two families ceased. As Go pal became older'
he slowly lost his Brahmin snobbishness and adjusted to the modest circumstances of his family. He gradually talked less about the life of Shakripal Sharma, but as late as 1974 his father thought that Gopal still remembered
much about it.
Gopal's case seems to me a strong one with regard to the small chance
that he could have obtained normally the knowledge he had about the life
an~ death of Shaktipal Sharma. It is true that Shaktipal Sharma belonged to
~n important family in Mathura, and his murder was prominent news when
1
~ ~appened. However, the Sharmas and the Guptas lived in widely separated
cmes and belonged to different castes and economic classes. Their social
orbits were totally different, and I have no hesitation in believing members
of both families who said that they had never heard of the other family before
the case developed.

The Case of Corliss Chotkin, Jr.

This case started with a prediction by an elderly Tlingit fisherman (of
Alaska), Victor Vincent, who told his niece, Irene Chotkin, that after his
death he would be reborn as her son. He showed her two scars from minor
operations, one near the bridge of his nose and one on his upper back; and
as he did so he said that she would recognize him (in his next incarnation)
by birthmarks on his body corresponding to these scars.

4. Fourteen yYpical Cases of Children Who Remember Previow Lives

59

Victor Vincenr died in the spring of 1946. About eighteen months later
(on December 15, 1947), Irene Chorkin gave birth to a baby boy, who was
named after his father. Corliss Chotkin, Jr., had two birthmarks, which his
mother said were exactly ar rhe sires of rhe scars to which Victor Vincent had
drawn her arrenrion on his body. By rhe rime I first examined rhese birth~arks in 1962, both had shifted, according to Irene Chorkin, from the positrons they had had at Corliss's birth. Yer they remained quire visible, and rhe
one on Corliss's back impressed me strongly. It was an area on the skin about
three centimeters in length and five millimeters in width; compared with the
surrounding skin ir was darker and slighrly raised. lrs resemblance to the
healed scar of a surgical wound was greatly increased by rhe presence at the
sides of rhe main birthmark of several small round marks char seemed to correspond co positions of rhe small round wounds made by needles char place
rhe srirches used co close surgical wounds.
When Corliss was only rhirteen months old and his mother was crying
to gee him to re pear his name, he said to her petulantly: "Don't you know
who I am? I'm Kahkody"; chis was rhe tribal name Victor Vincent had had.
When Irene Chorkin mentioned Corliss's claim chat he was Kahkody co one
of her aunts, rhe larrer said char she had dreamed shorrly before Corliss's birth
2
char Victor Vincenr was coming to live wirh the Chorkins. Irene Chorkin
was cerrain char she had nor previously cold her aunt about Vicror Vincent's
prediction char he would rerurn as her son.
When Corliss was between rwo and three years old, he spontaneously
recognized several persons whom Victor Vincent had known, including Victor Vincent's widow. Irene Chorkin said char he also mentioned two events
in rhe life of Viccor Vincent about which she did not think he could have
obtained information normally.
In addition, Corliss showed several behavioral traits corresponding to
similar ones chat Victor Vincent had shown: Corliss combed his hair in a
manner closely resembling rhe style of Victor Vincent; borh Corliss and Victor Vincent srurrered; borh had a srrong inreresr in boars and in being on
the water; both had strong religious propensities; and both were left-handed.
Corliss also had a precocious interest in engines and some skill in handling
and repairing chem; his mother said he had taught himself how to run boat
engines. It is unlikely chat Corliss inherited or learned this particular skill
from his father, who had lirrle interest in engines or skill with chem.
After rhe age of about nine, Corliss made fewer remarks about the previous life he had seemed co remember earlier, and by 1962, when I first mer
him, he said chat he remembered nothing about it. I mer Corliss and his family three times in the early 1960s and once more in 1972. At the time of this
last meeting, Corliss had almost completely lost the stuttering that

formerly

60

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

affiicted him, but he still stuttered when he became excited. His interest in
religion had diminished, but he had maintained his interest in engines. During the Vietnam War he had seen combat as an artilleryman, and a shell
bursting near him had damaged his hearing. Otherwise, when I last saw him
in 1972, he enjoyed good health and was working contentedly at a pulp mill
near his home in Sitka.

The Case ofMa Tin Aung Myo

Ma3 Tin Aung Myo was born in the village of Nathul, Upper Burma,
on December 26, 1953. Her parents were U Aye Maung and Daw Aye Tin.
When Daw Aye Tin was pregnant with Ma Tin Aung Myo, she dreamed on
three occasions that a stocky Japanese soldier, shirtless and wearing short
pants, was following her and saying that he would come to stay with her and
her husband. Ma Tin Aung Myo first indicated that she might be remembering a previous life when she was between three and four. At that time an
airplane flew over Nathul, and Ma Tin Aung Myo became frightened and
cried. She continued to show a phobia of airplanes - for her fear of them
amounted to that - for some years. On another occasion when she was about
four, ~he was noted to be weeping, and when asked what was troubling her
she .said that she was pining for Japan. Thereafter, she gradually told about
havmg been a Japanese soldier stationed in Nathul during World War II,
when the Japanese army occupied Burma. Ma Tin Aung Myo said that she
had been a cook and that an (Allied) airplane had come over the village,
strafed it, and killed her.
Ma Tin Aung Myo also furnished a few other details about the life she
claimed to remember. She said that she came from the northern part of
Japan, where she had been married and had had children. She thought that
she had had a small shop in Japan before she joined the army. She claimed
that she had been killed during the Japanese retreat from Burma. (This would
make 1945 the probable year of death of the concerned previous personality.) She described what the Japanese soldier had been wearing and doing
when the strafing airplane came over and how he had tried to avoid being
hit by its bullets. She said that he was struck in the groin and died immediately.
Ma Tin Aung Myo mentioned no proper names except that of Japan.
She could not remember the names either of the Japanese soldier or of the
place in Japan from which he had come. Consequently, we could not even
begin to trace a Japanese person corresponding to her statements. They are,
however, harmonious with events in Nathul as the Japanese army evacuated

4. Fourteen Typical Cases of Children Who Remember Previous Lives

61

Upper Burma. Daw Aye Tin recalled that she had known and had even been
friendly with a cook in the Japanese army who had been stationed there, but
she did not know whether he had been killed there.
Ma Tin Aung Myo showed behavior unusual for her family but harmonious with that of a Japanese soldier. She did not like the hot climate of
Upper Burma, or its spicy food; she preferred sweet foods and liked to eat
fish half raw, although she did not try to eat completely raw fish, as do some
Japanese people. She frequently expressed a longing to return to Japan and
would sometimes lie on her stomach and cry disconsolately from (what she
said was) homesickness. 4 She also expressed anger toward British and American people when they were mentioned in her presence. 5
Ma Tin Aung Myo's most remarkable behavior was her extreme boyishness. She insisted on dressing in men's clothes and wearing her hair in a
boy's style. This eventually led to a crisis at her school when the authorities
there insisted that she come to school dressed appropriately as a girl. She
refused; they were adamant, and so she dropped out of school at the age of
about eleven. Her lack of education limited her choice of occupation, and
when I first met her in 1974 she was earning only a meager income as a
hawker of foods at the nearby railway station.
As a young child, Ma Tin Aung Myo had played at being a soldier.
Whenever her father visited Mandalay, she would ask him to buy her a toy
gun. Her three sisters and her only brother did not play at soldiers when they
were young. Ma Tin Aung Myo also played football and caneball, both primarily boys' games.
Ma Tin Aung Myo's parents had had three girls before she was born.
They therefore had hoped their next child would be a boy, but this does not
mean that they encouraged Ma Tin Aung Myo to behave like one. Indeed,
her mother strongly opposed her daughter's masculine mode of dress,
although her father appears to have been more indulgent toward it. (He had
died before I reached the case, and so I did not learn about his attitude
directly from him.)
As Ma Tin Aung Myo grew older, she remained strongly masculine in
her sexual orientation. She still dressed in men's clothes and had no interest
in marrying a man. On the contrary, she said that she would like to have a
wife. She obviously thought of herself as a man and disliked being considered a woman. When U Win Maung, my associate in Burma, addressed her
with the female honorific "Ma," she asked him not to do so and requested
that he call her "Maung" (the honorific for boys) or use no honorific for her
whatever. During one interview, she told U Win Maung and me that we
could kill her by any method we chose if we would first guarantee that she
would be reborn as a man.

62

CHILDREN WHO REMEI\1BER PREVIOUS LIVES

Ma Tin Aung Myo's family accepted her explanation of her case, narnely
that her sexual orientation derived from a previous life as a man; they sirn_
ilarly accepted much of her other unusual behavior as having been carried
over from the previous life of a Japanese soldier.
This case is a good example of an unsolved case of the reincarnation
type. Ma Tin Aung Myo made no detailed and verifiable statemenrs that Permitted identifying a particular deceased person whose life she seemed to be
remembering. Nevertheless, her statements about the previous life were all
plausible, and she showed a group of unusual behaviors that fully accorded
with her claim to have been a Japanese soldier in a previous life. Whether
such a case could have developed solely from the influence of her parents or
as the expression of obscure motives on the part of Ma Tin Aung Myo herself are questions to which I shall return in a later chapter.
Ma Tin Aung Myo's case is one of claimed "sex change," and I shall discuss cases of this type (of which I have studied numerous examples) in chapters 5 and 9.
I met Ma Tin Aung Myo again in 1975, but have not met her since.
However, U Win Maung (who assisted me in Burma between 1970 and his
death, in 1989) met her twice more, in 1977 and 1981.

The Case ofShamlinie Prema

Shamlinie Prema was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on October 16,
1962.
Her pa rems 1ive d .m G onagela, a town about sixty
.
l<.I 1ometers sour l1 o f
C
olombo, and Shamlinie grew up there.

Shamlinie's parents nouced

that even before she could spea k , s h es I1owed
a remarkable fear of being bathed; she resisted with screams and struggling
any attempt to immerse her in water. She also showed, while still an infant,
a severe phobia ofb
d h
uses, an s e cried whenever her parents took her on one,
or even when sh
I
.
.
eon Ysaw one at a dmance. These phobias puzzled her parI
ents, a .though th ey surmise
d t h at they might have dcnved

f rom traumatic

evenrs m a previous life.

~frer Shamlinie began to speak, she gradually cold her parents, and
other l~te:ested persons, about a previous life that she claimed to rememb~r. This life had taken place in a nearby village called Galtudawa, about two
kilometers from Gonagela. Shamlinie mentioned the names of the parents
she said she had had there, and she often referred to her "Galrudawa mother."
She also spo_ke of ~isters and two school companions. She described the house
0
~ the prevwus life, the location and characteristics of which were quite
different from those of the house in which her family was living. She

4. Fourteen Typical Cases of Children W'ho Remember Previous Lives

63

described the death in the previous life in the following way. She said that
she went to buy bread in the morning before going to school. The road was
flooded. A bus splashed water on her and she fell into a paddy field. She threw
up her a:ms and called "Mother." After that she fell into sleep.
A girl named Hemaseelie Gunerame, who had lived in Galrudawa, had
drow~e~ on May 8, 1961, in circumstances corresponding to Shamlinie's
descn~non. (She appears to have stepped back to avoid a passing bus and
fallen Into a flooded paddy field.) Hemaseelie had been a schoolgirl of just
eleven years when she drowned. Shamlinie's parents were distantly related to
the Guneratnes, but they had little acquaintance with them and had never
met Hemaseelie. They remembered hearing about Hemaseelie's death and
feeling sad about it at the time, but afterward they had completely forgotten
the incident, and when Shamlinie first began to talk as if she remembered
drowning in a previous life, they did not initially connect her statements with
Hemaseelie's drowning. However, at about three years of age Shamlinie recognized one of Hemaseelie's cousins when she saw him in a street in
Gonagela. More than a year later, she recognized one of Hemaseelie's sisters,
also in Gonagela. In the meantime, Shamlinie had been clamoring to be
taken to Galrudawa, particularly to visit her "Galrudawa mother," and she
compared her own mother unfavorably with the "Galrudawa mother."6
Shamlinie's father finally took her to the Gunerarne home in Galrudawa.
A large crowd gathered there when they learned that a child who claimed to
have been reborn was visiting the village. The presence of many strangers
may have inhibited Shamlinie so that she made fewer recognitions than she
might have done in a more relaxed atmosphere. Shamlinie's father said that
she had recognized Hemaseelie's mother, W. L. Podi Nona, but the Gunerames remained doubtful about this. The visit, however, permitted verification of Shamlinie's statements, nearly all of which corresponded to facts in
Hemaseelie's life. In addition, the two families exchanged information about
the girls concerned and learned that Hemaseelie and Shamlinie had some
traits in common, such as preferences for certain foods and styles of cloth-

mg.
I began to investigate this case in 1966, a few weeks after Shamlinie's
first visit to Galrudawa. I could therefore interview the informants while
their memories - both of what Shamlinie had said and done and of the life
of Hemaseelie - remained fresh. In the following years, I made additional
visits to both of the families in order to obrain further information about
details, to test the informants for consistency in what they said, and to observe
Shamlinie's further development. Apart from a few discrepancies in minor
details, the informants gave concordant statements, and what they said in later
interviews agreed with what they had said earlier.

64

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

After her first visit to Galtudawa, Shamlinie exchanged some further visits with the Guneratnes, but these gradually diminished over the ensuing
years. The decrease in visits coincided with a gradual fading of Shamlinie's
memories of the previous life. She stopped speaking spontaneously about it
when she was between five and seven, and she appeared to have forgotten it
entirely by the time she was eleven, in 1973; probably she had forgotten it
even earlier. She had lost her phobia of water by the age of four and had
become less afraid of buses by the age of eight; yet some slight fear of buses
persisted even then. In all other respects, Shamlinie, when I last met her in
1973, was developing like an entirely normal Sinhalese girl.
Shamlinie's case seems to me to be another one of at least moderate
strength with regard to the chance that she had obtained her knowledge of
Hemaseelie's life by normal means. It had the undoubted weakness that the
families concerned lived within about two kilometers of each other and had
had a slight acquaintance before the case developed. In my judgment, however, the rare contacts the families had had could not explain Shamlinie's
detailed knowledge of Hemaseelie's life or the unusual behavior that accorded
with her statements about it.

The Case of Suleyman Andary

. Suleyman Andary was born in Falougha, Lebanon, on March 4, 1954.
His family were Druses, members of a religion that derived from Islam. This
religion has, however, separated so much from orthodox Islamic teachings
that its members now regard it as separate. Reincarnation is a central tenet
of the Druse religion.7
.As a young child, Suleyman seemed to remember fragmentarily a few
details of a previous life. Some of the information came to him in dreams.
He recalled having had children and knew some of their names; and he
remembered that he was from a place called Gharife and had owned an oil
press ther~_Dnlike most children subjects of these cases, however, he did not
recall add1t1onal details until he was considerably older.
When he was about eleven, a particular episode appears to have stimulated further memories. He was living then with his paternal grandmother.
(His father had died when he was two years old.) His maternal grandmother
came to the house and asked to borrow one of the Druse religious books.
Suleyman refused her request rather curtly, asking her whether she did not
have the book at her home. (He apparently did not stop to think that if she
had had the book, she would not have come ro borrow it.) His paternal
grandmother overheard his rude handling of his other grandmother and

4. Fourteen Typical Cases of Children Who Remember Previous Lives

65

asked him to explain his conduct. Suddenly, he remembered that he had had
religious books in a previous life and that he had not allowed them to leave
his house. Druses who have copies of their religious books almost venerate
them and preserve them carefully at home; Suleyman's attitude, therefore,
although impolite for a young boy, accorded well with what one might expect
of an older Druse man.
After this incident, Suleyman made a more or less deliberate effort to
retrieve further details of the previous life that he seemed to be remembering. He then recalled that he had been the mukhtar (headman) of Gharife.
He also remembered the mukhtar's name, Abdallah Abu Hamdan, and other
details of his life. Now, however, Suleyman became afraid of being teased if
he told people that he had been a mukhtar in a previous life. His family and
friends, he thought, would accuse him of arrogance or would deride him. So
he kept his memories to himself for almost another two years. He then talked
a little about them, at first with other children and later with adults.
Some of Suleyman's adult relatives proposed to take him to Gharife in
order to verify what he was saying about a previous life there. Gharife is about
thirty kilometers from Falougha, but in a different region of Lebanon.
Although roads connect the two villages, it takes some effort and a special
reason to travel from one to the other, as I found myself. With one exception, members of Suleyman's family had no connections with Gharife. One
member was employed there temporarily, but he could not confirm from his
own knowledge what Suleyman was saying about a previous life in Gharife.
Later, this relative made inquiries in Gharife and managed to verify a few of
Suleyman's statements. In the meantime, other persons had also confirmed
the accuracy of some of these statements.
As usually happens in these cases in Asia, word about Suleyman's claims
concerning a previous life spread to other persons. A cousin of his family met
(in Saudi Arabia) some residents of Gharife and told them about Suleyman's
statements. They confirmed that Suleyman's memories accorded with facts
in the life of one Abdallah Abu Hamdan, who had owned an oil press and
had been the mukhtar of Gharife for many years before his death - probably of heart disease - in 1942 at che age of about sixty-five. The Gharife residents who gave this information invited Suleyman to visit them. At first he
refused, but then in the lace summer and autumn of 1967 he went twice to
Gharife.
Suleyman seemed shy and inhibited in Gharife. Abdallah Abu Hamdan's widow and two of his children were still living there, but Suleyman did
not recognize them, nor did he recognize members of the family in photographs. 8 He did, however, recognize three other persons and a few places
at Gharife. Perhaps the most important of these recognitions occurred when

66

CHILDREN WHO Rf.MEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

he pointed our an old road, no longer used and almost obliterated by 1967,
for reaching rhe house where Abdallah Abu Hamdan had lived. However,
rhe importance of Suleyman's case does not lie in his few recognitions. Ir
derives instead from his statements about the previous life and from some
unusual related behavior char he showed.
Before going ro Gharife, or during his first visit there, Suleyman made
seventeen statements about the previous life. These included the names of
most of Abdallah Abu Hamdan's children and some other derails of his life.
His statements were all correct with two exceptions: he gave the name of
Salim as that of one of Abdallah Abu Hamdan's sons, whereas Salim was his
brother; and he said char Salim was blind, whereas a son of Abdallah Abu
Hamdan named Naseeb was blind, but Salim was not.
I began invesrigaring chis case in March 1968 and continued working
on it unril 1972. I interviewed nineteen informants in Falougha and Gharife. Suleyman later emigrated for a rime to Saudi Arabia, and I did not meet
him between 1972 and 1997.
When he was still a young child, Suleyman comported himself like ~n
adult. He preferred the company of adults to that of children, and even m
~ group of adults he tended ro sear himself prominently among them as an
in:porranr person might do. He objected if anyone scolded him, and when
this happened he would say something like: "One doesn't scold me I am an
adult."
. Suleyman's fears char ocher persons would laugh at him if they knew he
claime.d to have been a mukhtar in a previous life proved sound; his family
~nd friend~, did tease him for his pretension, and they even nicknamed him
Mukhtar. This did nor altogether displease him especially as some members. of rhe family seeme d to use t h e nickname

'
ly, as 'f
affect10nate
i to say: ''Wie
believe you." And indeed they did believe him after they had verified his statements about the life of Abdallah Abu Hamdan.
Suleyman. also showed greater concern about religion than the other
members of his family did. This accorded with Abdallah Abu Hamdan's
strong interest in religion; toward the end of his life, he had become a sheikh,
which m.eanr taking vows to maintain a much higher standard of conduct
than ordmary people aspire to.
I mentioned earlier that Suleyman did not wish to visit Gharife, and
when he was first invited to do so, he refused. His family underscood this
better when, at Gharife, they learned of the tragedies in the life of Abdallah
Abu Hamdan. Abdallah Abu Hamdan's children had given him little comfort; several had congenital abnormalities, one had emigrated to America, and
another had had a poor relationship with his father. Then other events darkened rhe last days of his life. In order ro help a friend, Abdallah Abu Hamdan

4. Fourteen Typical Cases of Children Who Remember Previous Lives

67

had foolishly falsified a document that, as mukhtar of his village, he had to

execute; when the government learned of his deception, he was dismissed
from his office as mukhtar. Finally, he invested beyond his means in an oil
press. The payments for this proved more burdensome than he had expected;
and according to his wife, worry about his indebtedness brought on his final
illness. No one could feel surprised, therefore, that anyone claiming to have
Abdallah Abu Hamdan's memories would not rush over to Gharife.
As I mentioned, Abdallah Abu Hamdan died in 1942, twelve years before
Suleyman's birth. If Abdallah Abu Hamdan had reincarnated as Suleyman,
where had he spent the interval? Suleyman answered this question by saying
that he had had an intermediate life of which he remembered nothing. This
is the stock answer of Druses when an interval - even of so little as a single
day- occurs between the death of an identified previous personality in a case
and the subject's birth. Occasionally one may find some slender evidence of
such intermediate lives, but usually they remain entirely conjectural.''
With regard to Suleyman's memories of the life of Abdallah Abu Hamdan, however, I do not think they derived from information he obtained
through ordinary means of communication. The distance between the villages concerned in this case - thirty kilometers - considerably exceeded that
in Shamlinie Prema's case, although it was much less than that in Gopal
Gupta's. Yet we should not measure accessibility only in kilometers. We must
evaluate all the possibilities by which a subject could have obtained normally
the information he had about the previous personality. Assessing it in this
way, I am inclined to rank Suleyman's case above that of Shamlinie, in which
the two families concerned had had some slight acquaintance before her case
developed. It is perhaps on the same level as Gopal's case. In the latter case
there were greater geographical and socioeconomic separations between the
families concerned than in Suleyman's case; but Gopal was remembering rhe
life of a prominent man whose murder by his brother became a sensation,
whereas Suleyman's memories related to a person about whose life and death
little information had diffused outside his village.
In November 1997 I went to Falougha and met Suleyman again. He was
then forty-duce years old. His father having died when Suleyman was only
two years old, the family had insufficient money to afford the fees for his continuing education, and he left school at the age of eleven, when he had
finished the fifth grade. In adulthood he worked as a blacksmith, a machinery driver, and a vehicle driver. At the time of our meeting in 1997 he was
unemployed.
Su!eyman said chat at chis rime no memories of the previous life in
Gharife came: to him spontaneously, but he might have chem when he talked
about chem. In 1988 he went co a wedding in Gharife. While there he noticed

68

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

that a particular house, which he had not visited before (as Suleyman), had
been altered, and his statements about the alterations were correct. He had
not returned to Gharife since 1988.
Suleyman remarked that, although the previous life had been pleasant
he knew that it "is not going to come back." It is difficult, he said, to maintain relationships with two families and better "to leave the past behind." (In
describing the previous life as "pleasant" Suleyman was presumably remembering better or emphasizing the prosperity and power of Abdallah Abu
Hamdan before the misfortunes of his last years, which were certainly not
pleasant.)
The nickname of "Mukhtar" had stayed with Suleyman, and everyone
in the village called him by it. He still had an interest in local politics. Friends
were encouraging him to become a candidate for the office of mukhtar of
Falougha, and he was seriously considering this.

The Case of Bongkuch Promsin

Bongkuch Promsin was born in the village of Don Kha in Nakhon
s.awan Province, Thailand, on February 12, 1962. His father, Pamorn Promsm, was principal of a school near Don Kha and therefore a person of some
education, although having extremely modest financial means.
Soon after Bongkuch could speak coherently, and perhaps even before,
he b:gan to make references to a previous life, and he gradually unfolded
d~tails about it to his family. He claimed that he came from Hua Tanon (a
village about nine kilometers from Don Kha). He gave the name of the person whose life he claimed to remember Chamrat as well as the names of
Chamrat's parents. He also described so:ne objects' that he had owned, such
as a knife and a bicycle, and he referred to two cattle the family had owned.
(Bongkuch's family owned no cattle.) Above all, he described how two men
had murdered him at a fair that the villagers of Hua Tanon had held The
mu:derers had stabbed him in several places, taken his wristwatch and neck
cham, and afterwards dragged his body into a field. (Bongkuch was about
two years old when he communicated the foregoing details.)
Bongkuch said that after Chamrat's death he had stayed on a tree near
the site of the murder for about seven years. One day when it was raining he
had seen his (present) father and accompanied him home on a bus.
Bongkuch's father later recalled that he had been in Hua Tanon not long
before his wife became pregnant with Bongkuch; he had attended a meeting there, and it had been raining.
His mother, Sawayi Promsin, had gone looking for bamboo shoots in

4. Fourteen Typical Cases of Children Who Remember Previous Lives

69

the area where the murder had occurred before she became pregnant with
Bongkuch, but I did not learn how long before her pregnancy. She said that she
had not gone into the part of Hua Tanon where Chamrat's family lived. 10
Pamorn Promsin had some acquaintance with schoolteachers of Hua
Tanon through his professional work, but he had no relatives or social
acquaintances there. He and his wife told me that they had never heard of
the murdered Chamrat, who had been only eighteen years old at the time of
his death. The news of a murder in a village like Hua Tanon might have
reached nearby villages, including Don Kha; on the other hand, the area had
a high rate of murder, and one could not expect a resident of it to remember all the killings that had occurred. Moreover, Chamrat had been murdered
more than ten years before Bongkuch talked about him. I think it likely that
Bongkuch's parents had heard about Chamrat's murder, but had given it little attention and had quickly forgotten it.
Word of what Bongkuch was saying reached Chamrat's family, and some
of its members came to see him in Don Kha. (He was about two and a half
years old by this time.) Later, he went to Hua Tanon with members of his
family. These visits led to the verification of nearly everything that Bongkuch
had said about the previous life. My informants - and I myself, later - could
not verify some of his statements about Cham rat's murder, such as the details
of how he was stabbed; there had been no autopsy. One of the murderers
had quickly fled, and the other, although arrested and tried, was acquitted
for lack of evidence. Nevertheless, some policemen I interviewed recalled the
murder rather well, and they confirmed as correct some of Bongkuch's statements about it, such as the names of the suspected murderers.
Reports of the case appeared in newspapers of Thailand in March 1965
and were sent to me by a correspondent. Dr. Sophon Nakphairaj (director
of the Government Hospital in Nakhon Sawan) made a preliminary investigation of the case in 1965. I began studying it in 1966. I interviewed members of both families concerned in Don Kha and Hua Tanon. I continued
studying the case in the following years and last met Bongkuch and his parents in March 1980.
Bongkuch's unusual behavior attracted from the members of his family- and from me later - as much attention as his statements about the previous life did. During the period when he talked most about it, he exhibited
what his family considered dirty habits, such as in his manner of washing his
hands, and he used a number of words that his parents could not understand.
He also showed a strong preference for foods that his family did not eat
much or especially relish. It turned out that Chamrat's family were Laotians
(whom the Thais consider less concerned about cleanliness than the Thais
are) and that Bongkuch's strange words were Laotian. I do not wish to suggest

70

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

that this is a strong case of xenoglossy (the ability to speak an unlearned language); nevertheless, no other members of Bongkuch's family used the Laotian words he spoke, and I think it unlikely that he learned them normally.
(There were no villagers in Don Kha from whom he could have learned
Laotian.) The foods Bongkuch enjoyed so much were ones, such as sticky
rice, commonly enjoyed by Laotians; Thais sometimes eat these foods, bur
Bongkuch's food preferences were much more appropriate for Chamrat's
Laotian family than they were for his own Thai family.
Bongkuch showed an unforgiving attitude toward Cham rat's murderers, and for years he threatened to take revenge on them when he could do
so. He sometimes practiced beating on a post with a small stick that served
as his imaginary weapon, while the post represented Chamrat's murderers,
whose names he would call out as he did this.
Like many subjects of these cases, Bongkuch sometimes thought of
himself as an adult imprisoned unwarrantedly in a child's body. At times he
had what I call attacks of adulthood. He brushed his teeth like an adult
(children do not ordinarily brush their teeth in Thailand), and on at least
one occasion he asked the local barber to shave him. He ignored girls of his
own age, but made advances to postpubertal young ladies, which they found
startling and even alarming. One girl who came to visit the Promsins had
planned to stay longer, but she departed precipitately after Bongkuch tried
to fondle her. Yet Bongkuch was not exclusively a little lecher; sometimes he
talked about joining the order of Buddhist monks and would ask for a monk's
costume or fashion one for himself from cloth char was at hand. These rwo,
somewhat opposite, aspects of Bongkuch's nature marched attitudes we can
reasonably ascribe to Chamrat. At the time of his death Cham rat had a girl~riend t~ whom he was more or less engaged; at the same,time, he had a strong
Interest 10 Buddhism and had expressed the intention of becoming a monk.
(These are not incompatible interests; in Thailand many young men become
monks for a few months or longer and then return to the life of laymen and
marry.)
As Bongkuch became older, his memories of the previous life gradually
faded. In his village, some other children teased him as "the boy with two
lives," and this may have made him say that he had forgotten more of the
memories than he actually had. At any rate, he stopped discussing his memories with other persons, and I chink he had forgotten most of them by the
time he was ten. His unusual behavior also diminished along with the imaged
memories, and he gradually developed entirely normally. In 1980, when I last
met him, he was a young man of eighteen and was studying in a school in
Nakhon Sawan. A residue of Laotian behavior persisted in his continued
fondness for sticky rice.

4. Fourteen Typical Cases of Children Who Remember Previous Lives

7I

Dr. J ilrgen Keil studied this case again in 1995. In the meantime, some
of my informants, most notably Bongkuch's father and both of Chamrat's
parents, had died. Others, however, were still living and informative; these
included Bongkuch's mother and Chamrac's older stepbrother. Their
accounts of the case co Dr. Keil did not differ in essential derails from what
I had learned almost thirty years earlier.
Dr. Keil had a long interview with Bongkuch, who was then thirty-three
years old. After completing high school, Bongkuch had attended a college
for two years and obtained a degree in physical education. He had married
when he was twenty-five and he and his wife had one child, a daughter of
six. He was employed in an office of che Post and Telegraph Service and living in a town of Nakhon Sawan Province (not Don Kha).
As I mentioned, Chamrat had been much interested in Buddhism. So
was Bongkuch, and he cold Dr. Keil that he had a room in his house with
many Buddhist statues and amulets. He was meditating regularly.
In 1995 Bongkuch said that as a young boy he could remember about
60 percent of Cham rat's life; bur then (1995) he could only remember 2 percent, and even to recover that he had to be relaxed. He mentioned three
events chat had stimulated his memories when he was a young boy: hearing
someone speak the northeastern dialect of Thai (which is close to Laotian);
being scolded by his father; and passing by the village of Hua Tanon, where
Chamrat had lived.

The Case of Gillian and Jennifer Pollock

Gillian and Jennifer Pollock (identical cwin girls) were born at Hexham,
Northumberland, England, on October 4, 1958. When they were between
two and four years old, they made several statements chat suggested they
remembered the lives of their two older sisters, Joanna and Jacqueline. On
May 5, 1957, a crazed automobile driver had deliberately driven her car onto
the pavement of a street in Hexham, where Joanna and Jacqueline were walking, and killed chem both almost instantly. Joanna had been eleven and
Jacqueline six when they died.
Grief from chis tragedy numbed their parents, John and Florence Pollock. John Pollock, however, was a strong believer in reincarnation (although
his wife was not), and when Florence became pregnant early in 1958, he
confidently asserted that the two deceased sisters were going to be reborn as
twins. Despite medical advice ro the contrary, he persisted, up to the time
of the twins' birth, in saying that his wife would have twins. Their births
then vindicated his seemingly rash prediction, at least about a twin birth.

72

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

His conviction immediately received some further support, because he and

his wife noticed that Jennifer, the younger twin, had two birthmarks that
corresponded in location and size to two marks on Jacqueline's body. A mark
on Jennifer's forehead, near the root of her nose, matched a scar that had persisted on Jacqueline's forehead after she had fallen and cut herself there, and
a brown mark (nevus) on the left side of Jennifer's waist matched a similar
(congenital) one of Jacqueline.
I mentioned above that between the ages of two and four the twins made
a few statements about the lives of their deceased sisters. In addition, they
recognized some objects, such as toys, that their sisters had owned or with
which they had been familiar. Their parents later asserted that the twins
could not have known about these objects normally; the Pollocks had never
discussed the deceased older sisters with the twins, and the twins could not
have seen the objects they recognized before the occasions when they did so.
When the twins were less than a year old, the family moved away from Hexham, and the twins did not return until their parents rook them there when
they were about four. On that occasion, the twins spontaneously mentioned
~o places - a school and some swings in a park - before these were in their
view. Although the twins had been taken to the park in their perambulator
wh~n they were infants - they had left Hexham when nine months old their parents did not believe that they could have thereby acquired any normal knowledge about the school or the swings in the park.
Gillian and Jennifer also showed behavior that corresponded to the
behavior of their deceased older sisters. Jennifer was rather dependent on her
older (twin) sister, Gillian, just as Jacqueline had been on her older sister,
Joanna. When the twins learned to write, Gillian readily held a pencil
between her fingers and thumb, but Jennifer grasped her pencil in a fist.
Joanna had been able to write correctly for some years before her death,
:Vhereas !~cq~eline (who was only six when she died) still persisted in holding a wrmng instrument in her fist.
I first investigated this case in 1964 and remained in touch with the Pollock family until 1985. John Pollock's enthusiasm for reincarnation may
diminish the strength of the case among persons who cannot believe that he
and his wife (or some other member of the family) did not talk about the
deceased sisters in front of the twins. In response to the suggestion that his
conviction about reincarnation may have weakened and even vitiated the
case, he wisely replied that, although this objection has some merit, his
openness concerning reincarnation enabled him to note and remember
remarks and behavior of his twin daughters that most other Western parents
would have ignored or laughed at. I shall return to this important point in
chapters 5 and 8.

4. Fourteen Typical Cases of Children Who Remember Previous Lives

73

In 1978 I arranged for blood tests that would show, through analysis of
the blood types and subtypes of Gillian and Jennifer and other members of
the family, whether the twins' bodies derived from one or two eggs. The tests
demonstrated that they were "identical" or one-egg (monozygotic) twins; this
means that they have the same genetic material. Since birthmarks of the
type Jennifer had are sometimes hereditary, one would expect that if]ennifer's
birthmarks were of genetic origin, Gillian would have similar marks. Because
she did not have any, we may suppose that some biological aberration during the twins' gestation produced Jennifer's birthmarks, but this hypothesis
would not account for their close correspondence in size and location to the
marks on Jacqueline's body.
Gillian and Jennifer Pollock grew up to become normal young women.
Long before that, they had completely forgotten, in later childhood, the
memories they had had of previous lives. In my later meetings with them
they were mildly skeptical about their own case. By this I mean that, not then
having any persisting memories of the previous lives, they did not present
themselves as offering evidence for reincarnation, but they did not deny the
evidence their parents had obtained from observing them when they were
young children.

The Case of Samuel Helander

Samuel Helander was born in Helsinki, Finland, on April 15, 1976.
When he was between one and two years old, he began to make so~e stat~
ments and recognitions that suggested he was remembering the life of his
mother's younger brother, Pertti Haikio. Later, Samuel showe~'some b~hav
ior that was unusual in his family but harmonious with Perttl s behavior. I
investigated this case in Helsinki in 1978 and 1981; my infor~~nts were
Samuel's mother and his maternal grandmother, who was ~ls~ Perttl s. mother.
Pertti Haikio was born on June 8, 1957, also in Helsmk1, and died there
of severe, uncontrolled diabetes mellirus on June IO, 1975, when he was just
eighteen years old. For some months before his death he had shown one of
the prominent symptoms of uncontrolled diabetes - drinking large amounts
of water - but no one at the time had realized how seriously ill he was before
he fell into a coma and died. Pertti's mother, Anneli Lagerqvist (who had
married again after divorcing Pertti's father, Pentti Haikio), and his sister,
Marja Helander (Samuel's mother), grieved severely after his death. When
Marja was ten weeks pregnant with Samuel, she dreamed about Pertti. At
the time she had been considering having an abortion, but in the dream she
heard Pertti say to her: "Keep that child."

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

Samuel was only about a year and a half old when, upon being asked
his name, he said that it was "Pelti." (At that time and for some time later,
he could not pronounce the r sound of "Pertti.") Attempts to convince
Samuel that his name was "Samuel" generally failed; he insisted that it was
"Pelti" and later "Pertti." He was still saying that his name was "Pel ti" at the
age of six. He did not, however, refuse to respond or to come to his mother
when she called him "Samuel."
Samuel made only a few direct statements about the previous life that
he seemed to remember, and nearly all of these occurred in connection with
his recognizing some person (often in a photograph) or object familiar to
Pemi.
Photographs of Pemi taken when he was a child of under ten seemed
often to stimulate Samuel's remarks; those taken when Pertti was older did
nor. On looking at one photograph Samuel remarked that he remembered
how a dog had bitten him on the leg. A dog had bitten Pertti on the leg when
he was a child of three, bur Samuel had never been bitten by a dog and had
never been told about Pemi's having been bitten. Nor did the photograph
give any clue suggesting that he had been bitten.
On another occasion Samuel noticed a photograph of Pertti as a young
child using a walker. He said that the photograph was of himself and that
he had been in the hospital with his legs in plaster. When I was studying
this case in Helsinki, I was shown the photograph that had stimulated this
remark. Ir showed Pemi using a walker, and one might infer that he had
injured his legs; bur nothing in the photograph suggested that his legs had
been in plaster, as they had been just before the photograph was taken.
Pemi's legs had both been fractured in an accident when he was about four
years old. When Samuel made his remark about this, he was himself between
three and four years old.
Samuel's claim that photographs of Pertti were photographs of himself
were not made only on the occasions that I have mentioned. The family had
some of these photos in an album that they would occasionally look through,
and each time Samuel saw Perrri's photograph he would say: "That's me."
When Samuel saw a photograph of Penni Haikio, Pertti's father, he said:
"This is my father." Because Anneli Lagerqvist's second husband was somewhat jealous of her first husband, Penni Haikio, this photograph was ordinarily kept hidden, and she was certain that Samuel had never seen it before
the occasion when he recognized it as that of "his father."
Samuel also identified several objects that had belonged to Pertti: a guitar, a velvet corduroy jacket, and an old watch. The hands had been lost from
the watch, and it had been put away in a drawer full of junk, but when
Samuel saw it he pounced on it, said it was his, and insisted on keeping it.

4. Fourteen Typical Cases of Children Who Remember Previous Lives

75

Sometimes he slept with the watch under his pillow; at other times he placed
it in a drawer under his bed.
Samuel never alluded directly to Pertti's death. He did, however, make
two remarks suggestive of memories of events occurring after it. He said that
he had been to a place where there were a lot of coffins and that some of them
were open. (Samuel had never been taken to a mortuary, but Pertti's body
was taken to one after his death.) Samuel also remarked on how much Pertti's
mother (Samuel's grandmother) had cried after his death; however, he might
have obtained this information normally or surmised it.
When Samuel was taken to the cemetery where Pertti had been buried,
he looked at Pemi's grave and said: "This is my grave."
Samuel's mother and grandmother mentioned several items of unusual
behavior on his part that accorded with similar behavior of Pertti. When
Perrti was a young child, he had swallowed water while he was in a bathtub;
this had frightened him, but he did not then develop a phobia of water. Later,
when he was about fifteen or sixteen years old, he fell off a quay, through
thin ice, and into the sea. He nearly drowned. After that accident he did have
a phobia of water and would not go swimming. Samuel showed a marked
phobia of being immersed in water. He especially resisted being bathed, and
his grandmother said the struggle to give him a bath was a "nightmar.e."
When Samuel first began to speak, he called his parents by their firs~
names: Penni and Marja. He also called his maternal grandmother, Anne.It
Lagerqvist, "Mother." He was definite about these identities and told Maqa
Helander: "You are not my mother." Samuel showed a strong attachment to
Anneli Lagerqvist, and when he was about rwo he tried to nurse at her breast.
(He had already been weaned at that age, but Pertti had not been.) Samuel
had stopped calling Anneli Lagerqvist "Mother" by the age of five.
Perrti had had the pleasant habit at Christmas time of going a.round a
room full of assembled family members and kissing each person m tu~n.
This seems not to have been a custom among other members of the family,
and they were therefore surprised at the Christmas gathering of 1~78 when
Samuel, only two and a half years old, went around the room and kissed each
person present, just as Pertti had done.
Samuel also had two physical stances that resembled those of Pertti.
Both had a habit of standing with one foot forward, often with a hand on a
hip, and both tended to walk at times with their hands held behind the
back. No other members of the family assumed such postures.

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

The Case of Roberta Morgan

I first learned about this case in February 1971, when the subject's
mother, Shirley Morgan, telephoned me at the University of Virginia from
Minnesota, where she lived. She said that her daughter, Roberta, had several years earlier talked insistently about having "another mummy and daddy"
whom she eagerly- it seemed almost desperately- wished to visit. Roberta
had said that she (presumably in the previous life she seemed to remember)
had promised this "other mummy and daddy" that she would go back to
them, and she wanted to keep her promise.
Roberta had been born on August 28, 1961, and therefore in February
1971 she was nine and a half years old. She had begun to talk about the previous life when she was between two and two and a half years old. (But by
1971 she had long ceased to do so, for reasons that I shall describe later.)
Shirley Morgan explained that at the time Roberta was talking most about
the previous life, she herself had not known anything about reincarnation
and thought that Roberta was talking nonsense. Then later, through reading and reflection, it occurred to her not only that Roberta might have been
remembering a real previous life, but that she (Shirley Morgan) had failed
in her responsibilities by suppressing Roberta when she talked about it.
Shirley Morgan then swung almost completely around to the opposite
ex~reme, and in 1971 she became rather frantically preoccupied with how she
might trace Roberta's previous family so that Roberta might visit them after
all. She then decided to telephone me.
When Shirley Morgan gave me the information that I have included in
the preceding paragraphs, I asked her to write out for me an account of what
Roberta had said concerning the life she appeared to be remembering. Shirley
Morgan did this, and she also answered further questions for me in subsequent letters. In July 1972, I visited Roberta and her mother at their home
in_ Minnes~ta. (I did not meet Roberta's father during my visit.) Roberta was
friendly with me, but by the time I met her she had completely forgotten
about the previous life. Thus all my information about the case derives from
her mother. During our interview and in correspondence, she gave me the
following information.
At the peak of her talk about the previous life, Roberta behaved "at times
like an adopted child with full memory of her [previous] parents and their
house." She said that her previous house was reached by going down a long
road; it stood on a hill with no other houses nearby. Roberta further described
the house and land that she said she remembered, but her mother could later
recall little of Roberta's description, except that the previous family had lived
on a farm where there were horses and dogs. Once when she was about four,

4. Fourteen Typical Cases of Children Who Remember Previous Lives

77

she was taken to a horse farm; she went directly to the horses and petted them.
:x'hen someone asked her: "Aren't you afraid of the horses?" she replied:
No, I have been on horses lots of times." Roberta also spoke of an automotive vehicle that the previous father had owned. (It was not clear whether
this had been a passenger automobile or a truck.) She would sometimes indicate a vehicle and remark: "There is a car [or truck] [like the one] that my
Dad used to own."
Roberta said that her "other mummy and daddy" lived in the same
town where she and her family were then living. (This was a different town
than the one where I visited them.) On one occasion, Roberta was in a car
with her mother and pointed to a road, saying that was where she lived; she
indicated a dirt road that joined the highway. She wanted to go down the
road to see the previous family. Her mother did not wish to do this, evidently
because at this time she was not able to think that Roberta might be correct.
Roberta reproached her mother for days afterward for not having taken her
11
to the previous family when they had a chance to visit them.
Roberta asked her mother to buy her toys similar to those she said that
she used to have; when her mother said she did not know what these were,
Roberta became annoyed at what she considered her mother's dullness. On
other occasions, also, she scolded her mother for not remembering her
(Roberta's) previous life, as it seemed to Roberta she should have done. (And
yet Roberta did not claim that her mother had had a part in the previous
life.)
Roberta evidently had clear visual images of the appearances of the previous parents. Referring to the previous mother, she told her mother:
act like her, but she did not look like you." 12 Roberta favored the previous
mother's style in various household tasks, including cooking. When her
(present) mother prepared some new dish for dinner, Roberta would sometimes tell her parents that she had eaten it many times before. Once her
mother cooked scalloped corn as a surprise for the family. When she placed
this on the table, Roberta said: "I had that lots of times. Don't you remember, my other mother used to make it." She then referred to it by some name
other than scalloped corn, but Shirley Morgan later forgot this name. Shirley
Morgan asked Roberta how her "other mother" prepared the dish, and
Roberta patiently explained her "other mother's" way of cooking it. Roberta
also thought her mother foolish not to wash windows in the more efficient
manner of her previous mother. She often intervened in her parents' conversations and remarks indicating familiarity with some topic or object of
which, in her mother's opinion, she could have known nothing normally.
Roberta gave few clues to the period when the previous life took place.
She did not, for example, refer to wearing clothes that obviously belonged

":ou

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CHILDREN WHO RElvlEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

earlier fashions. Her familiarity with automobiles suggested that the previous life had occurred at least after they had become commonly owned by
American farmers. She implied, more than she expressly stated, that the previous parents were still living and could be found if only her parents would
apply themselves to the task.
Roberta showed some inclination to wear boys' clothes, and she complained of being a girl. She did not, however, state that she had been a boy
in the previous life. Her requests for toys suggested that the person whose
life she was recalling had died young, yet Robena never said anything about
how that person had died. In fact, she denied having died. When Shirley
Morgan once asked a direct question about this, Roberta replied: "I didn't
die. I had to leave them [the other parents] for a while. And I told them I
was coming back." She never said that she loved the previous parents, and,
indeed, Shirley Morgan thought that in a straight popularity contest between
herself and the previous mother, she (Shirley Morgan) would win, although
barely. Roberta's pressure to return to the previous family appeared to derive
more from her promise to go back to them than from ties of affection. Since,
however, she never gave any names for herself or the family of the previous
life, Shirley Morgan had no way of tracing them, even if she had wished to
do so at the time, which was far from being the case.
Shirley Morgan and her husband were both Christians - she a member of the Assembly of God, he of the Roman Catholic Church; reincarnation had no place in the teachings of either of these religions. Shirley Morgan
knew nothing about reincarnation at the time Roberta began talking about
a previous life. She was not prepared for such talk, and even less prepared
for Robena's demands to be taken to the "other mother" and for her constant, unfavorable comparisons of Shirley Morgan with the "other mother."
Every parent has a limit of tolerance for such assessments, and Shirley Morgan reached hers after about six months of daily pounding by Roberta. She
then began to punish Robena every time she alluded to the previous life. She
spanked her for doing so. This gradually brought Roberta's utterances to a
halt (except for occasional lapses, such as the one that occurred when she was
four and spoke about having ridden horses).
I do not know when Roberta actually forgot about the previous life. She
may have remembered it for a time after her mother began punishing her for
talking about it. To outward appearances, however, she remembered it less
than her mother did in the years that followed her mother's efforts to suppress her memories. The matter continued to trouble Shirley Morgan, latently
at first and then openly. Finally, as I have explained, she became "obsessed" that was her own expression -with the thought that she must trace Robena's
previous family and allow her to meet them. She began blaming herself also
to

4. Fourteen Typical Cases of Children \Vho Remember Previous Lives

79

for not having allowed Roberta to speak freely about the previous life; she
was sure that Roberta at that rime could have stated some names that would
have permitted verification of her memories.
Unfortunately, this change of attitude came too late. Roberta by this
time was nine and a half years old, and she had given no additional clues to
the identity of the previous family since her allusion to horses at the age of
four; she never added proper names to what she had said earlier. Shirley Morgan appears to have considered a search of farms with horses in the area of
the Morgans' former home: this seemed impractical without some further
clues that might have narrowed the area of searching. However, I do not
understand why she did not try driving down the farm road that Roberta
herself had indicated about six years earlier.
Soon after my visit to Roberta and her mother in the early summer of
1972, I lost touch with them and have been unable to trace them since. I can
say nothing therefore about Roberta's further development.

The Case of Susan Eastland

I first learned of this case in 1968, when I received a letter from Charlotte Eastland, who, having read about my research in a magazine, volunteered information about the statements and behavior of her daughter Susan.
These suggested that Susan had memories, albeit fragmentary ones, of the
life of her deceased older sister, Winnie. I exchanged letters with Charlotte
Eastland during 1968 and early 1969, and in the summer of 1969. I visited
her in her home in Idaho. There I also met Susan, the subject of the case,
and Charlotte Eastland's older daughter, Sharon. However, I did not meet
Robert Eastland, the stepfather of Sharon and Susan, who had also been,
according to Charlotte Eastland, a witness for some of Susan's statements
about the previous life.
Winnie was a lovable six-year-old girl who was hit by an automobile
and fatally injured in 1961. Her sudden death devastated the members of her
family. Her mother suffered grievously and found herself longing to have
Winnie somehow back in rhe family. Ar this rime, she had only the vaguest
notions about reincarnation; she rold me later that she had heard about the
belief held by people in India that humans can be reborn as nonhuman animals (which she considered impossible), but she had never heard of reincarnation in another human body.
Nevertheless, the family members had an idea that Winnie might somehow return to chem. Abouc six months after Winnie's death, her older sister, Sharon, dreamed that Winnie was coming back to the family. And when

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

Charlotte Eastland became pregnant two years later, she dreamed of Winnie being with the family again. In 1964, when she was in the delivery room
for the birth of her new baby, her first husband (the father of all her children) thought he heard Winnie's voice saying distinctly: "Daddy, I'm coming home." The baby, Susan, thus came into a family that had lost a girl just
a few years earlier and that had some expectations that this same girl would
be reborn among them. We have to remember these facts when we evaluate
Susan's remarks related to Winnie's life.
When Susan was about two years old, she made several statements that
seemed like references to the life of Winnie. When anyone asked her how
old she was, she would answer that she was six (the age Winnie had been when
she was killed). Her sense of being older than her actual age persisted at least
up to the age of five, because at that time she insisted that she was older than
her brother Richard, who was then eleven. Winnie had been more than three
years older than Richard, so Susan's remark was correct for Winnie but obviously wrong with regard to her own age relationship to Richard.
Susan expressed unusual interest in two photographs of Winnie and said
of them: "That was me." Charlotte Eastland thought that she might earlier
have told Susan that the photographs were of Winnie; but she had not told
Susan that she thought she (Susan) might be Winnie reborn. Susan not only
identified the photographs as being of her; she insisted on having them for
herself. She kept one hanging by her bed and carried the other around with
her for weeks, sometimes repeating that it was a photograph of herself.
Susan never asked to be called Winnie, but on one occasion, when she
could barely scrawl, she took a crayon and wrote letters on the kitchen door
that spelled "WINNI." She omitted the final E of Winnie, and she laid the
second I ~n its ~ide, instead of standing it upright.
Dunng this same period, Susan frequently used the phrase "When I
went to school," and she talked also about playing on the swings at school.
Susan had not yet gone to school; she had played on a swing in the family's
back yard, but not on one at a school. Winnie, on the other hand, had started
school before she was killed, and she used to play on the swings at her school.
During Winnie's lifetime, Charlotte Eastland had a cookie jar that had
a cat on its lid. She used to play a game with her children in which, when
one of them wanted a cookie from the jar, she would ask the cat how many
cookies the child could have. She would then imitate a cat by replying in a
squeaky voice: "Meow, you may have one." (The number of allowed cookies varied with Charlotte Eastland's estimate of the child's needs and hunger.)
After Winnie's death, Charlotte Eastland put the cookie jar away and forgot
it; the jar remained packed away for several years. When Susan was about
four, Charlotte Eastland brought it out and again filled it with cookies.

4. Fourteen Typical Cases of Children Who Remember Previous Lives

81

Susan asked for a cookie. Without realizing that Susan would know nothing about the game with the cat on the cookie jar, her mother unthinkingly
asked her: "Well, what does the kitty say?" Susan startled her by replying:
"Meow, you may have one." Charlotte Eastland, in recounting this episode
to me, wisely remarked that a child as intelligent as Susan might have inferred
the answer; and I would add that she might also have obtained the reply from
her mother by telepathy. Her spontaneous reply was nevertheless harmonious also with the interpretation that Susan somehow had access to Winnie's memories.
After this, Susan spoke of several other events in which Winnie had participated. She described an occasion when she and other members of the family had gone to a beach and had caught a crab, and she named family
members present on this outing. Charlotte Eastland recalled that the family
had gone to a beach in the state of Washington the year before Winnie's
death. They had played in the surf and on the sand; they had found shells
and dug for clams; Charlotte Eastland could not, however, remember that
they had caught a crab. Susan correctly named three of the four persons who
had been present, but she included one person, her stepfather, who had not.
Later, however, she corrected herself and said that Winnie's (and her) father
had been present.
Susan also referred to playing in a pasture with her sister, Sharon; she
said that she had been unafraid of the horses and that she had once walked
under a horse. All this was correct for Winnie, who had played in a pasture
with Sharon, was unafraid of horses, and had once walked under one.
Charlotte Eastland once asked Susan whether she remembered the little boy Gregory who had lived across the street from them. Susan replied:
"Yes, I remember Greggy. I used to play with him." "Greggy" had been
Gregory's short name; Charlotte Eastland had not mentioned it before Susan
did.
Susan's mother also asked her if she remembered Uncle George, who
had lived up the street from them. Susan could not remember what Uncle
George's house looked like, but said that she remembered him and then
added: "We used to stop and see him before going to school, and play
awhile." This had been Winnie's custom; in fact, she had stopped to play at
Uncle George's house on the day she was killed. I should add that Gregory
and Uncle George lived in the town where the family lived during Winnie's
life. Susan was born and had lived all her life in another, smaller town of
Idaho.
Readers will have noticed that Susan's mother tried sometimes to stimulate her memories by asking questions about events that had occurred during Winnie's life. This sort of conversation carries some risk of inadvertently

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

furnishing information to the child thus questioned; and it may encourage

an identification with the dead person that would not have happened otherwise. Nevertheless, such questioning, if conducted by a person as vigilant
and intelligent as Charlotte Eastland seemed to be, may arouse additional
memories without lowering safeguards against normal communication.
Here is another example. Charlotte Eastland once told Susan that she
(meaning Winnie) had lost some new shoes in a field. At this, Susan laughed
and said that she had not cared about the loss of the shoes. Then she added:
"And you had to go up to town and buy me some more." Such an incident
had happened to Winnie, who had lost her only pair of shoes in a field.
I thought that by the end of 1969 I had learned all that I could about
this case. However, when I was corresponding with Charlotte Eastland in
1977 - in order to recheck some details and inquire about Susan's further
development - I learned that Susan had recalled yet another incident in
Winnie's life. My letter to her mother, which Charlotte Eastland told Susan
about, evidently stimulated her to further recollections of the previous life.
She then told her mother about a time when she (as Winnie) had accompanied her mother to a bowling alley. While her mother was bowling, Winnie
was left in the area where food and candy were sold, bur she kept running
between this area and the place where her mother was. A boy who happened
also to be there was running around with Winnie, and he kissed her. Charl~tt~ Eastland remembered this incident well, especially because the boy's
~lSSing Winnie had greatly annoyed her husband when she told him about
lt .

. ,,Susan never directly said anything like: "I was Winnie," or "I am Winrne. She came closest to such a statement when she claimed that the photographs of Winnie were of herself. She had memories that, in her mother's
expressi.on,. seemed to be of"a long rime ago." She remembered doing things
that Winnie had done but that she (Susan) had not. Susan's memories of
Winnie's life were not, however, organized into a more or less coherent pattern, as are the memories of many other subjects of these cases. Put another
way, we might say that although Susan had memories of a previous life, she
seemed not to have an explicit idea that she had lived before.
Susan learned rapidly, so much so that Charlotte Eastland wrote in one
of her letters to me: "Sometimes I feel when she learns something new that
she knew it all the time and only had to be reminded of it."
Charlotte Eastland noticed two features of personality in which she
thought Susan and Winnie resembled each other. She said both were rather
aggressive girls and both were well coordinated. She distinguished them in
these two characteristics from her other daughter, Sharon, who, she said, was
inclined to be timid and also poorly coordinated.

4. Fourteen Typical Cmes of Children W'ho Remember Previous Lives

83

Susan did not resemble Winnie physically, however. Winnie had had
red hair and extremely dark eyes; Susan had blond hair and blue eyes. Susan
and Winnie both had a rather heavy growth of hair on their backs. Their
father had an unusual growth of hair on his back, but the other children did
not.
Susan had a small birthmark on her left hip. It was an area of increased
pigmentation (nevus) about 1.3 cm by 1.0 cm. Its location corresponded
fairly closely to the site of the most serious injury Winnie received when she
was struck by the automobile and fatally injured. (I obtained a copy of Winnie's medical records from the hospital to which she was taken after the automobile struck her, and where she died.) No other member of the family had
a similar birthmark.
This case is one of a considerable number of American cases in which
the subject's religious background was not in any way favorable to the belief
in reincarnation. Charlotte Eastland belonged to a Christian church that
sternly denies the possibility of reincarnation. When I visited her, she cold
me that she thought her congregation might expel her from the church if they
suspected that she found the idea of reincarnation attractive. She did find it
attractive, although she also managed to continue conforming to her church
in other doctrinal matters.
Charlotte Eastland assured me that up to the time of my visit to her,
early in the summer of 1969, she had not told her children about her belief
that Susan was Winnie reborn. She did tell them later that summer, however, perhaps in response to their understandable curiosity about the reason
for my visit.

The Case ofMichael Wright

My investigation of this case, like that of Roberta Morgan's, began with
a telephone call from the subject's mother, Catherine Wright. One of my colleagues (Dr. Emily W. Kelly) talked with her first and found her distraught
about some statements her son had made, which suggested - indeed had
convinced her already- chat he remembered che life of the boyfriend she had
had before she married her husband. This friend, Walter Miller, had died in
an automobile accident when the car he was driving ran off the road and
crashed.
The idea of reincarnation did not perturb Catherine Wright. On the
contrary, she believed in it firmly and also believed in a wide variety of other
paranormal phenomena. I will not digress to describe her personal psychical experiences, but I cannot neglect to mention them here and also what

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

seemed to me a degree of related credulity that she showed. These might in the view of some readers - diminish her reliability as a witness of her
son's statements about a previous life. I myself have not formed this opinion, however; ifI had, I would not offer a report of Michael's case, for which
Catherine Wright provided nearly all the testimony.
A reader may ask here, however, why, if Catherine Wright had such an
open mind about psychical experiences, she had any need to telephone so
urgently to the University of Virginia in September 1978. I did not learn the
answer to that question until the following month, when I interviewed her
in Texas. (Nearly all the information for this report derives from this interview and another one conducted a year later by Dr. Kelly.) At the time of
my interview, I learned that Catherine Wright formed with her mother a twoperson enclave (in their community) of believers in reincarnation. Her husband, I also learned, did not share her beliefs. In addition to this, Catherine
Wright knew him well enough to think he would not enjoy hearing about
the pretension of his son to be his wife's former boyfriend reborn. She could
readily imagine his recalling without effort or pleasure that he had succeeded
in marrying her only because Walter Miller had died in an automobile accident. Was Walter Miller then not permanently dead, but invading now his
successor's home?
In the event, Catherine Wright's fears about her husband's reaction had
little or no foundation. Between the time of her telephone call to us in September 1978 and my visit to her at the end of October, she braved her husba~d's expected wrath and told him about her conjectures regarding what
Mich~el had been saying. She then learned to her surprise that he had already
surmised that she might be thinking that Michael was the reincarnation of
Walter Miller, and he seemed to take this in good part. I never learned
enoug~ about the relationship between Catherine Wright and her husband
to decide whether his unexpected knowledge of her opinion derived from
telepath~ between them or from some normal seepage of information from
her to him that had occurred without her being aware of it.
. T~ go back to Catherine Wright's boyfriend, Walter Miller, he was not
quite eighteen years old when he died in the summer of 1967. A promising
amateur artist and a popular high school student, he had looked forward to
his senior year, which was to begin in the autumn. He and Catherine had
known each other for about three years and had dated steadily with an understanding of being engaged, short of formally stating this. One night Walter
attended a dance with a friend, Henry Sullivan, and he probably drank more
alcohol than he should have. Returning from the dance, he appears to have
fallen asleep at the wheel of his car, which ran off the road and crashed. Walter died almost instantly, although his friend emerged unharmed.

4. Fourteen Tjpical Cases of Children Who Remember Previous Lives

85

Catherine felt the death of her boyfriend keenly, but she rallied; and
about a year later, in 1968, she married another boyfriend, Frederick Wright,
who had earlier stood in second place. They had a daughter first, and then
Michael was born. Before this happened, however, and a little more than a
year after Walter's death, Catherine Wright had a dream about him that
would certainly have counted as announcing his rebirth if it had occurred to
a prospective mother in most of the countries where these cases are frequently
found. In fact, Catherine Wright interpreted her dream as doing that. In it
Walter said that he was not dead as people thought, that he would come back,
and that he would draw pictures for her again. At the time of the dream and
even after Michael's birth, which did not take place until 1975, Catherine
Wright thought that Walter would return as the child of someone else - perhaps, she mused, of his sister, Carole Miller Davis, who happened to be
pregnant at the time of the dream. I mention this because the dream prepared Catherine Wright in a general way for Walter's rebirth, but it left her
with no expectation that he would reincarnate as her son.
Michael's birth and early development proceeded normally, although as
an infant he apparently had some difficulty in breathing, which he later outgrew. He was about three when he began to show signs of having an unexpected knowledge of people and events. He startled his mother one day by
uttering the name "Carole Miller." Catherine Wright had maintained some
friendly contact with Carole Miller after Walter's death; but Carole had married ten years earlier, and Michael, who had met her only twice, had never
known her except by her married name, Carole Davis.
The foregoing opening utterance by Michael did little to prepare his
mother for his detailed narration, which followed, of the accident in which
Walter Miller had died. After a false start in which he referred to a motorcycle, Michael corrected himself and said, according to his mother: "A friend
and I were in a car, and the car went off the side of the road, rolled over and
over. The door came open, and I fell out and was killed." Michael ~lso ~dded
other details, although I am not sure whether he included these m his first
account or stated them later. He said, for example, that the glass in the car
had broken and that he had been carried over a bridge (after the accident).
He also said that he and his friend had stopped (along the highway) and had
gone to a rest-room before they had the accident. Michael also mentioned
the name of the town where the dance from which Walter Miller was returning had taken place.
Catherine Wright knew that most of these statements applied correctly
to Walter's accident, and a newspaper report (with a photograph of the mangled car) that she showed me confirmed her account of the main events of
the accident. The impact of the crash threw Walter from the car, and he died

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

almost instantly of a broken neck. The ambulance transporting his body went
over a bridge near the site of the accident.13 Catherine Wrigh r could not say
whether Walter and his friend had stopped to use a rest-room before the accident, and her sense of being an almost solitary believer in reincarnation in
a community of nonbelievers prevented her from daring to broach the subject with the only person who could verify the detail. (This was Walter's companion, Henry Sullivan, who had survived the accident.) Nor did she approve
my doing so; neither of us imagined that I could conceal the true purpose
of any such inquiries I made in a small Texas town, even if I had been willing to do so, which I was not.
Michael made some further statements about matters within the knowledge of Walter, but outside his own, so far as his mother could tell. He knew
some details about Walter's home and that of Henry Sullivan. Eventually, but
only after questioning by Catherine Wright, Michael gave out the last name
of Henry Sullivan. He also stated (with a slight error) Henry's nickname.
Catherine Wright's mother, Margaret Carpenter, participated in my
interview with Catherine Wright, and she corroborated her daughter's report
of what Michael had said about the accident, which he had repeated in her
presence. Unfortunately, we lack corroboration for Catherine Wright's report
of other details stated by Michael. When Dr. Kelly visited Michael's family,
she briefly interviewed his father, Frederick Wright, bur learned that he then
remembered almost nothing of what Michael had said about the previous life.
I 0 not know whether this ignorance derived from lack of attention to what
his son had said or from his not having been present when Michael spoke
about the previous life, which he often did with his mother.
. Ca.cherine Wright and Dr. Kelly talked on the telephone in 1985. At that
t~me Michael, who was then ten years old, was doing well at school. Ar this
nme, he never talked about the previous life, bur we did not learn how old
he had been when he stopped talking about it.
I am far from satisfied with my understanding of this case, but I have
rhou~ht it Worth presenting because it illustrates features found in many
A~encan cases of the reincarnation type and in some cases of other counmes. Its weaknesses lie mainly in the somewhat overeager atti rude of
Michael's mother toward her son's remarks and in our inability, for the reason stated earlier, to verify any of Michael's statements independently with
Walter Miller's family or friends. Normally I do not publish a report of a case,
if it has verifiable features, unless I can make independent verifications; but
other considerations influenced me to set this rule aside in chis instance. My
grounds for doing this included certain strengths the case undoubtedly has.
le developed in a subculture that I think we can fairly describe as unfriendly
to the idea of reincarnation. Nor can one easily find any motivation within

4. Fourteen Tjpical Cases of Children Who Remember Previous Lives

87

members of the Wright family to contrive, or even encourage, a case of this

type with its poignant domestic rriangulariry. 14 In rhe fantasy world of those
psychiatrists who assign motives as they wish, one could easily imagine rhar
Catherine Wright thought up the case to torment her husband or that Michael
conceived it as a subtle torture for his parents. Maybe they did, but I do nor
believe ir. My opinion is not, however, incontestable. Dr. Emily Kelly, who
knows the case as well as I do, differs with me. She thinks it quire plausible
that some more benign motive, such as nostalgia or a longing for a past loved
one, could have led Catherine Wright ro encourage her son's identification with
Walter Miller and co have read more into his statements than was warranted.

The Case of Erin Jackson

I learned about chis case when Erin Jackson's mother, Marilyn Jackson,
wrote co me about it in 1980. She told me rhar when Erin, who was born in
an Indiana town in 1969, was about three years old, she had spoken often
about a previous life she seemed co remember. After exchanging letters with
Marilyn Jackson, I arranged co meet her and Erin at the cown in Indiana
where they resided. We had a long interview there in the summer of 1980.
Erin's father did not participate in this meeting; according co Marilyn Jackson, he could have added nothing co what she remembered.
Marilyn Jackson herself had co remember events of some years back,
because Erin had stopped speaking about rhe previous life when she was
about four years old. Her references to it had continued for about a year only,
a shorter time than that during which most subjects of these cases speak
about the lives they seem co remember.
During the period when Erin talked about che previous life, she made
frequent references co the time "when I was a boy" and "when I was called
John." These allusions would form part of statements like: "When my name
was John, we went to a lake and I floated my big boat," or "When I was a
boy, we had a black dog and a white cat." Erin said she had a stepmother
who loved her and created her well and a brother called James. James, she
said, had a strong preference for wearing black cloches and even wanted co
wear black underwear.
Erin mentioned no place where rhis life had occurred, and she gave no
direct indications of its period. She did, however, make frequent allusions
co the ugliness of modern American highways with their billboards, telephone
poles, and automobiles massed cogecher. She sometimes muttered co herself
about the loss of rural (and urban) beauty, and her mother overheard her
making such remarks as: "le was lots better when there were horses. These

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

cars are awful. They've just ruined everything." (The spoiling of the American countryside took several decades. We might say that it began around
1910 with Henry Ford's development of methods for mass-producing automobiles, which in turn led to the building of modern highways. If my
appraisal is correct, Erin's remarks refer to a time before 19 30, at least.)
In keeping with her conviction that she had been a boy, Erin wished to
dress like a boy and engage in boys' activities. As soon as she became old
enough to appreciate that boys and girls dressed differently, she insisted on
wearing boys' clothes. When she began to learn swimming, her mother
bought her two-piece bathing suits of which Erin regularly wore only the bottom part. To prevent this, her mother eventually bought her one-piece
bathing suits. Erin seemed to feel humiliated when her mother insisted on
her wearing a dress; she much preferred jeans and slacks. Even at the age of
ten, when I met her, she was wearing a dress only about three times a year,
and she required that such dresses as she did wear not have noticeably feminine features, such as lace or ruffles. She also wanted her hair kept short and
allowed it to grow long only when she was about nine.
Erin had no interest in dolls representing humans, and if she was given
such a doll, she would strip off its clothes and transfer them to an animal
doll. Her favorite indoor activities were drawing, reading, and building with
toy blocks. Among outdoor activities, she enjoyed swimming, climbing trees,
and fishing. She expressed a strong wish to learn baseball, and she intensely
wanted to become a Cub Scout; she became incensed when told that as a girl
sh~ was ineligible to join the Cub Scouts. Marilyn Jackson wrote me that
Erm would sometimes say with a sigh: "I wish I were a boy. Why couldn't I
have been a boy?"
Erin was a child of superior intelligence. Her mother said that she
seemed to know how to read at the age of three, before anyone had taught
her. She had a gift for drawing that I judged- after looking at some sketches
she had made- unusual for a child of her age. She also com posed poems that
a much older person might have felt pleased to have written .
. For a. year Erin spoke frequently- on average, once a week - about the
prev10us life. From the age of about four on, she began to talk of it less and
less frequently and finally stopped altogether; by the time I met her, when
she was nearly eleven, she seemed to remember little of what she had said
when she was three or four years old. Slight traces of the memories remained,
however, so that when I was talking with her mother, Erin sometimes intervened with comments concerning them. Her associated masculine behavior
persisted for four or five years after she stopped speaking spontaneously about
the previous life. Residues of this behavior still remained at the time I met
her, but she was then moving toward normal development as a girl.

4. Fourteen Typical Cases of Children Who Remember Previous Lives

89

Erin's parents had a conventional Protestant Christian background; they

did not believe in reincarnation at the time she began speaking about a previous life. Marilyn Jackson appears to have known almost nothing about the
subject at that time. Later she read something about it and began to believe
in reincarnation, but Erin's father remained a disbeliever. By 1980, Marilyn
Jackson had read a few popular books on the subject, but no one could classify her as a propagandist for it. I do not think anyone can attribute this case
to Erin's parents' having encouraged her to engage in fantasies about a previous life. Marilyn Jackson said that she showed a polite interest in what Erin
said about the previous life and never ridiculed her when she referred to it;
but neither did she encourage her to talk more than she did of what seemed
co her at that time mere "fantasy." This last word she herself used to characterize her first opinion of what Erin had been saying about the previous
life.

The Case of Hanumant Saxena

Han um ant Saxena was born in a small village in the state of Uttar
Pradesh, India, in 1955. His parents, Faujdar and Gainda Wati Saxena, were
landless villagers of extremely modest means. Shortly before Gainda Wati
became pregnant with Hanumant, she dreamed that a recently deceased man
of their village, Maha Ram Singh, appeared to her and said: "I am coming
to you." When Hanumant was born, his parents noticed that he had a prominent birthmark in the lower part of his chest near the midline. It was a large
irregularly shaped area of diminished pigmentation. Hanumant's parents
knew that Maha Ram had been killed by a murderer with a shotgun about
a year before Hanumant was born. They also knew that he had been shot in
the chest; Gainda Wati had been among the numerous villagers who had gone
to look at Maha Ram's body after he was killed.
Gainda Wati's dream and Hanumant's birthmark prepared Gainda Wati
and Faujdar to believe that Maha Ram had been reborn as Hanumant. Maha
Ram had been a neighbor - his house was about 250 meters from theirs and they had known him fairly well and liked him. He was a farmer who
owned some land that he cultivated. His murder occurred in the evening,
and the murderer escaped in the dark. Maha Ram was a gentle person with
no known enemies. The police had no suspect and made no arrests. My
informants conjectured that the murderer mistook Maha Ram for someone
else he had i mended to kill.
Hanumant began to speak when he was about one year old, and when
he was about three began speaking and acting as if he remembered the life

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CHILDREN WHO R.EMEtv1BER PREVIOUS LIVES

of Maha Ram. For example, he said that he was Maha Ram and, pointing to
his birthmark, said that he had been shot there. He made a small number of
other statements that were correct for Maha Ram, and he also recognized
some people and objects connected with Maha Ram, such as Maha Ram's
wife, his house, and his bullocks. He showed a moderately strong identification with Maha Ram in his use sometimes of the present tense. For example, he would say of Maha Ram's wife, when he saw her: "She is my wife."
He liked ro go to Maha Ram's house and showed much affection for Maha
Ram's mother, sometimes even accompanying her when she went to the
fields. She for her part accepted Hanumam as her son reborn and came to
visit him often. One of Maha Ram's sons agreed with her, but another did
not. He complained that Hanumant had not recognized him, and he declared
the case a hoax. Maha Ram's wife would not cooperate with our investigations, and I do not know how she regarded Hanumanr's claims. (Maha Ram's
mother had died before I investigated the case.) A former headman of the
village whom we interviewed was convinced that the case was authentic. He
said thar some villagers had begun saying that Hanumant was Maha Ram
reborn on the basis of his birthmark, before Hanumanr had even begun to
speak about the life of Maha Ram.
I learned about chis case in 1964, but it occurred in what was for me
then a remote, interior part ofUttar Pradesh, and I did not investigate it until
l97I-2. By this time Hanumanr was sixteen years old, and he had completely
forgotten abour the memories of Maha Ram's life that he had expressed as a
young child. Dr. Sarwanr Pasricha and I returned to the village for a followup visit in 1979.
This was one of rhe first cases for which I obtained a postmortem report
of the wound~ on the concerned previous personality. It showed that Maha
Ram had received a large wound from shotgun pellets in the midline of his
lower chest. Most 0 f h
II
h
h

f
r e pe ets ad entered the body close to t e sne o
Hanumanr's large birrhmark.

:v1a~a Ram's dissident son attached much more importance to Hanumant s failure to recognize him than I do. Moreover, he had a motive for dismissing the case. The Singhs had land and property, Hanumanr's father was
a landless laborer, and Maha Ram's son might have_ unjustly I chink - suspected Hanumant and his father of trying to claim some of the Singhs' property for Hanumant. In fact, I have never known a case where a subject's
parents have made such a claim, bur doubts of this kind sometimes come
into play when rhe two families concerned in a case belong to different socioeconomic classes.
Even if we consider chis case authentic, as I do, our difficulties in interpreting it have not ended. Far from char, we need to consider whether

4. Fourtem Typical Cases of Children Who Remember Previow Lives

91

Hanumant's birthmark might derive from a maternal impression. This is a

concept of a psychosomatic influence of the mother on a gestating fetus that
I will discuss later. Here we need to remember that Gainda Wati saw Maha
Ram's dead body with its huge chest wound and must have retained an image
of this somewhere in her mind during her pregnancy with Hanumant. What
then are we to make of Hanumant's reported claim to be Maha Ram? A
skeptic would say that his parents, believing that Maha Ram was being reborn
to their family, imposed this identification on him. I find this summed combination of interpretations topheavy and unsatisfactory, bur I cannot deny
that they have a certain plausibility.

The Case of Semih Ttttujmttj

Semih Tutumll was born in the village of ~arkonak, in the province
of Hatay, Turkey. His parents were Ali and Karanfil TutumU. Semih's father
was keeper of a small shop in the village. Two days before Semih's birth,
Karanfil had dreamed that a man with his face covered with blood came to
her. He said that he was Selim Fesli, that he had been shot in the ear, and
that he wished to stay with her. Karanfil had never met Selim Fesli, but she
knew a little about him and particularly that he had died from a shotgun
wound some months earlier.
Semih was born with a severe malformation of his right ear. His left ear
was normal, bur on the right side of his face he had, instead of the usual external ear (pinna), only a narrow linear stub of skin where the ear should have
been.
Selim Fesli, a farmer of the neighboring village of Hamn Koy, had been
fatally wounded after he lay down in a field to rest after a day's work. A neighbor, isa Dirbekli, was out hunting rabbits, and in the twilight he mistook
Selim for one and shot him at close range. The shotgun pellets entered the
right side of Selim's head, and he died of cerebral hemorrhage a few days lacer.
Karanfil's dream and Semih's birch defect led her and her husband to
chink that Semih was che reincarnation of Selim Fesli. They were therefore
not surprised when Semih, ar the age of about one and a half, bega1~ to talk
as if he were Selim Fesli. His first words, in facr, were the name of Isa Dirbekli. Semih made numerous statements about Selim Fesli's life and death.
For example, he correctly gave the names of Selim's wife and all six of th~ir
children. He particularly remembered being shot in the right ear by Isa
Dirbekli. Although Karanfil did not know Selim, her husband, Ali, had
known him well. le is unlikely, therefore, chat Semih made any statement
about Selim's life chat referred ro matters unknown to Ali Tutul11ll. The

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

importance of the case lies instead in Semih's identification with Selim and
in his unusual birth defect.
Semih's identification with Selim was particularly vivid. When he was
probably less than four years old, he walked by himself to Harun Koy (two
kilometers from Sarkonak), went to Selim Fesli's house, and introduced himself as "Selim." He was credited with recognizing (on that occasion) several
members of the Fesli family, either by name or with other identifying statements. Thereafter, he made frequent visits to the Feslis, sometimes going
alone to Hatun Koy without permission. When he was punished for some
misconduct, he would threaten to go off to "his" village. He expected the
Fesli family to consult him about important family matters, and he became
enraged when - possibly through oversight - the Feslis failed to invite him
to the wedding of one of Selim's sons. For the engagement and wedding of
another son, Semih raised some money from his father and gave it to this
son. When Semih learned that Selim's widow, Katibe, was enjoying the attentions of another man, he went to Hatun Koy and rebuked this man for his
audacity. He asked Katibe how she could possibly marry anyone but him.
When Katibe died a few years later, Semih was visibly saddened.
Above all, Semih nourished a grievance against isa Dirbekli, whom he
accused of deliberately shooting him. isa Dirbekli insisted the shooting had
been accidental; he was sentenced to two years in prison. After he left prison,
he returned to Hatun Koy where he became a street vendor of raki (a distilled alcoholic beverage widely consumed in Turkey.) Semih often threatened to kill isa Dirbekli, and when he saw him in the street he would throw
stones at him.
I. learned of this case in 1966 and investigated it by means of numerous
.
Interviews with Semih, his parents, and twelve other informants between 1967
and 1~77. I ~as. able to obtain and study the postmortem report on the body
~f Selim Fesh; It confirmed that he had died of shotgun wounds to the right
~tde of the head. T~roughout most of these years Semih continued his burning resentment of Isa Dirbekli. Between the ages of sixteen and eighteen he
was in the Turkish Army, performing his obligatory military service; during
this period a plastic surgeon operated on his ear and fashioned for him a
remarkably normal appearing right ear. Hair styles also changed at this time,
and Semih let his hair grow over his ears. Whether from these changes or
from increasing maturity- or both - Semih, when I last met him in 1977,
said that he had given up his intention of avenging himself on isa Dirbekli.
He said that he still remembered the life of Selim Fesli, and Karanfil (his
mother) told me that he still talked about it "from time to time."
As I mentioned, we cannot readily credit any of Semih's statements
about the life of Selim Fesli to a paranormal process. On the other hand and

4. Fourteen 7Jpical Cases of Children Who Remember Previous Lives

93

contrary to my usual skepticism about recognitions, I found reports of some

of Semih's recognitions impressive. Even more impressive was his intense
identification with Selim Fesli. I am confident that Semih's parents could not,
and would not if they could, have imposed such an identification on him.
Semih's birth defect (microtia) is a rare one with an estimated incidence of one in between 20,000 and 30,000 births. Moreover, Semih had
more than a defect of his right ear. The whole right side of his face was
underdeveloped compared with the left side, a condition called hemifacial
hyoplasia. The correspondence between Semih's malformed ear and the
wounds in Selim's head was precise. The extension of Semih's abnormality
to the whole side of his face suggests a field effect. I will return to this last
topic in the next chapter.
The foregoing summaries show some of the strengths and weaknesses
of these cases, considered with regard to evidence for the subjects' having
information about a deceased person that they could not have obtained normally. In later chapters I shall describe the methods I have used to investigate the cases and the ways in which I have analyzed and interpreted them.
Before these chapters, however, I shall present next some observations of
features that recur in large series of cases.

CHAPTER

Characteristics of
Typical Cases of
the Reincarnation Type
The fourteen case summaries that I gave in the last chapter offer a provisional basis for outlining a typical case. Readers will probably have noticed,
for example, that in at least nine of the fourteen cases the death in the previous life had been violent. (In two cases the cause of death was unknown.)
In the present chapter I shall describe other recurrent features of typical
1
cases and also draw attention to the more important variations among them.
First, however, I shall tell where the cases are found most abundantly and
mention the social and economic backgrounds of the persons concerned in
them.

Where the Cases Are Found

.
Pe~sons who claim that they remember a previous life are easily found
m cerram areas of the world. These are northern India, Sri Lanka, Burma,
Thailand, south-central Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, West Africa, and the northwestern region of North America (among tribal people). I have also found
and investigated many cases in Europe and North America (apart from the
tribes of the northwestern region). I have found cases in South America as
well, but much less abundantly than in the other countries and regions I have
mentioned.
Tibet may at one time have been a country where numerous cases of
this type occurred, if I may judge from their fairly common occurrence
94

5. Characteristics of Tjpical Cases of the Reincarnation Tjpe

95

among the refugees from Tibet who now live in India. I have studied a few
cases among these Tibetans, but the dispersal of family members and other
firsthand informants makes their investigation unusually difficult.
I have reason to believe that cases could also be found easily in parts of
Japan and in Indochina (that is, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam). I have
learned of some cases in these countries, and correspondents have told me
that they think more cases could be found there if someone would look for
them, which I did not do myself. I lacked time, not zeal, for this, and thought
it better to concentrate my efforts on a smaller number of countries with the
cultures of which I have gradually become at least somewhat familiar.
The most obvious aspect of the inventory of geographic locations that
I have just given is the correlation between a high density of reported cases
and a belief in reincarnation. I shall discuss possible interpretations of this
correlation later. I wish to emphasize here, however, that cases also occur and much more frequently than the average Westerner realizes - in Western
countries, such as those of Europe and North America. Moreover, we have
found some cases in Asia among groups of peoples who do not believe in reincarnation (for example, the Christians of Lebanon and Sri Lanka, and the
Sunni Moslems of India).
I can say much more confidently where we can easily find cases than
what their real incidence is. My colleagues and I can only investigate a case
after someone has informed us about it, and there are many filters between
the development of a case and news of it reaching us. There are several reasons for our not learning about cases promptly or not learning about chem
at all.
An unknown number of cases are quietly observed just within a small
circle of family members and perhaps a few close friends. These are usually
cases in which the subject is identified as being a deceased member of the
same family reborn. I sometimes refer to these cases as "private cases." As I
have continued my investigations and become better known to informants
in various countries, more of chem have taken me into their confidence and
told me about private cases, even allowing me at rimes to investigate chem
thoroughly.
Another unknown number of cases are suppressed, even within the subject's own family. This is particularly likely co happen in cultures, such as
chose of Western countries, where the majority of people do not believe in
reincarnation. The parents of the child subject of such a case may think he
is talking nonsense or telling lies, and they often try to silence him. A similar motive accounts for the suppression of cases among the Sunni Moslems
of India and the Christians of Lebanon and Sri Lanka.
However, even in cultures with a strong belief in reincarnation, parents

96

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

may sometimes not wish a child to talk about a previous life, and they may
try to stop him from doing so. They may try to suppress him if they believe as many persons in India and Burma do - that it is harmful and possibly fatal
for a child to have such memories. In many instances also parents dislike
either the content of what a child is saying or some features of the child's
behavior that matches his statements. Thus if a child talks about a sordid
murder in the previous life or if he claims to have belonged to a family
markedly superior (or markedly inferior) to his own, his parents may try to
stop him from talking about his memories.
We sometimes learn of suppressed cases in which the subject simulates
amnesia for the previous life while actually retaining his memories, which
he later reveals to listeners more sympathetic than those he found in his own
family. The case of the Thai monk Ven. Chaokhun Rajsuthajarn provides
an excellent example of this. As a young child he had clear memories of the
life of his own maternal uncle. His family fully accepted his statements as
indicative of his being his uncle reborn; bur he insisted on a certain adult
status and, for example, addressed his mother familiarly as if she were his sister, not his mother. His family therefore took various measures to suppress
his references to the life of his uncle, including some mild physical handling,
such as making him dizzy by turning him on a potter's wheel. 2 To avoid any
worse treatment, the boy pretended that he had forgotten the previous life,
although he had not. When he grew up, however, he began to tell some other
persons about his memories, and eventually he wrote and published in Thailand an autobiographical account of them.
If a case is not private and is not suppressed, I may learn about it through
~ne of many associates and assistants who have helped me - often first as
mterpreters - in different parts of the world. In India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, cases are reported in newspapers from time to time. In contrast, cases
are rarely reported in newspapers in Burma, Turkey, and Lebanon. In India
the ~ewspapers tend to publish reports of cases only if they have some dramatic ~eature, such as the case of Go pal Gupta, which included the detail attracnve to many newspaper readers - of a man shooting his own brother,
a prominent man of the community where they lived. The newspapers of Sri
Lanka and Thailand are less discriminating and have published reports of a
wide variety of ordinary cases, as well as ones having sensational features. In
the early days of my investigations, I depended heavily on newspaper reports
for my first information about a case. In recent years I have done this much
less, because some of my associates and assistants have become adept at locating unpublished cases, and also because now informants for one case that we
are investigating often tell us about others, which we then schedule for study
as soon as possible.

5. Characteristics of Typical Cases ofthe Reincarnation Type

97

I am confident that the incidence of cases is much higher than the number of reported ones. 3 I have learned this particularly through the labors of
some of my associates and of the persons whom I call subagents; these latter are persons who, having become interested in this research, have kept a
close watch for cases occurring in their vicinity. Pins on a map indicating
cases known to us sometimes show dense clusters around the towns where
these admirable scouts lived. 4
In 1978 two of my associates, Dr. David Barker and Dr. Satwant Pasricha, conducted a systematic survey of cases on a sample of persons living
in a designated part of the Agra District in Uttar Pradesh, India. They found
an incidence of approximately two cases per thousand inhabitants. We need
similar surveys in other regions of India as well as in other countries.

The Social and Economic Backgrounds of the Subjects

In Asia most of the cases I have investigated have occurred among villagers of poor economic means and little education, but that is the condition of most Asian families, and so there is nothing remarkable about the
backgrounds of the cases. I should add, however, that we also find Asian cases
among prosperous and educated town and city dwellers. Further analysis of
our data may reveal patterns in the social and economic circumstances of the
families concerned in these cases that I have not yet discerned.
I shall venture one comment under this heading with regard to cases in
the United States. (I refer here to cases other than those found among the
tribes of northwestern North America.) I have noticed that the informants
for these cases (usually the mothers of the subjects) are often residents of small
towns and villages. They may have had little education beyond h~gh sch~ol.
They are likely to be Christians who are more attached to Jesus teachmgs
than to the various doctrines of the churches founded in his name. And they
are likely to read occasionally or regularly one or more popular magazines
dealing with paranormal experiences or the "occult." In this way they may
have heard of reincarnation and of my research. Such qualifications make
these persons protestants in the original meaning of that word: they need no
intermediary directing them in matters concerned with religious belief. Most
of them can therefore allow a child to talk about a previous life without
becoming alarmed.

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CHILDREN WHO REME;\1BER PREVIOUS LIVES

The Recurrent Characteristics of the Cases

A fully developed case has five major features. Ir begins with a person usually an elderly one- predicting that he will be reborn (after he dies); he
often indicates to which parents or what place he would like to return. He
later dies, and then someone - not necessarily a member of his familydreams about his returning to a particular family. The baby is born and is
found to have birthmarks (or perhaps birth defects) that correspond to
wounds or other marks on the body of the deceased person whose reincarnation was expected. Soon after the baby begins to speak, he makes statements - rudimentary at first and then more detailed - about the deceased
person's life. Finally, the child behaves in ways that are unusual in his family bur that informants say match behavior that the deceased person had
shown or that might have been expected of him.
Thus the fully developed case has a prediction of rebirth, a dream, a
birthmark or birth defect, statements about the previous life by the child,
and associated unusual behavior. 5 However, few cases show all five of these
features. Specific predictions about reincarnation occur rarely. Also, even
when three or four of the other features occur in a case, some elements may
appear much more prominently than others. I shall next consider each of
these five features in turn.

PREDICTIONS OF REINCARNATION MADE BEFORE DEATH

As I have just said, specific predictions about where a person will be

reborn occur rarely in most of the cultures where we find these cases. Howev~r, ~hey do occur with notable frequency in the cases of two peoples: the
Tlmgn of northwestern North America and the Tibetans. I found that in ten
(22 percent) of forty-six Tlingit cases the concerned previous personality had
stated premortem his choice of parents for his next incarnation.
Many Tlingits also express wishes for physical, and sometimes other
personal, improvements in the next life. Such aspirations sometimes represent hopes more than predictions; yet a small number of cases do suggest
the fulfillment in one life of wishes expressed in a preceding one. Tlingits
also sometimes predict the appearance on their next body of birthmarks that
will correspond to scars or other marks on their (present) body. They mention these to aid in the later identification of themselves as having reincarnated.6
The lamas of Tibet also often make predictions about their next lives.-:Their predictions tend to be more subtle and allusive than those of the Tlin-

5. Characteristics of Typical Cases ofthe Reincarnation Type

99

git; nevertheless, they also may tell, or make hints about, where they expect
to be reborn. To such indications they may add others, such as that they will
have a birthmark on a particular part of the body. However, obscureness in
the hims dropped by a lama concerning the place and circumstances of his
next incarnation may leave his surviving disciples puzzled about how to
interpret the indications given for them to find the lama's successor incarnation.
Among the cases of other cultures, predictions of rebirth, when they
occur, tend to be a feature of cases in which an elderly person says that he
will be reborn in his own family. I have studied numerous cases of this type
in Turkey and India. In these countries cases of claimed reincarnation within
the same family are exceptional, bur when a child does recall the life of a
deceased member of his own family, that person has often predicted his reincarnation within the family.
ANNOUNCING DREAMS

In many cases, someone connected with the (future) subject has a dream
in which a deceased person appears to the dreamer and indicates his wish or
intention to reincarnate. The dreamer is usually a married woman and a
potential mother for the next incarnation of the person who is to be reborn.
Sometimes the woman's husband, another relative, or a friend may have a
dream of this type. I call these dreams "announcing dreams" because they
occur, with a few rare exceptions, before the birth, and sometimes before the
conception, of the subject. 8 Seven examples occurred among the fourteen
cases that I summarized in chapter 4.
Announcing dreams have been reported in all of the countries where we
find these cases. They happen with greater frequency, however, among the
Burmese, the Alevis of Turkey, and the tribes of northwestern North America.
We have found that among the Burmese the dreams tend to occur before
the subject's conception; among the tribes of northwestern North America,
on the other hand, they occur nearly always during the last month of pregnancy and especially within the last few days or hours before the subject's
birth.
The dreams also vary in their form. Among the Tlingit the discarnace
personality appearing in an announcing dream often conveys symbolically
his intention co reincarnate. For example, in the dream he may walk into the
house with his suitcase and deposit it in one of the bedrooms, or he may enter
the parents' bedroom and lie down between chem. In contrast, announcing dreams among che Burmese often represent the discarnate personality as

100

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

petmoning to reincarnate in the family chosen. This suggests that the

dreamer has the option to refuse such a request.
Amusing contretemps can occur in connection with such dreams. A
Burmese wife whose husband was away from home on a long journey had a
dream in which a deceased friend seemed to be asking for permission to be
reborn as her child; she did not like this proposal and (in the dream) told
him not to come to them. When her husband returned from his journey, he
told her that he had dreamed of the same old friend and had told him (in
his dream) that the friend would be welcome to be reborn in their family. In
due course a child {Maung Aung Than) was born who later made statements
suggesting that his father's acceptance had prevailed over his mother's
attempted veto. His mother accepted the situation with the good humor
characteristic of the Burmese.
Much less frequent than announcing dreams are what I call departure
dreams. In a dream of this type, a member of a deceased person's familyhis widow perhaps - dreams that the deceased person indicates the family
in which he can be found after his reincarnation.
Some instances have occurred in which a member of a deceased person's family has had an apparent communication from the deceased in a
dream after the birth of the baby in whose body he is thought to have reincarnated. In one such instance the mother of a man who had died dreamed
that. her son appeared to her and said: "Help! I have got myself in a poor
family. Come and rescue me." She obtained sufficient information in the
dream to trace the child, who later had memories of her son's life. In two
?ther instances the presumed previous personality of an infant communicated
ma .drearr~ (h.ad by a member of the previous family) his dissatisfaction with
the mfa~t s Sit,uation. In one of these, the previous personality complained
t~at the mfam s father was drinking alcohol excessively; in the other, the previous ~ersonality alleged that the infant's mother was feeding him at her
convenience rather than when he needed feeding, and this was making the
baby hungry.
In most announcing dreams the dreamer recognizes the person appearing to communicate his intention of being reborn. In some, however, the
dreamer cannot identify the person in the dream, but after the child's birth
she may notice that her baby resembles in appearance the person appearing
in the dream. For example, Necip Onllitak1ran's mother, before her pregnancy with him, dreamed about a man unknown to her who had several
bleeding wounds. When Necip was born, he had prominent birthmarks that
were later found to correspond to fatal wounds on the body of the man
whose life Necip later claimed to remember, but his mother had known
nothing about this man or his murder when she had her dream.

5. Chamcteristics of Typical Cases of the Reincarnation Tjpe

IO I

In some dreams related later to a case, the connection between the

dream and the subject appears to be tenuous or even only symbolic. Among
the Sinhalese, dreams in which an identified person appears in a dream occur
rarely, bur the Sinhalese sometimes interpret dreams of snakes, elephants, and
other animals as having some connection with a case that develops later. I
myself attach little importance to such dreams, especially those given a
significance only after other developments in a case.
The more common type of announcing dream, which occurs before the
child's birth or even his conception, tends to lessen the value of other evidence that may emerge later in the case. Such a dream nearly always disposes
the child's parents to act differently toward the child than they otherwise
might have done, and they may influence the child to adopt the attitudes of
the deceased person, even without being aware that they are doing so.
BIRTHMARKS, BIRTH DEFECTS, AND OTHER BIOLOGICAL FEATURES

Birthmarks and birth defects occur in about 35 percent of the subjects

of these cases. Nearly all of them correspond to wounds, usually fatal ones,
or other marks on the previous personality. For two reasons they provide a
type of evidence much superior to the oral testimony of informants for the
cases. First, the birthmarks or birth defects can themselves be seen, sketched,
and photographed. Second, medical records, usually postmortem reports,
give us objective evidence of the location and other features of the corresponding wounds on the previous personality.
Readers learning about the birthmarks and birth defects in these cases
will probably find them easier to understand and credit if they already know
about psychophysiologic relationships that most physicians already acknowledge and take into account in the care of their patients. Nearly everyone must
be aware of the changes in his breathing and heart rate that accompany
strong emotions. Less well known is the observation by Dr. Bernard Lown
and his colleagues that 20 percent of sudden deaths from cardiac disease
(fatal arrhythmias or cardiac arrest) were immediately preceded by some
event that the patient perceived as stressful.
Other psychophysiologic phenomena, although even less familiar than
those affecting the heart, are also relevant for the understanding of these
cases. I am thinking here of the stigmata that appear on the hands and feet
of some persons who think intensely about Jesus' crucifixion.
Coming closer to the theme of this book are the phenomena called
maternal impressions. The concept of maternal impressions supposes that in
certain pregnant women the sight of a wound or other physical abnormality in another person may somehow generate a corresponding abnormality

102

CHILDREN WHO R.Etv1E!\1BER PREVIOUS LIVES

in her gestating baby. The concept was widely accepted by physicians, and
even more by most lay persons, until the end of the nineteenth century. Ir
then gradually fell our of favor as an acceptable explanation for birthmarks
and birth defects. Nevertheless, some instances have occurred and reports of
them published in recent times. In 1992 I published a review of the literature of maternal impressions and reported two cases that I had investigated.
An analysis of 113 published cases showed (with strong statistical significance)
that the mother to be had been exposed to the presumed generating stimulus more often in the first trimester of her pregnancy than in the second and
third ones. This is the trimester when the embryo is most susceptible to teratogenic substances, such as viruses and noxious drugs. I mention the subject here because the idea of a maternal impression has understandably
become an important rival for reincarnation in the interpretation of the cases
0
: children who claim to remember previous lives and who have related
bmhmarks and birth defects. I shall consider it again in chapter 7.
In 1997 I published a monograph in which I included reports - most of
them detailed- of 225 cases with birthmarks, birth defects, or other unusual
physical features. In that work I addressed the question of whether' because
n~arly everyone has some birthmark, we should attach any importance co
bi~thmarks that happen to correspond with a dead person's wounds. Could
this ~ot just happen by chance? My answer to that question is that most of
the
mt h ese cases are not like the " ord'mary " b'1rt I1marks
h birthmarks occurrmg
t. at nearly everyone has. The latter are nearly always small areas of increased
pigmentation
' th ey are usua ll y fl at, although some are e l evate d a b ove t l1e sur.
rounding
skin Some 0 f t h e b'irthmarks I have descn be d In
t h ese cases are 0 f
.
t h is type but m
l.k
'
ost are not. Instead they are hairless, puckered scar 1 e areas,
an d t hey are ofte l
d
}
" d.
,, b.
n ocate in areas, such as the head and legs, w 1ere or 1nary mhmarks
1
"
d
"
. h
k
rare Y occur. They are frequently larger than or mary
b irt
mar s. Man (l'k h
. . .
.
Y i et at ofHanumam Saxena) have d1mm1shed p1gmen.
tanon. Some ooze and
bl
h'ld' b' h
.
even eed for days or longer afrer the c i s Irt
Regard .mg t h e birth
d fi
I
fi

e
ects, should emphasize that the defects gunng m
t h e cases are nearly l
f
I
'f
.
a ways o unusual types. Some of them are extreme y rare,
I not unique. Only a fe

Ware cram1iiar malformat10ns,

sue I1 as c Je1c.t 1tps.
I obtained and exa mine
d me d'ical records usual Iy postmortem reports,
for forty-eight
cases that also h ad su ffi c1ent

uuormatton
~

c
inc I us1on

an

.
1or
1n
analysis. Among these I found in forty-three cases a close correspondence
b~tween the wounds on. the previous personality and the birthmarks (or
bm~ .defects) on t~e subjects. In 1998 Dr. Pasricha published a report of ten
addmonal cases with the feature of a birthmark or birth defect. In seven of
them a medical document, such as a postmortem report, showed a close correspondence between the birthmark or birth defect and a wound on the

5. Characteristics of Typical Cases of the Reincarnation Type

103

previous personality. (No medical report was available for the other three
cases of this group.)
I have calculated from the surface area of the skin (of an average adult
person) that a correspondence between a single wound or other mark on one
person and a birthmark on another person may occur one time in 160 by
chance. The odds of a correspondence in location between two wounds on one
person and two birthmarks on another are much less: one in less than 25,000.
In addition to the correspondence in anatomical location between
wounds and birthmarks (or birth defects) many of the birthmarks showed
unusual details that accorded with the verified or conjecrurable wound or
other mark on the previous personality. For example, one subject who
remembered the life of a young girl who died during cardiac surgery had a
linear birthmark of diminished pigmentation in the midline of her lower
chest and upper abdomen. In chapter 4 I described the birthmarks of Corliss
Chotkin, Jr. One of these had a linear scarlike appearance and beside it were
small punctate marks, also present at birth; this group of birthmarks corresponded to the wound of a surgical biopsy that had been stitched up. (In this
case I obtained a medical record that showed the previous personality to
have had a condition for which a biopsy might have been indicated, but I
did not verify that one was performed.) In another case, a subject who
remembered the life of a man who had died after an operation in the region
of his liver had a horizontal linear scarlike birthmark on the skin over his liver.
Another subject had a large crescentic birthmark behind his right ear; this
corresponded in shape as well as location to the surgical operation of masroidectomy (a type of operation often performed for intractable infections
of the ear before antibiotics became available). As a final example of such
details in the birthmarks I will mention the case of a Burmese woman who
had two small round birthmarks of different sizes on her left breast; these
corresponded to wounds of shotgun pellets of different sizes on the body of
the person whose life she claimed to remember.
Forensic pathologists know that bullet wounds of entry are usually small
and round whereas wounds of exit are usually larger and irregular in shape.
In its transit through the body the bullet tumbles and often pushes in front
of it portions of bone and other tissues, all of which make a larger wound at
rht: site of exir. Birthmarks corresponding to wounds of entry and exit
occurred in fourteen cases that I investigated and in four others chat colleagues studied. In fourteen of these eighteen cases one birthmark was larger
than the other; the smaller birthmark was usually round or roundish and rhe
larger one was irregular in shape. In several cases we were unable to learn
which of rwo wounds on the previous personality was the wound of entry
and which the wound of exit. There were, however, nine cases in which the

104

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

small round birthmark corresponded to the wound of entry and the larger
birthmark corresponded to the wound of exit.
In the case of Corliss Chotkin, Jr., the previous personality predicted
that he would be recognized, when he was reborn, by two birthmarks corresponding to scars on his body to which he pointed when he made this prediction. In a small number of other cases a living person or a deceased one
appearing in a dream has predicted the occurrence of a birthmark in a laterborn baby. Much more common than these are predictions that are made in
the group of cases that we call "experimental birthmarks." In these cases
someone puts a mark on a dying person, or one who has just died, with the
expectation that a later-born baby of the family will have a birthmark at the
site of the mark on the deceased person and will also have memories of that
person's life. The marking substance is often black soot or grease from the
bottom of a cooking pot, but the marker may use other substances, such as
ochre or lipstick. Cases of experimental birthmarks can be found fairly easily in Burma and Thailand, but they also occur in other countries, such as
Lebanon and India. I have myself published reports of twenty such cases, and
my colleagues (Dr. Jurgen Keil and Dr. Jim Tucker) have investigated more
than twenty other examples. Most of the experimental birthmarks have no
distinctive shape, although they are much larger and more prominent than
nearly all ordinary birthmarks. A few are in unusual places; one Burmese boy
had a wide birthmark that went around the bottom of one of his feet. Some
of the children born with such marks later express memories of the deceased
and marked person, but others do not.
~he subjects sometimes show biological features other than birthmarks
~nd bi_nh defects. Particularly interesting to me as a physician are the cases
m :Vhich a subject has an internal disease, such as a kidney disease from
':hich the previous personality also suffered. In one such case that I invesn?ated the subject, a girl of Turkey, had kidney disease and also a prominent
bmhmark (a so-called port wine stain birthmark) in the skin at the area of
t~e left kidney. This and other cases suggest to me the existence of a field of
disturbance that can influence tissues at a distance from its center.
Other biological features of the subjects that sometimes correspond to
similar aspects of the previous personality are: pigmentation of the skin and
hair, facial appearance, physique, posture, and gait. I became aware of the
potential importance of these and other aspects of the cases too late to study
them as fully as I hope my successors will. I did, however, discuss them at
some length in my 1997 monograph.
The biological features that I have briefly described in this section suppose that, if reincarnation occurs, the deceased person concerned in a case
exerts a powerful influence on the gestating baby of whose body it will later

5. Characteristics of Typical Cases of the Reincarnation Tjpe

105

become the tenant. The cases of birth defects, especially some affecting the
extremities, suggest a contest between the constructive biological processes
of the developing embryo and the destructive ones that the assumed psychic
force of the previous personality generates. The abnormality of constriction
rings strongly suggests such a struggle. In this condition, deep grooves are
sometimes found in the baby across the extremities or parts of them, such
as the fingers and toes. The grooves or rings, as they are commonly called,
seem to correspond (in these children's cases) to pressure from ropes or cuts
with swords and knives that wounded the previous personalities. 9
THE CHILD'S STATEMENTS ABOUT THE PREVIOUS LIFE

Under this heading I propose to discuss the age and manner of the child's
speaking about the previous life and the common themes of the statements
the child makes. I shall also briefly mention recognitions attributed to the child
of persons, places, and objects familiar to the previous personality.
Age and Manner of Speaking About the Previous Life. A child who is
going to refer to a previous life nearly always does so for the first time between
the ages of two and five. If a younger child has imaged memories of a previous life, as some have afterward claimed they had, he nearly always lacks
the verbal skills to express what he wants to say. Even so, some subjects begin
speaking about the previous lives before their verbal skills have developed
enough for adequate communication of the images in their minds.
Children starting to speak this early often mispronounce words and use
gestures to eke out a deficient vocabulary. It may take baffled parents a year
or more before their dull comprehension - as it seems to the child - and t~e
child's improving powers of speech provide an intelligible picture of the life
he is trying to describe. A few examples will help to illustrate the early age
at which the children begin to communicate their memories. Imad Elawar
(in Lebanon) wanted to say that in the life he was remembering he had a double-barreled gun; he held up two extended fingers to represent the two b~r
rels of the gun. When Kumkum Verma (in India) wished to tell her family
about the occupation of the previous personality's son in her case - he was
a blacksmith - she gestured to imitate the movements of knocking a hammer on an anvil and of working bellows. Pushpa, another subject of India,
wanted to say that her husband had a bicycle repair shop; she lay on her back
and with her legs in the air made the movements of pedaling a bicycle.
An analysis that we carried out on 383 cases in India showed that the
average age at which the child began to speak about the previous life he
remembered was thirty-eight months or a little over three years. The average age of first speaking about the previous life was less - around three

106

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

years- in the cases of Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Lebanon. On rhe other hand,
it was somewhat greater- about forty-three months - in ll5 American (nontribal) cases. 10
A few children do not remember a previous life until they are older, or
they do not tell other people about any memories they have until then. Some
children, even in cultures where nearly everyone believes in reincarnation,
do not speak about what they remember for fear chat their family and friends
will cease or scold chem. (Suleyman Andary illustrated such inhibitions.)
In general, I become doubtful about the value of a case as evidence of
anything paranormal if I learn that the subject first had memories of a previous life in later childhood or adulthood. I recognize, however, rhar some
subjects seem to have had significant memories for the first time in adulthood. In the majority of these cases (as I explained in chapter 3) the memories have first occurred either after an emotional shock, as in the case of
Georg Neidhart, or during or after meditation, as in rhe cases of Pratomwan
lnrhanu and Uttara Huddar.
The children vary widely in the amount of detail included in their
memories. Some remember little of the previous life; others could talk a volume about ir. A boy of Delhi probably holds the record for paucity of such
memories: he said that he was from Bombay and could remember a lot of
smoke and people weeping. That was all. (His statement about a lot of smoke
and people weeping could have derived from a scene at a cremation ceremony,
but this was not verified.) Ac the other extreme of abundance of detail in the
memories we find cases like those of Edward Ryall, Marta Lorenz, and Swarnlata Mishra. Edward Ryall wrote an entire book filled with extraordinary
details; a few were inaccurate and some unverified, but most were correct.
He had some memories in lacer childhood, but most of them even later.
Legitimate questions can be raised about che source of the many accurate
derails he said were memories, but here I am considering only rhe amount
of these. The father of Marca Lorenz (the subject of a case in Brazil) wrote
down 120 sraremenrs that she made about a previous life when she was a
young child. Unfortunately, someone accidentally discarded his notes, and
less than a third of what Marra had said was ultimately properly n:corded.
As for Swarnlara Mishra (of India), she claimed co have almost total recall.
Although chis was probably an exaggeration, and was certainly never tested,
she did have many more memories than most subjects have had. Unfortunately- and this time the cause was my own inexperience when I studied
Swarnlata's case - only a small portion of her memories were adequately
recorded.
More subjects may belong co the class of those with abundant memories than we now realize. Unfortunately, we reach few subjects during the peak

5. Characteristics of Tjpical Cases ofthe Reincarnation Tjpe

107

of their speaking about the previous life; too often we meet them only later,
by which time many details may have slipped away and left a smaller residue
of fading memories, or perhaps no memories at all. Some children's parents
say that they too have forgotten much of what their child said earlier. Be that
as it may, in most cases that I have studied, the informants have remembered
between five and fifty separate statements that the child has made about the
previous life.
The children also vary widely in their desire and apparent need to talk
about the previous life. Some, like Mallika Aroumougam, talk about the
previous life only when some object or event reminds them of a similar feature of the previous life. Others cannot keep off the subject and become
bores or worse. They talk about the previous life so incessantly, even after
several years, that the other members of the family may crave a meal without having to hear once again about how much better the child's previous
life was than his present circumstances are. The number of details in a child's
memories may correlate poorly with his desire to talk about them. Mahes de
Silva, for example, remembered only a few details about a previous life, but
he battered his parents - especially his mother-with them until it became
a wonder that they applied no measures of suppression to him. Other parents have been less forbearing.
The subjects also differ markedly in the forcefulness with which their
memories impinge on them. Some use the present tense in their statements.
They may say, for example: "I have a wife and two sons," or ''My house is
much bigger than this one." (They may talk in this way even after they have
learned to distinguish past and present with appropriate words.) Orher children make a point of distinguishing the two lives in their remarks. They will
b~gin ,~ome reference to the previous life with a phrase such as: "When I was

big ...
Sometimes the children act as if they have been snatched without warn11
ing from the body of an adult and thrust into that of a helpless child. When
Celal Kapan, a subject in Turkey, began to speak, almost his first words were:
"What am I doing here? I was at the port." When he could say more, he
described derails in the life of a dockworker who had fallen asleep in the hold
of a ship that was being loaded. Unfortunately, a crane operator who did not
know he was there allowed a heavy oil drum to drop on him, killing him
instantly. From the evidence of the case, one might say that this sleeping man
regained consciousness in the body of a two-year-old child. These cases
remind me of the case of a woman who had a stroke and became unconscious
while playing bridge. When she regained consciousness several days later, her
first words were: "What's trumps?"
What I have said above may have prepared readers for my now saying

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

that the children show differing expressions of emotion when they speak
about the previous lives. Some speak of them with detachment, as if they are
referring to far-off things, but the majority show a continuing strong involvement with the remembered people and events. Some weep as they talk about
the previous life; others angrily denounce murderers who ended it. Teasing
adults and siblings have brought some subjects to tears by falsely telling them
that a spouse, other relative, or close friend of the previous personality was
ill or had died. 12
Some of the subjects switch rapidly from being completely absorbed in
the memories of the previous life to the usual behavior of a young child. For
example, a boy may gravely talk about his wife and children one minute, and
the next minute run off to play a child's game with his young brothers.
A few children become abstracted from their immediate surroundings
as they talk about the previous life. They may talk about it to themselves.
Sometimes they may appear to onlookers to be in a partial trance, but the
word "trance" may be inappropriately strong, because these children can be
readily brought back to awareness of their environment. Cases like that of
Uttara Huddar, in which an apparently total change of personality occurs,
are extremely rare.
Most of the children have their memories only in the waking state. However, I ~ave studied some cases in which the subject definitely or probably had
memories of the previous life during dreams or nightmares. 13 Also, some children have tended to talk about the memories more when getting ready to go
to sleep (and perhaps already drowsy) or soon after awakening.
Although most of the children have communicated their memories in
~ord.s only'. perhaps supplemented with gestures, some have also made drawings In which they depicted persons and events of the previous life.
The children nearly always stop talking about the previous lives between
~he ages.of five and eight, but some stop earlier and others later. A few sub1ects claim to preserve all their memories into adulthood, and a few others
pretend they have forgotten everything, although they apparently still
remember much. Parents often credit themselves with having arrested the
flow of a child's talk about a previous life by various measures they adopted
to "help" him forget. Yet the children appear to forget the memories at about
the same age regardless of whether their parents have encouraged them to
remember or have forbidden them to do so. Dr. Narendar Chadha and I
found in an analysis of sixty-nine cases in India that in twenty-nine ( 41 percent) of them the child's parents had suppressed the child. We also found
that the measures of suppression had no demonstrable effect; suppressed
children continued talking about a previous life just as long as those not suppressed.14

5. Characteristics of Tjpical Cases ofthe Reincarnation Tjpe

I 09

The usual age of forgetting seems to coincide with the increased activ-'ity of a child outside the physical and social environment of his immediate
family. Whether or not he goes to school, this is a period when a child can
no longer manage life solely by controlling other members of his family; he
must adapt to other, less indulgent persons. I believe this adjustment brings
new experiences, the memories of which cover and seem to obliterate those
of the previous life. Another occasion for the beginning of forgetting that '
the subject's parents often mention is his first visit to the family of the previous personality. Sometimes, after such a visit, what had seemed before to
be a torrent of talk about the previous life dries to a trickle and soon afterward ceases. 15
The attention given a child who talks about a previous life appears to
influence how long he continues talking about it; this is how I interpret our
finding that children who talk about the lives of identified deceased persons
go on talking longer than do children who speak about persons who cannot
be traced. Children who remember verified previous lives {solved cases) continue speaking about them to an average age of just under seven and a half
years, whereas children having unverified memories stop speaking about the
previous lives at an average age of under six. When the child's statements
cannot be verified, members of his family tend to lose interest in them; and
without any encouragement from surrounding adults the child may soon
cease to mention his memories. In contrast, if the statements are verifiedand especially if the child then has the additional attention of another family, that of the deceased person about whom he has been talking - he has
16
incentives and stimuli to continue talking about the previous life.
Although social factors have some importance in bringing on the amnesia for the memories, they are probably less important than developmental
ones within the subject himself. The onset of the amnesia coincides with the
rapid development of verbal language and the associated loss of visual imagery
in the child. Memories of previous lives appear to occur primarily (in the
child's mind) in the form of visual images.17 Then as the child acquires the
ability to speak, he gradually finds words with which he tries to communicate the content of these images to his family. However, the development of
language leads in most persons to a layering over of visual images, which
gradually become less and less accessible. Even the ability to have visual
images becomes greatly impaired in most persons as they leave early childhood. After that age, most ordinary persons have visual images only in dreams
or when deliberately reminiscing; apart from poets and artists, few adults preserve an ability to think normally with visual imagery.
I cannot emphasize too strongly that -with some exceptions - a child
who is going to remember a previous life has little more than three years in

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

which to communicate his memories to other persons, and he often has less.
Before the age of two or three he lacks the vocabulary and verbal skill with
which to express what he may wish to communicate. And from the age of
about five on, heavy layers of verbal information cover the images in which
his memories appear to be mainly conveyed; amnesia for the memories of a
previous life sets in and stops further communication of them.
The Principal Themes ofthe Memories. The child's memories rend to cluster around events of the last year, month, and days of the life remembered. 18
Nearly three-quarters of the subjects claim to remember how the person of
the previous life died, and they remember this detail more often when the
death was violent than when it occurred naturally.
In addition to the mode of death of the previous personality and the
events immediately preceding it, the subjects may recall a wide variety of persons and objects with which the previous personality had been familiar.
Recency of association with the person or object (on the part of the previous personality before death) appears more important than length of association in influencing the subject's memories. For example, Suk.la Gupta
remembered numerous derails of the married life of Mana (the previous personality of her case), bur she had almost no recollection of the family in which
Mana had spent nearly all her life before her marriage.
The subjects usually remember the names of the previous personality
~nd 0 ~ some members of his circle of family, friends, and enemies. In cases
10
which the previous personality has been murdered, the subject tends to
recall the murderer's name. Here again, however, many variations occur not only from one case to another within a culture, but among cases of
diff~rent cultures considered as groups. For example, the children of cases in
India: Burma, and Thailand tend to remember the name of the previous personalny, but those in Sri Lanka and North America (apart from the northwestern tribes) do not.
.

.I attribute the general deficiency in remembering names among subjects

Sn Lanka to a common reluctance on the pan of the Sinhalese people to
use proper names in their everyday living. They prefer to address each other
by titles or relationships, rather than by proper names. 1'> Since repetition
strengthens memories, the failure to use proper names in the everyday activity of one life could lead to poor retention of them in another.
For the corresponding deficiency in the memories of American children
(for proper names) we must find another explanation, because Americans
show no reluctance to use names in their ordinary communications with
each other. So far, we have not been able to find a satisfactory explanation.
For a time I thought that American children who remember previous lives
had fewer memories of any kind than similar children of other cultures; this
10

5. Chamcteristics of Typical Cases ofthe Reincarnation Type

III

would have meant char their failure to remember proper names was only one
aspect of a general paucity of memories. However, a comparison of the number of statements American children made with the number made by Indian
children failed to support this conjecture. Nevertheless, American children
do nor make as many verified statements as Indian children, and it is possible
char many of their statements derive from fantasies with which they fill gaps
in real memories. This question is one of many awaiting further research.
Most of the subjects have nothing whatever to say about events between
the death of the person whose life they remember and their own birch. In
their memories chis period is usually a complete blank. Parmod Sharma, the
subject of an Indian case, passed over this interval in a single sentence when
he said: "I was sining in a bathtub, and my feet have become small." (This
was a reference to naruropachic rub baths that the man whose life he recalled
had taken just before he died.)
Nevertheless, some subjects do claim to remember events chat happened
between the death of the previous personality and their own birch. These
memories are of two types: of terrestrial events (chiefly in the previous personality's family) and of experiences in a discarnace "realm."
In the first type, the subject remembers events happening to living persons after the previous personality's death. le is as if the previous personality had somehow stayed near where he had lived and died and had monitored
the activities of living persons while he was discarnate; in fact, some subjects claim char they did just chat. I mentioned in chapter 4 char Bongkuch
Promsin remembered chat Chamrat's murderers had dragged his body into
a field and char he (the then discarnate Chamrat) had stayed at a bamboo
tree near the murder site until he saw Bongkuch's father. Disna Samarasinghe
(a subject in Sri Lanka) remembered char che body of Babanona (whose life
she recalled) had been buried near an anthill; the burial sire had been chosen only after Babanona's death. Similarly, Oellal Beyaz scared chat her (previous) body had been buried under an olive rree.
Veer Singh, rhe subject of another case, in India, claimed that after
death in the previous life he had remained near the house of the previous
family. As evidence of this he gave an account of the food consumed at family social occasions, such as weddings. There was nothing especially remarkable about his description of che food at the weddings, which is just as
predictable as the conventional food served at Western weddings, although
different. More impressive was his assertion that he had accompanied members of the family who went our of the house alone. This matched a dream
that the mother of the previous personality (Som Dutt) in this case had had.
She had dreamed that the discarnate Som Dutt cold her that he was accompanying his older brother, who was slipping out of the house at night and

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

attending fairs being held in the region. (Upon being asked, the brother
acknowledged that he had been doing just that, but the other members of
the family did not know it until the mother had her dream.) Veer Singh also
showed knowledge of other private family matters occurring after Som Dun's
death and before Veer Singh's birth, such as lawsuits involving the family, a
camel they had purchased, and children born during this interval.
The Thai monk Ven. Chaokhun Rajsuthajarn, to whose case I referred
earlier (in describing the futile efforts of his parents to suppress his memories), remembered that after dying in the previous life he had attended the
funeral of the person whose life he recalled. At this time, he said, he had a
sense oflighmess and seemed to move easily from place to place. He thought
that he was in charge of the ceremony and was receiving the guests; in fact,
however, he was invisible to the participants, who went on with the ceremony with no suspicion of his presence.
Occasional subjects claim to have engaged in poltergeist activity while
discarnate. Veer Singh said that he had broken the plank of a swing on which
people were playing, and Tinn Sein said that he had thrown a stone at the
man who later became his father (in the next incarnation).
The second, more common type of memory of the period between death
and presumed rebirth is that of another realm where the subject claims he
s?journed- usually not knowing for how long - after death in the previous
li.fe and before his birth in the present one. Disna Samarasinghe gave a rather
circumstantial account of her stay in such a place after the death of Babanona,
the elderly woman whose life and death Disna remembered. The clothes one
wore there were rich and elegant, she said, and they needed no washing. One
could have food, which appeared when one wished for it, but there was no
need to eat. She met a kindly "ruler," who eventually advised her to get herself reborn, bur did not tell her where.
Subjects in Burma and Thailand (and occasionally elsewhere) who have
memorie~ of a discarnate realm may describe meeting in it a sagelike man
who befriends them and later guides them to a family for their next rebirth.
The Burmese monk Ven. Sayadaw U Sobhana, who (as a child) remembered
a previous life, gave one of the fullest descriptions I have of a meeting with
such a discarnate advisor. He recalled that the sage had brought him back
to the village where the previous personality had lived, had taken him first
to that person's house, and finally had led him to another house a few doors
away and left him there; this was the house of Ven. Sayadaw U Sobhana's
parents, where he was born. 20
The Accuracy ofthe Subjects' Statements. An analysis by Dr. Sybo Schouten and myself of 103 cases in India and Sri Lanka showed that the subjects
in India were correct in a little more than 80 percent of the statements they

5. Characteristics of 7)1pical Cases of the Reincarnation 7)1pe

113

made about the previous personality; those in Sri Lanka were correct in
about 74 percent of the statements they made. In both groups no significant
difference occurred between the subgroups with and without written records
made before the two families concerned had met.
Recognitions. Subjects frequently claim that if someone would take them
to the village or town of the previous life they would be able to meet and
recognize persons (and also recognize places) they knew in that life. Reports
of recognitions by the subject of persons, places, and objects with which the
previous personality was familiar figure in the testimony of many cases. These
recognitions usually occur when the child's parents take him to visit the previous family, or when members of the previous family who have heard about
the child first come to visit him.
The informants for these cases attach much more importance than I do
to such recognitions, which rarely occur under even partially controlled conditions. When the child meets members of the previous family, he is almost
always surrounded by a number of persons varying from a few members of
the families to a huge crowd. They frequently ask the child leading questions,
such as "Do you see your wife here?" and the expectant stares of the encircling people toward the previous personality's wife may then make it impossible for the child to answer incorrectly.
I must add, however, that recognitions by the child under two types of
circumstances deserve credit. First, a child may unexpectedly and spontaneously recognize someone he sees, for example, someone walking along the
street. Corliss Chotkin, Jr. (whose case I summarized in chapter 4), thus
spontaneously recognized a stepdaughter of Victor Vincent (whose life he was
recalling). She was at the docks in Sitka, where Corliss happened to be with
his mother. Corliss, suddenly noticing her, called out excitedly: "There's my
Susie." In this instance, Corliss's mother was acquainted with Susie, although
she had not noticed her before Corliss did. In the best of these spontaneous
recognitions, the subject identifies someone who is completely unknown to
any person with him. Am pan Petcherat, a subject of Thailand, spontaneously
recognized on the street of the small town where she lived an aunt (Joy
Ruang Gun) of Chuey, the boy whose life she remembered. Am pan's mother,
who ~as with her, had not previously known Joy Ruang Gun. Another subject, Ismail Altmkd1c; of Turkey, spontaneously recognized two ice cream
vendors who came along the street outside his home. Members of lsmail's
family probably knew these persons by sight, since they came into the area
to sell ice cream, but they did not know their names, which ismail stated.
In the too few incidents of this kind, there can be no question of prompting by the subject's family members. 21
Second, in a small number of situations, responsible adults have

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CHILDREN WHO REME~tBER PREVIOUS LIVES

managed to control conditions so that persons the child might recognize

were presented to him in a secluded and tranquil setting, and the only question asked was: "Do you recognize this person?" Gnanatilleka Baddewithana, the subject of a Sri Lanka case, made several recognitions under these
conditions when her case was first studied (not by me). I did not witness
these, but I have been present on a few other occasions of similarly controlled
recognitions, including a later one by Gnanatilleka. For it, I brought to her
house a friend of Tillekerame (the boy- Gnanatilleka's was another case of
sex change - whose life she recalled) and another person whom Tillekerame
had not known. Gnanatilleka, upon being asked whether she knew these persons, gave the name of the previous personality's friend (with a slight error,
saying "Dora" instead of "Lora"), but did not recognize the other visitor.
When asked where she had known the recognized visitor, she correctly gave
the town's name (Talawakele); she might perhaps have inferred the name of
the town from the circumstances of being asked to make this recognition,
bur not, I think, the name of Tillekeratne's friend.
On another occasion, without prior announcement I brought to a subject in Burma, Ma Choe Hnin Htet, a close girlfriend of the girl whose life
Ma Choe Hnin Htet remembered. When Ma Choe Hnin Htet was asked
whether she knew this person, she distinctly said the girl's name. However,
Ma Choe Hnin Htet did not recognize (under similar circumstances, but at
anot~er time) the cardiac surgeon who had operated on the previous personality. (This girl had died during the operation.)
. One other common feature of the recognitions deserves mention. Some
subjects, after making a recognition that by itself is of no particular signific~nce (perhaps because leading questions had been posed), make further pertinent rem~rks spontaneously. For example, they may mention a nickname
the recognized person had had, or make some telling personal comment,
such as "What has become of your teeth?"
. Jasbir Singh (a subject in India) provided an example of the use of a
rnckname. When a man called Birbal Singh came into a room where Jasbir
was, he spontaneously said: "Come in, Gandhiji." Someone present corrected him by saying: "This is Birbal." Jasbir replied: "We call him 'Gandhiji."' Birbal Singh was in fact called "Gandhiji" because he had large ears
and somewhat resembled Mahatma Gandhi. (The suffixed ji is a commonly
used honorific in Hindi.)
Swarnlata Mishra (the subject of another case in India) recognized a
friend of Biya (the woman whose life she recalled) and commented that he
was wearing spectacles, which he had not done during Biya's life. Oisna
Samarasinghe (whose description of the discarnate realm I mentioned above)
recognized a boy passing along the road outside her family's house. She said

5. Characteristics of Typical Cases of the Reincarnation 7Jpe

115

to her parents: "Do you know that child? This is the boy who stole my green
gram." Disna's parents later learned that the boy in question was the grandson of Babanona (whose life Disna was remembering) and that as an infant
he had eaten and spilled some gram that Babanona had been cooking and
left unattended while she bathed.
The spontaneity with which many subjects state nicknames or make references to little, often long-forgotten episodes in the life of the previous personality seems to me one of the most impressive features of the cases. It
damages the criticism sometimes put forward that the subjects (before these
meetings) had crammed themselves (or had been crammed by their parents)
with normally acquired information about the previous personality.

THE CHILD'S BEHAVIOR RELATED TO THE PREVIOUS LIFE

Subjects of these cases often show one or both of two types of behavior that are unusual in their families.
First, the child may show emotions toward the family of the previous
life that are appropriate for the memories he claims to have. If the previous
life was a happy one, and less often when it was not, he may ask- or even
clamor - to be taken to see the surviving members of the previous family.
When he meets them, he may show joy, familiarity, aloofness, or rejection;
these reactions nearly always accord closely with what can be learned or conjectured about the previous personality's relationship with these persons.
The case of Ratana Wongsombat (in Thailand) provides an excellent
example of a subject's discriminating responses to members of the previous
personality's family. Ratana was overjoyed to meet Anan Suthavil, the daughter of the elderly woman, Kim Lan, whose life Ratana remembered; bur she
was indifferent, and later even inimical, toward Kim Lao's husband, to whom
Kim Lan had barely spoken for the last years of their unhappy marriage. Gnanatilleka Baddewithana's behavior coward the family of the boy (Tillekeratne)
whose life she remembered illustrated the same differentiating capacity. Gnanatilleka was extremely friendly with Tillekerame's sisters and with one of
his schoolteachers; but she was almost offensively cool toward his brother.
Tillekeratne had had a good relationship with his sisters, and had adored the
schoolteacher, but he disliked his brother, who seems to have been unkind,
perhaps even cruel, to Tillekerame. 22
The child's later attitudes and behavior coward the previous family
depend to some extent on how its members receive him. In some cases the
child wins total acceptance by the previous family; they invite him for visits and give him gifts or more substantial support. 2-) In other instances, the
previous family rebuffs the child, and the first visit becomes the last. This

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

happens sometimes - and for the most part only - when the family of the
previous personality is much wealthier than that of the subject, and its members fear (unreasonably in my experience) that the subject and his family will
mulct them. 24 In the majority of cases in which I have been able to make
later observations, the two families have exchanged friendly visits for a few
years and then have gradually ceased to meet as their lives developed in
different ways.
The second type of unusual behavior consists of traits (such as fears,
preferences, interests, and skills) that are unusual in the child's family but
that correspond to traits the previous personality was known to have had or
could be reasonably conjectured to have had. The other members of the subject's family in such instances either show no similar traits or show them to
a lesser degree, and the development of the traits cannot be attributed to any
event the child experienced before the trait manifested.
Phobias related to the previous personality's mode of death have particularly impressed me. And they occur frequently. Among 252 cases in
which the previous personality had died violently, we learned of phobias in
l27 (SO percent). If the previous personality died of drowning, the subject
may have a phobia of water; if he died from being shot, the subject may have
one of firearms.

T~e children with phobias frequently show responses that seem

to be

generalized from the original stimulus. Thus Ravi Shankar Gupta, who
remem~ered being murdered by a barber, showed a phobia not just of this
murdering barber (who was still around when Ravi Shankar was a young
child), but of all barbers. A subject of Turkey (studied by Dr. Can Polar) who
remembere~ the life of a man who had been killed by someone called Hasan
had a phobi.a of everyone with the name "Hasan" (fairly common in Turkey).
Someumes the child manifests a phobia before he has learned to speak
and .t~ explain the apparent cause of the phobia in the previous life. In summanzmg the case of Shamlinie Prema, I mentioned that soon after she was
born she had shown an extreme fear of being immersed in water when her
mother tried to bathe her; when she became able to speak, she described
~ow she had drowned in a previous life. Another, similar example occurred
m the case of a boy of Sri Lanka, Lal Jayasooria. He visibly reacted to the
appearance of policemen before he could speak, and he would hide from
them as ~es: he :ould; he later described a previous life as an insurgent. 25
(The police m Sn Lanka had suppressed an insurgency in 1971 with unnecessary violence.)
Likings for particular foods (and aversions to them also) form another
large category of unusual behaviors the subjects show. I earlier mentioned
Bongkuch Promsin's fondness - almost a craving- for sticky rice, a food to

5. Characteristics of Typical Cases of the Reincarnation Type

117

which his family was indifferent but which had been the favorite food of the
youth, Chamrat, whose life Bongkuch remembered.
Many of the subjects exhibit play that is unusual in their family. By this
I mean that we learned of no obvious model for the play within the subject's
family or immediate neighborhood. The possibility of a model within reach
of the subject has led me to exclude as examples instances of a child's playing at being a soldier - but there are some exceptional instances of this kind
of play- and at kite-flying, which children enjoy all over the world. An
analysis of 395 cases showed that 158 (40 percent) of the subjects exhibited
some kind of unusual play. The principal types of unusual play showed imitations of the previous personality's vocation, avocation, and mode of death.
I shall give examples of each of these types.
Wijanama Kithsiri regularly opened a play shop when he came home
from school, and Parmod Sharma's mother grumbled that Parmod had squandered a year in playing at having a tea and biscuit shop. Both of these subjects remembered lives as shopkeepers. Two subjects who remembered
previous lives as schoolteachers, Lalitha Abeywardena and Chanai Choomalaiwong, played at teaching school. Vias Rajpal, who remembered the life of
a physician, used to play at being one. He "prescribed" for his playmates and
sometimes "took their temperatures" with a stick that he shook down as an
adult would shake a mercury thermometer. Daniel Jirdi, who recalled the life
of an automobile mechanic, would lie under a sofa and play at repairing the
underside of an automobile. Another child, Erkan Kil1c;, who remembered
the life of the owner of a night club, played at running a night club. His _furnishings included boxes for the bar with bottles on top of them for dnnks
and a stick to be held like a microphone by the nightclub's singer, for which
role he recruited a neighborhood girl.
Two children who played at parenting- !tidal Abul-H.isn and_ Sukla
Gupta - remembered the lives of women who had died leaving behmd an
infant child.
Two of the children who played at being a soldier could not have h~d
any model for such behavior in their families. One of these was Ma Tm
Aung Myo, whose case I summarized in chapter 4. The other was Bajrang
B. Saxena, a subject of India, who claimed to remember the previous life of
a British Army officer killed during World War I. As a child be played at being
a soldier, practicing military exercises and giving military commands. He pretended that a stick was a gun. He also played at games, such as leapfrog and
hopscotch. His parents were Indians who could not speak English and who
had only minimal contact with the few British people living in their city.
B. B. Saxena's father was a scrivener with no interest in military matters.
Judith Krishna was a child of India who remembered the life of a

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

sweepress (a person who sweeps the streets and cleans the latrines). She gathered twigs, which she put together in the form of a broom (of the type used
by sweepers), and with this she would sweep our her family's compound. She
liked to wash her younger sister's dirty diapers. Another young Indian girl,
Swaran Lara, also remembered the life of a sweepress. She had particularly
dirty habits, but she cleaned up the excrements of the younger children of
the family with seeming pleasure. Sometimes she would put on clothes similar to those worn by sweepers and play at being a sweepress. Both of these
last two subjects were daughters of middle-class parents in whose families
the behavior of a sweeper was as unexpected as it was unwelcome.
Several subjects have played at games or enjoyed other diversions known
to have given pleasure to the previous personalities whose lives they remembered. Kumkum Verma was such a child. She greatly enjoyed playing a game
with glass beads that resembles another game called an di, played with castor seeds. The woman whose life she remembered had enjoyed andi and
played it often. Two children who remembered the previous lives of persons
who liked to put on theatrical plays played at presenting such performances
when they were young children.
In two cases, those of Sukla Gupta and Sleimann Bouhmazy, the subject gave dolls or other play objects the names of the previous personality's
children.
Other subjects have relived in play how the previous personality died.
Ramez Shams, who remembered a life that ended in suicide (by shooting),
sometimes held a stick up to his throat as if going to shoot himself with it.
Another child, Maung Win Aung, who recalled a suicidal death by hanging,
had t~e maca~re habit of walking around his village with a rope around his
neck In seemmg enactment of hanging himself. Three other subjects who
reme~bered previous lives that ended in suicidal drowning used to play at
dro~vnrng .. The children who reenact the death of the previous life resemble
panenrs wtth post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) who relive, sometimes
in play, a stressful situation they endured. The obvious but only difference
between the two groups is that patients with PTSD have survived a stressful event of this life, not a previous one.
To the children who show the unusual play chat I have described, it
seems entirely natural. Indeed, it almost has a quality of automaticity about
it, as if the child were inwardly compelled to repeat a familiar activity.
Individually, few of these behaviors are specific; many children show
them and so do many adults. Collectively, however, they become impressive.
The subjects often show a syndrome of behaviors that sets them apart from
other members of the family but that characterized the person the subject
claims to have been. The following examples will illustrate such groups of

5. Characteristics of Typical Cases ofthe Reincarnation Type

119

unusual behavior. Ma Tin Aung Myo showed masculine traits, a phobia of

airplanes, play at being a soldier, and several "Japanese-like" behaviors; Sujirh
Lakmal Jayaratne manifested, when a young child, cravings for alcohol and
tobacco and had phobias of trucks and policemen; Shamlinie Prema had phobias of buses and being immersed in water, as well as having somewhat
unusual tastes for particular foods; and Erkan Kilt<; showed a phobia of airplanes and a fondness for alcohol, and he played at running a nightclub. All
these sets of behaviors were appropriate for the previous personalities concerned.
Subjects of a social class markedly different from that of the previous
personality often show particularly vivid unusual behavior. Thus a child of
poor parents who claims to remember having belonged to a wealthy, upperclass family may disparage and scold his parents for their poverty and their
low-class habits. I described in chapter 4 how Gopal Gupta shunned household work on the grounds that he had servants to do it. Another Indian subject, Bishen Chand Kapoor, who remembered the life of a wealthy young
man, looked contemptuously at the cheap clothes his impoverished family
gave him; he said that he would not give such clothes to his servants.
Conversely, a child remembering a previous life in a family of circumstances inferior to his own may behave in a coarse manner that members of
his family find disagreeable. Swaran Lara, the subject whose play as a sweepress I mentioned above, was born in a Brahmin family. She had many lovable traits, bur her personal habits were (to her family) repulsively dirty, and
she horrified her vegetarian family by asking for pork. Some children. who
recall lives in inferior social circumstances also express pleasure and granrude
when they compare their situation with that of the previous life. For example, Anusha Senewardena (of Sri Lanka) was delighted with, and r~ankful
for, foods like marmalade, which were ordinary in her wealthy family; she
recalled the life of a poor village schoolgirl who had had only a bun for
26

lunch, and had even had to share that with another child.
.
h I h
d scribed in this secuon
M ost o f t h e unusual behav10rs
t at
ave e
.
exemplify the kind of memory that I described in chapter 1 <~S behavtoral
memory. The behavioral memories often persist longer than the imag~d ones.
When this happens, the child may continue to show some behav10r. (f~r
example, liking particular foods) after he can no longer remember details 111
the life of the previous personality who had had similar behavior. For example, Bishcn Chand Kapoor told me that he continued to e~at meat (whenever
he was away from his vegetarian family) many years after he had almost
forgotten his earlier memories about rhe life of a person who had eaten
meat. Ravi Shankar Gupta (of India), whose phobia of barbers I mentioned
above, remained afraid of the murderers of Munna (the boy whose life he

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

remembered) after he could no longer remember the origin of his fear

(although he understood it from what other persons had told him).
In keeping with their remembered adult status, many subjects appear
to their elders to be more mature than other children of their age. They
adopt an adult demeanor and at times an air of condescension toward other
children and even toward some adults. 27 After all, what else should we expect
from a married man with a wife and children, even if he is a boy of only four?
Some of these children may, however, also match rank with service; the
mother of a young girl subject may find, for example, that she can trust this
daughter with household responsibilities at a much earlier age than she can
her other daughters.
One of the most interesting and most important types of unusual behavior shown by subjects is that often observed in the children who say they were
a member of the opposite sex in the previous life. (These are the subjects of
what I call cases of the sex-change type or sex-change cases.) Many such children show (in varying strength) habits of dressing, ways of speaking, play,
and other behavior appropriate for the sex of the life remembered. The cases
of Ma Tin Aung Myo and Erin Jackson, which I summarized in chapter 4,
illustrate such behaviors. 28

THE INTERVAL BETWEEN PREVIOUS

PERSONALITY'S DEATH AND SUBJECT'S BIRTH

With the exception of a small number of outliers and cases with anomalous dates (which I shall briefly describe later in this chapter) the interval
between the previous personality's death and the subject's birth is usually less
than three years. The median interval varies from culture to culture and ranges
from four months among the cases of the Haida (of Alaska and British Columbia) to 141 months among nontribal cases of North America. 29 The median
interval for 616 cases from ten different cultures was fifteen months.
~her~ is a widespread subsidiary belief about reincarnation according
to whICh v10lent death leads to a more rapid reincarnation than natural death.
Our cases tend to support this belief. Dr. Chadha and I analyzed 326 cases
from eight different cultures and found that cases having a violent death had
a significantly shorter interval between death and birth than ones having a
natural death.

The Attitudes of the Adults Concerned in the Cases

When parents (and other adults) hear a child talking about a previous life,
their initial reaction depends on their convictions concerning reincarnation.

5. Characteristics of 7Jpical Cases ofthe Reincarnation 7Jpe

121

The usual Western parents do not merely disbelieve in reincarnation; they

do not even think it possible. To these parents, a child who claims to remember that he lived before is susceptible to bizarre fantasies, if he is not indeed
a monstrous liar. Such parents think chiefly of how they can limit the scandal if word gets around in their community that they have procreated such
an abnormal child. The Western cases that have come to my attention have
occurred in families in which the parents did not have this attitude or overcame it if they did.
In Asia and other parts of the world where people are hospitable to the
idea of reincarnation, a case starts off on a better footing. In these regions
parents of a child who talks about a previous life do not consider him to have
lost his mind; they accept that he may in fact be having memories of a real
previous life that he lived before being born in their family. However, parents in India and Burma (but not, so far as I know, elsewhere in South Asia)
consider that it is unhealthy and perhaps even fatal for a child to remember
a previous life. This may lead them to suppress him. Apart from this, the
child's parents take positions toward his statements and behavior according
to the content of what he says, and the implications for their family life if he
continues to talk about it and if what he says becomes generally known.
If the child is talking about a previous life that seems to have been ordinary, his parents may not trouble themselves much about the matter. Many
of the lives talked about, however, have not been ordinary. For one thing,
many have ended in murder, and the attitude of the murderers may have to
be taken into account; they may still be in the neighborhood and dislike the
subject's aspersions on them. Such a child's parents may thus think it expedient to silence him.
Many subjects of these cases reject their parents on the grounds that they
are not their "real" parents; these, they say, live elsewhere and must be gone
to, or brought to the child. Such attitudes put a severe strain on even the
most affectionate parents. No parent wants his child to reject him, and sometimes a negative reaction by the parent to the child's invidious comparisons
increases the child's isolation in his family. Fortunately, in the places where
these cases occur most often, the belief in reincarnation has provided a cushion against the child's rejection of his parents. Since the parents believe in
reincarnation, they reason -with themselves and sometimes with the childthat some larger process has brought them (parents and child) together in a
new family unit; even if the situation is not a happy one, it probably has some
ultimate good purpose, they will say.
The children of poor parents who claim to have lived previous lives in
luxurious upper-class homes pose another difficulty. Such a child's parents
may find their initial tolerant amusement over his pretensions gradually

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CHILDREN WHO R.EMErvtBER PREVIOUS LIVES

displaced by a sense of vexation as the child continues to denigrate the ~~vel

in which they live. I sometimes wonder whether the widespread superstmon
in India according to which a child who talks about a previous life is destined to die young may not have originated as a handy excuse for suppressing a tiresome child. Be that as it may, many parents do eventually resort to
various measures of suppression. (I described some of them in note 2 of this
chapter.) As I mentioned earlier, even in India parents had tried to suppress
the subjects in more than 40 percent of a series that we examined. Dr. Pasricha found, in another series of Indian cases, that 27 percent of the subjects'
mothers and 23 percent of their fathers rook some measures, often violent
ones, to suppress the subjecr. 30 These are figures from cases we learned about;
we have no knowledge of the frequency with which completely successful
suppression prevents us from ever learning about cases so handled.
Parents do not suppress cases only in India. In other countries also they
may disapprove of children talking about previous lives, and for a variety of
reasons. Among the Tlingit of southeastern Alaska a child may start talking
about a murder related to a quarrel between septs, and his parents, not wishing to start up an old clan feud that has been quiescent, may hush him up.
When I was with the Igbo of Nigeria, I heard several rimes that parents consider it harmful for a child to talk about a previous life that ended violently.
Opposite to the suppression of cases are the rare instances in which a
parent has exaggerated the evidence of one. Although many Indians believe
rh~t remembering a previous life is harmful and possibly fatal to a young
child, some believe that such children are geniuses, perhaps even godlings;
they may think that a child who remembers a previous life has immense parano.rmal powers. Sometimes huge crowds come to the family, just to see the
child. Most parents remain detached from such adulation, but it occasionally intoxicates one, who may then inflate the evidence and importance of
the case .
. I have 0 ?served a very few parents in the act of prompting a child who
hemared while speaking with us. This is certainly undesirable, but also
almost certainly innocent. The parent has heard rhe child make a statement
about some detail, perhaps has heard it many times. When the child stumbles or forgets to mention this item, the impatient parent reminds him of
what he had earlier said to the parent. The behavior appears corrupt, but is
not.
Nevertheless, cases of outright self-deception and even hoaxes occasionally occur. In 1988 two of my colleagues (Dr. Pasricha and Godwin
Samarararne) and I published reports of seven such cases. There may be others that we have missed, but I think they must be extremely rare.
Journalists and writers of popular books have sometimes damaged rhe

5. Characteristics of Typical Cases ofthe Reincarnation Type

123

credibility of a case by introducing false derails in order to make the case more
sensational. Responsible journalists have also been helpful allies in our investigations; we have first learned of more than a few cases from a journalist's
report.
Whether or not the parents have attempted to suppress the child, word
of what he has been saying usually leaks into the community. The neighbors
then begin to assess the merits and weaknesses of the case; sometimes they
even him maliciously at contrivance and exploitation on the part of the parents, and this may stimulate the parents to try to vindicate the child, something they can only accomplish by verifying what he has been saying. This
firs the subject's wishes, because he has usually been asking them to take him
to the previous family. And so, with one of these several incentives, but most
often because of either the child's importunity or their own curiosity, they
nearly always try to locate the family to which the child seems to be refernng.
The least important of all motives among the adults concerned in a case
is that of converting other people to a belief in reincarnation. The simple
villagers - among whom, for the most part, these cases occur - care not at
all whether other persons share their convictions about reincarnation. Sometimes they themselves have had doubts about its reality, but even if a case
has helped to relieve these doubts, this does nor seem to fill them with missionary fervor to influence other people. (Critics who believe the contrary
would find astonishing the skepticism that relatively uneducated villagers may
show in appraising the claims of a subject to be a particular deceased person
reborn.) Better-educated persons may express more interest in the relevance
of a case to their traditional beliefs; some of them show an understandable
satisfaction in thinking that a particular case confirms what their e~ders raught
them to believe. Yet none of these persons (known to me) has med to publicize a case for purposes of religious propaganda.

The Later Development of the Subjects

I have already mentioned that the children in these cases usually forget
their memories - or at least stop talking about them - between the ages of
five and eight. Most have completely forgotten the previous life by the age
of eight, and many have done so at an even younger age. The behavioral
memories tend to diminish as the imaged memories do, but, as also mentioned earlier, they sometimes continue for many years after the imaged
memories have completely faded.
As the child forgets his imaged memories of the previous life, and his

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

behavioral ones yield under the influence of new experiences, his further
development is generally entirely normal. I have been able to follow into
adulthood many subjects whom I first knew when they were young children.
Some have married and now have children of their own. Nearly all have
taken appropriate places in society and have no conspicuous features of
behavior that might make them obviously distinguishable from their peers.
This last remark included the behavior of the subjects of sex-change
cases who, when they were young, showed traits of the opposite sex. Most
of chem, as they grew older, accepted their anatomical sex. In this respect
Ma Tin Aung Myo has been exceptional instead of typical.
Paulo Lorenz (of Brazil) was another exceptional subject of a sex-change
case. He remembered the life of his sister Emilia, who committed suicide in
young adulthood. Emilia had been masculine in her outlook, never married,
and predicted that if she reincarnated she would be a man. Paulo Lorenz was
markedly feminine when he was a young child, and, although he became
more masculine in later childhood and adulthood, he never married. He too
was a lonely, depressed person, and he committed suicide in his forties.
Rani Saxena (of India) was another subject of a sex-change case who
intransigently retained some masculine attitudes into middle life. Although
she had married and had children, she still used masculine verb forms (in
her lace thirties, when I knew her). Hindi is a language in which some verb
forms identify the speaker's sex, and Rani's use of masculine verb forms communicated her continuing strong identification with a male lawyer whose life
she remembered. 31
A few other subjects have found the later path stony for reasons other
than claimed sex change. Sometimes their difficulties seem to arise from their
inab.ilit! to leave the previous life behind and move ahead in the present one.
Jasbi.r Smgh, ':ho was born in a Jat (low-caste) family of India, remembered
the life of a (high-caste) Brahmin. As a young child he exhibited caste snobbishness toward his family that led him almost to starve, because he refused
t~ eat the.ir food, which he considered polluted. This behavior in turn earned
h~m beaungs by his older brother. As he grew up he seemed to lose some of
his sense of superiority, but, although he then ate his family's food, he still
thought of himself as a Brahmin; for example, he tacked the Brahm in name
of the man whose life he remembered onto his Jat family's name. When he
became a young man, he had great difficulty finding employment that he
considered appropriate for a person of his status. Eventually, one of my colleagues in India (who had studied Jasbir's case with me) found him a job,
which Jasbir accepted; but our next news of him was that he had quit the
job because of its menial nature, which he considered beneath the dignity
of a Brahmin.

5. Characteristics of Tjpical Cases of the Reincarnation Tjpe

125

Occasionally, the subjects become so absorbed in the memories of the

previous life that they fall behind in schooling. This happened to Parmod
Sharma, another Indian subject, whose play at managing a shop for selling
biscuits and soda water I mentioned in describing the unusual play of many
of the children. His mother told me that he spent so much time at this kind
of play that he lost a year of school, and in scholastic accomplishment he
never fully recovered from this. He later performed poorly in college, and
when I last met him (he was then in his early thirties), he had a low-level
clerical position with the government, one that seemed to me distressingly
far below his natal capacities.
I am unable to say why behavioral memories persist for many years in
some subjects but not in others. For example, against Jasbir's entrenched
adherence to his identity as a Brahmin we could set Jagdish Chandra's happier development. Jagdish Chandra, who was born in a family of Kayasths
{a middle-level caste), remembered the previous life of a Brahm in child;
when he was young, he had marked Brahmin traits, but as he grew older he
lost most of these, although a few persisted into his middle adulthood. I mentioned above three subjects of sex-change cases who continued to show some
traits of the opposite sex in adulthood. In contrast to them, Ampan Petcherat,
the subject of another sex-change case, showed masculine behavior in childhood but developed a normal feminine orientation in her teens and early
adulthood. Daw Tin Hla, another subject of this group, had similar developments toward femininity. The different course of development in these
subjects may be due to the different ages of the previous personalities when
they died. Jagdish Chandra and Ampan Petcherat remembered the previous
lives of young boys, who perhaps had not lived long enough to develop hardened attitudes of Brahminism or masculinity, whereas such attitudes might
have been developed by the adult previous personalities who figured in the
cases of Jasbir Singh, Ma Tin Aung Myo, Paulo Lorenz, and Rani Saxena.
Yet this also does not seem a complete answer. Ma Myint Myint Zaw remembered the previous life of her own brother, who had died at the age of no
more than four. In childhood, Ma Myint Myint Zaw was stubbornly masculine in her cross-dressing as a boy; nevertheless, in her late teens, she
changed her gender identity. She married, had children, and when Dr. Keil
met her in 1996 she was a contented wife and mother. He found only a slight
trace of masculinity in her speech.
We must consider at least two other factors that may influence the fading or persistence of behavioral memories. First, the subject's parents may
either indulge or oppose unusual behavior and accordingly affect whether it
persists or not. Jagdish Chandra's father used the powerful weapon oflaughter when his son assumed poses of superiority as a Brahmin, and he thereby

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

probably contributed to Jagdish Chandra's giving up his Brahmin attitudes.

On the other hand, the two families concerned in the case of Veer Singh
(another subject oflndia, to whose case I referred in describing memories of
the period between death and birth) reacted in ways that prolonged the
conflict he had about caste differences between the families. Like Jasbir Singh,
Veer Singh was born in a Jar family and remembered the life of a Brahmin;
this Brahmin was a child, Som Dutt, who had died naturally at the age of
about four. Veer Singh exhibited Brahmin snobbery when he was young, but
one might have expected him to lose this trait as he became older, on the
grounds that Brahmin attitudes could not have been strongly developed in
Som Dutt by the time he died. But Veer Singh's family allowed him to spend
much rime with Som Dun's family, and while he was with them he naturally lived as a Brahmin. They, however, did not fully accept him, and as a
consequence in early adulthood he was half-Jar and half-Brahmin in his attitudes.
The case of Bir Sahai further illustrates rhe possibilities for entrapment
in the Indian caste system, at least in his days; he lived from about 1912 to
1979. He was born in the Chamar caste, one of the lowest, and as a child he
remembered the previous life of a Thakur, the second-ranking caste. He
said he was Megh Singh and named the village, Nardauli, where he said he
had lived. He refused to accept the low status of a Chamar. Megh Singh's
family learned of Bir Sahai's claims, and after satisfying themselves about
their authenticity, they invited him to join them in Nardauli. He remained
there umil he died. Unfortunately, the Thakur parents of otherwise eligible
daughters would not allow them to marry a Chamar, as they continued to
regard Bir Sahai. This is not an instance of parental influence or lack of it.
Ir shows, however, the force of attachment to the status claimed from a previous life.
. Another factor that might contribute to the strength, and hence the persistence, of behavioral traits would be a series of incarnations under similar
~ircumstan~es. A person who had, for example, six successive incarnations
m male bodies before having one in a female body might have more difficulty
in adjusting to life as a female than would a person who had had only one
previous incarnation as a male. We could extend this principle to many other
traits that may persist in unusual strength. Chauvinism of all varieties social, sexual, religious, national - may derive some strength from repeated
incarnations in the same type of body, the same circumstances, or the same
country.
In the preceding paragraphs of this section, I have discussed the tendency of the outward circumstances of a life to consolidate habits. (In this
I count the sex of a person's body as one of the outward conditions of a

5. Characteristics of Typical Cases ofthe Reincarnation Type

127

life.) I think it probable, however, that the most important factor in the
persistence of behavioral traits that may be carried over from one life to
another is inflexibility of attitude - the inability to adapt to different circumstances.

Some Variant Types of Cases

Before concluding this chapter, I shall refer to two types of cases that
depart significantly from the "standard" case.

XENOGLOSSY

In chapter 3 I briefly referred to xenoglossy, the ability a few persons

have demonstrated to speak a foreign language they have not learned normally. Authentic cases of xenoglossy contribute importantly to the evidence
for human survival after death. 32 Xenoglossy does not, however, figure
prominently in the ordinary case of the reincarnation type, even when the
subject claims to remember a previous life as a person who spoke another
language ..u Few subjects of this group appear able to speak the language spoken by the previous personality, although informants said that several of
them learned that language (for example, English taught in an Asian school)
more rapidly than their siblings did. A few other subjects of this group
seemed to learn their mother tongue slowly and imperfectly, a condition I
have called glossophobia.ji

CASES WITH ANOMALOUS DATES OF DEATH AND BIRTH

In a small number of cases, the subject was born before the person
whose life he remembered died. (The intervals vary between a day or two
and several years.) In a case of this kind, taken at face value, it would seem
that the subject's body was fully made and presumably occupied by one personality before another one rook it over. We may be talking here about a type
of body theft, often called possession.
The quickest way co rid oneself of such awkward cases is to suppose that
errors have been made in recording the dates, and in some cases vagueness
about the exact dates supports this conclusion. I have satisfied myself, however, chat in at lease ten cases of this type we have obtained accurate dates
and the anomaly remains. 3 'i
The number of these cases is small and any generalization about them
hazardous. Nevertheless, a common feature in nearly all the cases of chis

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

group so far investigated is that either the first "occupant" of the body is
an infant or the body is gravely ill and sometimes considered dead or almost
so.
Having now summarized fourteen typical cases of the reincarnation
type and described what we have observed as recurrent features in a much
larger number of cases, I shall next, in the following two chapters, describe
my methods of investigating these cases and how I analyze and interpret
them.

CHAPTER

Methods of Research
I begin this chapter with a short history of the investigation of cases of
the reincarnation type. Then I briefly mention some of my observations
when I first began to investigate these cases in the early 1960s. Next, I summarize the principal improvements in methods of investigating the cases that
I have introduced. This section leads to the main part of the chapter, in which
I outline the methods that my associates and I now use. Because we now usually work in a team to which my associates contribute as much as I do, it is
appropriate (in this section) to describe what we do rather than what I do.

The Investigation and Reporting of Cases Before 1960

A few claims to remember previous lives have come down to us from
ancient times. Of these, the most notable are those of Pythagoras 1 and Apollonius2 (whom I mentioned in chapter 2), but few authentic details about
their claims were recorded. The earliest account of a case with features recognizably similar to those of the modern cases that I have studied is probably the Indian one (also mentioned in chapter 2) that the Emperor Aurangzeb
investigated early in the eighteenth century. 3 Following it, I know of no similar case until that of Katsugoro, a Japanese boy of the early nineteenth century who remembered the life of a farmer's son. 4 And after Katsugoro's case,
another long gap occurred until the publication of summaries of six Burmese
cases in 1898. 5
Between 1900 and 1960 a number of cases (mostly in India) were
reported in newspapers, spiritualist magazines, a French journal of psychical
research, and separate books and pamphlets.(' Because most of them were published as reports of a single case, or of a few cases only, it was easy to disregard
129

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CHILDREN WHO RE~vlEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

each one as an unimportant aberration and to overlook the common features

in the cases that would encourage closer examination of similar ones. In the
1950s I began to collect and compare the published reports of cases that I
could find. Once I began to look for them systematically, I succeeded in
finding forty-four that were reasonably detailed and appeared to be authentic. (I have since learned of additional case reports from this period.) In 1960
I published an article giving short summaries of seven of these cases, together
with a discussion of several possible interpretations. 7 My main conclusion,
which seemed a rather startling one at the time, was that the evidence these
cases provided, defective as it was, appeared to justify careful investigation
of any further cases of this type that might present themselves. I did not have
long to wait. In 1961 I learned about a new case in India, received a small
research gram to go there, and thus began my field investigations.

Early Investigations in the 1960s

Nothing had prepared me for the abundance of cases that I found in
India when I first went there in 1961. The reports of the eighteen from India
~hat I included among the forty-four analyzed in my first paper on this subJect had been published over a period of about thirty-five years; yet during
my first five weeks in India I learned about no fewer than twenty-five cases.
immediately seemed clear to me that only a small portion of all the earlier cases had penetrated the barriers to communication and had generated
a published report. Since 1961 my colleagues and I have investigated more
than 400 cases in India, and we still do not know what relation our sample
bears to the total number of cases that occur there. 8
There were other aspects of these cases for which I was unprepared as
well. The published reports that I had studied were concerned almost exclusively .with rhe statements a subject had made about the previous life; they
sometimes allud~d to pertinent recognitions that the subject had made, but
?nly. a few .descnbed the subject as showing behavior that was both unusual
In his family and harmonious with what could be learned or conjectured
about the previous personality. Accordingly, I found myself both surprised
and impressed by what informants told me (in 1961) about the remarkable
behavior of Jasbir Singh, whose case was one of the first I investigated. In
the preceding chapter I mentioned that he had refused to eat his family's food
on the grounds that he was really a Brahmin; and since Jasbir's family were
Jars, their food and manner of preparing it were unacceptable to him.
However, my surprise over this and other unusual behavior I learned
about did not lead me at once to make adequate inquiries: it took more years

1:

6. Methods ofResearch

131

than I like to admit before I realized the significance of such behavior. It

seems to me now, years later, that when we evaluate the cases, this unusual
behavior, when it occurs, should receive at least as much study as the subject's statements, and possibly more. I shall explain my reason for this opinion later.
The list of features to which I paid insufficient attention in my early
investigations includes one that- I now believe- may be the most important of all: physical abnormalities of the subject that correspond to wounds,
other marks, or physical features on the previous personality. The omission
seems all the more remarkable, even reproachable, because during my first
investigations in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in 1961 I studied the extraordinary
case of Wijeratne, who had an extreme malformation of one arm (Poland
Syndrome), which he himself attributed to his having murdered his fiancee
in the previous life he remembered. And less than a month later, at the other
side of the world, I studied three cases among the Tlingit of Alaska whose
subjects had birthmarks said to correspond to wounds or other marks in previous lives. Nevertheless, I only slowly realized that birthmarks and birth
defects provide a kind of objective evidence missing from the statements of
oral informants, and I did not begin to make a practice of trying to obtain
verifying medical records until I had been studying these cases for more than
a decade.
My 1960 review of the older reports drew attention to some recurrent
features of the cases, such as the extremely young age of many of the subjects when they first began to speak about a previous life and the tendency
for the apparent memories to fade as the child grew older. My early fieldwork with new cases in the 1960s confirmed the frequency of these features
and soon began to show others, such as the high incidence of violent death
among the persons whose lives the children subjects remembered.
The abundance of the cases and the repeated occurrence in them of certain features pushed me onto the piercing horns of a dilemma. Should I
study a small number of cases intensely so that I could presume to say later
what the most probable interpretation of each one was? Or should I study a
large number of cases less thoroughly (although sufficiently to be reasonably
confident of their authenticity 9 ) in order to analyze them for recurrent features? In the second choice, the larger number would presumably allow for
better-founded conclusions (provided not too many faulty cases gained
admittance to the series through a lessening of vigilance). In the end, I was
unable to discard either of these strategies and tried to adopt them both. As
a consequence, I have much data from each of a smaller number of thoroughly investigated cases and less data (on each case) for a larger number of
cases that I have studied less than thoroughly.

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

I have now intensely investigated about 400 cases (in India and other
countries) and at least another thousand less thoroughly, but yet sufficiently
to consider them deserving of inclusion in our analysis of recurrent features.
The remainder of the cases in the collection of the University of Virginia have
been investigated by my colleagues and assistants or (in a few instances) by
other persons in whom I have confidence, usually from direct acquaintance
with them. We have also included in our series the now proportionately
small number of cases whose reports (published between 1890 and 1960)
first stimulated my interest in the prospects for this research.

Principal Advances in Research Methods Since 1960

A few of the best case reports from before 1960 bear comparison with
the best we can offer today. For the most part, however, they fail to furnish
sufficient information for a sound judgment about whether the subject could
have gained his knowledge about the previous life by normal means. Too
much in them is summarized; we are not told enough about the chronological order of events in the development of the case, about exactly what the
subject said, when he said it, and to whom, and we are told little or nothing about who verified his statements. To remedy these problems the methods ~ have adopted emphasize the following procedures: interviews with
1:1ultiple firsthand informants; recording who said what and when; evaluation of the credibility of informants; repeated interviews with the same inform~nts to. check for consistency of their reports and to study details previously
missed; '.nd~pendem verification, whenever possible, of the subject's statemen~s with mformants who either knew the previous personality or had reli an d copymg

able mformation ab out h'im; an d 1ocatmg

a 11 pertment
wntten
documents, such as records of significant dates, hospital records, and reports
of postmortem examinations.

~hese methods are not new; lawyers and historians have used them for
centuries, and so have psychical researchers since their earliest days in the last
quarter of the nineteenth century. We have some equipment, such as tape
recorders, that they lacked; but we have not improved on their principles in
the investigation of cases that seem to show paranormal processes.
My adaptations of these methods and the additions of some of my associates did not develop smoothly and effortlessly. It took years for us to design
a reasonably adequate registration form on which we record the principal
demographic features of the families concerned in a case and which also has
an aide-memoire reminding us of many details about which we should
inquire. Also, in my early interviews my notes had deplorable gaps, as I did

6. Methods ofResearch

133

not at first appreciate the importance of recording in writing what informants

said verbatim or nearly so; and it was only around 1970 that we began systematically to make a written record of the questions we put to informants
as well as the answers given.
I shall now describe the main features of our present methods, beginning with the interview, which is by far the most important of them. 10

Current Methods ofResearch

METHODS OF INTERVIEWING

The Persons Interviewed. Our most important informant, if he will talk

with us, is the subject of the case himself. Children vary greatly in their
affability with strangers, and the interpreters with whom I have worked have
varied also in their ability to help the children become comfortable and talk
with us if they wish to do so.
Next to the subject himself, the parents are usually the main informants, and if the subject does not care to talk with us or no longer remembers the previous life, his parents become the most important informants.
After the subject's parents, we like to hear the testimony of other persons
involved, such as grandparents, siblings, neighbors, and other members of
the community. We require that all the persons we interview be firsthand
informants, 11 not busybodies merchandising tertiary fragments of information. (Unfortunately, such persons sometimes obtrude into interviews in Asia
and Africa, where one can rarely find a private place to talk; they have to be
gently set aside.) Intelligent members of the community (other than members of the subject's family), such as village headmen and schoolteachers who
have heard the subject speak about the previous life, often give valuable
information. They are more detached from the case than the subject's parents and can listen to him with less emotion - whether of enthusiasm or vexation - concerning what he says. These persons often help us also to appraise
the reliability of the principal informants, such as the subject and his parents. When someone tells you his opinion of another person, he generally
tells you more about himself than about the other person, but he does tell
you something about the other person, and I find that one informant can
sometimes aid my assessment of the value of another one.
After we have recorded (usually in written notes, but sometimes on
tape) what the subject and his family can tell us, we go to the family of the
previous personality (if he has been identified) and begin a new, similar series
of interviews with the members of that family and community.

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CHILDREN WHO REMEl\fBER PREVIOUS LIVES

In most cases we do nor reach the scene of a case until after rhe subject
and his family have mer the family of whom he has been talking. If they have
nor identified this family, we try to do so ourselves whenever there seems a
reasonable likelihood of success, and sometimes even when success seems
unlikely but worth trying for. Thus, even when the child has not given much
information about the previous family, we may search for a family corresponding to his statements. I think this effort justifies any rime spent because,
since we have already recorded what the subject has said, if we succeed, we
shall add to the small number of cases in which we can firmly exclude the
possibility rhar informants later misremembered what and how much the
subject actually said before the families met. As I shall explain later, errors
in the informants' memories seem to me now the most likely explanation for
many of these cases other than reincarnation itself.
How the Interviews Are Conducted. Ar the beginning of an interview
with an adult informant (following appropriate introductions and explanations of what we are trying to do), we ask an open question or make a general request, such as: "Tell us how the case began," "What did you notice
first?" or "Tell us everything you know about the case." We then record the
first flow of whatever the informant says, without our interrupting - unless
to check obviously irrelevant digressions. Afterward we go back to particular statements or events chat the informant mentioned and ask for more
details or clarifications. Then we turn to questions concerning matters that
we consider important but that the informant may have omitted. Here we
may work the informant onto unfamiliar ground; if so, we take pains to
e~plain to him why we are asking certain questions, since he may not immediately understand their relevance.

~ercain informants are too shy or too inarticulate to give a spontaneous

narr~tlon. w~ try to help these persons - even at the beginning - by asking

specific quesnons. Similarly, in the clarification phase of the interviews we
I have no phobia ofleadmg quesnons, bur we make a note of the fact whenever we ask one.
Most informants are unaware of the importance of the difference
between firsthand testimony and hearsay; and many are nor even aware that
there is a difference. Consequently, some of our effort goes co celling (and
reminding) the informant that he should say only what he has witnessed himself.

~ften nee~ to ask direct and even leading questions.

We never (or almost never) use secondhand testimony either for information about the subject's statements and behavior or for information about
the previous personality. In general, we do not even listen to secondhand witnesses, although, as I mentioned above, they sometimes press themselves importunately on us and have to be sifted our from true eyewitnesses. Occasionally,

6. Methods ofResearch

135

however, we use information furnished by a secondhand informant as a guide

to firsthand sources and in the appraisal of these.
How the Information Is Recorded. We prefer to rake notes instead of
making tape recordings. The latter become filled with irrelevancies, and they
miss many of the nonverbal features of the interviews. (We can note the
more important of these in writing as the interview proceeds.) We can also
review written notes more easily than a rape recording when we need to learn
quickly about possible omissions and discrepancies; it is sometimes important to note these before we leave the area of a case so that we can remedy
the former and inquire about the latter on a second interview the next day.
We do, however, like to record on tape whatever the subject himself tells us
that he remembers about the previous life. In addition, we sometimes use
tape recorders when an informant seems to have little rime to give us or we
ourselves become pressed to leave the site of an interview sooner than we
wish. (Drivers of taxis and bullock cans have less interest in these cases than
we have, and we must sometimes adjust to their needs.)
Whenever it is feasible, rwo members of our ream rake notes during an
interview, and I have often been able to arrange for this, at least in recent
years. When this is done, one assistant or colleague acts as the main interpreter (where one is needed); a second assistant makes notes in the language
of the informant and, at the same time, monitors the accuracy of the first
assistant's translation; I make notes in English of the questions put to the
informant and the answers given. In the evening after the interviews (~r
sometimes later), we have often reviewed the two sets of notes for the days
work. When we do this, we note and discuss discrepancies and omissions and
may decide that we need another interview to clarify doubtful matters. Sometimes I have compared the accuracy of my note-raking against a tape recording of an interview.
In the next chapter I shall discuss the difficulties involved in reach~ng
the best interpretation for these cases. Here I wish to emphasize that by bemg
meticulous about the accurate recording of what the informants tell us, I have
tried to transfer to them responsibility for whatever imprecisions get into my
reports.
I have had to use interpreters for many interviews, including most of
my interviews in Asia. This raises the question of the interpreters' competences and the possible influence of biases they may have on the information expressed and recorded. Probably some errors in translation have
occurred from time to time, as I have noted (when I have detected them) in
my detailed case reports. However, I do not think these have been numerous or damaging. In several different countries, I have been fortunate in having the same interpreters work with me for a decade or longer. They have

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

become used to my methods, and together we have identified some of the

words and phrases in the languages used that are particularly liable to faulty
translation. Moreover, by recording the questions asked as well as the answers
given, I can observe whether the interpreter is asking my questions or pursuing his own line of inquiry. The more experienced interpreters often think
of better ways of phrasing a question than I have, and they may also suggest
further questions to pursue a point that seems to them important. They have
thus become collaborators more than assistants in the interviews. 12

The Information Obtained During the Interviews with the Subject's Family. The information that we like to obtain falls into five main categories.
These are: (1) what the child has said about the previous life; (2) what possibilities existed for normal communication of information to the child;
(3) observations of any unusual behavior shown by the child that apparently
relates to the previous life; (4) information about the mother's pregnancy
with the subject and about the subject's early development; and (5) miscellaneous information about such factors as the subject's birth order in the family, appraisals of his intelligence, the social and economic circumstances of
the family, and the attitudes of the adults concerned toward the case.
I mentioned above that we prefer to record the subject's own account
of his memories, if he still has any and if he is willing to tell us about them.
However, often the subject is too shy- at least initially- to talk freely with
us, and sometimes the parents wish to tell their accounts before letting the
child speak. In these cases, we ask the parents to tell us whatever they can
~hour the child's statements concerning the previous life. I attach special
importance to their memories of the child's first, often half-articulate, communications. We particularly wish to learn what the child said spontaneously,
as opposed to what he may have said in response to questions. And we try
to separate what he said before the two families concerned in the case met,
if they have met, from what he said afterward. Anything he said after they
met- or even at t?e time of their first meeting- has much less value when
we c.ome ~o appraise the evidence that the child had knowledge about the
prevwus life that he could not have obtained normally. Nevertheless, we do
record these later statements by the subject as well as the earlier ones.
Some parents confuse their own inferences with the child's statements,
and then we have to pare away a crust of the former before we can reach the
latter. Imad Elawar's parents made numerous inferences about his statements, and as his was one of the first cases I investigated, I was unaware at
first that they had done this. A woman to whom Imad frequently referred
and who they thought was a sheikh's wife turned out to be the previous personality's mistress. Imad's parents told me that he had mentioned a relative
called Amin who was a judge and lived in Tripoli (Lebanon). In fact, Imad

6. Methods ofResearch

137

had said only that Amin worked in the courthouse in Tripoli; on hearing this
his parents promoted Amin to a judgeship, although he was a government
official who happened to work in the courthouse building.
In 1986 I observed (in Sri Lanka) one of the most extreme instances of
mistaken parental inferences I have known. The subject was a young girl,
Wimalawathie Samarasekera. (She was called Wimala for short.) Wimala's
mother told us that she had said that in the previous life her father had been
a doctor whose name was Wijesekera, she had lived in Colombo 3 (a particular district of the city of Colombo), she had attended St. Thomas's College, and she had died in an automobile accident when her (previous) mother
drove a car off the road into a drain. After patiently repeating requests to learn
exactly what Wimala had said, we learned that she seemed to have a precocious knowledge of medicine (unusual for her family, which had no medical
people in it) and she had mentioned the name Wijesekera; so her mother
assumed that the previous father was a Dr. Wijesekera. Wimala had said she
had lived in Colombo, and she had mentioned the number 3; her mother
assumed that she was referring to Colombo 3, although she might just as well
have been trying to give the number of a house in a street. Wimala had made
numerous references to "Baby Jesus," and this led her family (who were Buddhists) to think that the previous personality had been a Christian. It was
an easy step to suppose then that the previous personality had attended a
Christian school, St. Thomas's College, but Wimala had not said this.
Finally, although Wimala had mentioned an automobile accident in which
the previous mother had driven a car off the road into a drain, she had not
said that she had died in this accident. Wimala's family thought it would be
easy to find a family corresponding to her statements, and this might have
been true if she had really said what they assumed she had said. In fact, she
had given rather scanty specific information, and her case remains un~olv~d.
Eliciting information about possibilities for normal commumcatton
between the two families requires the most careful attention to detai~ and ~os
sibly needs more patience - on the part of both informants and mvemgators - than any other aspect of the investigation. The informants are usually
unaware of the subtle opportunities that may exist for the normal communication of information; they sometimes expect us to accept their statements
of not having previously known the other family as putting an end to the
need for further inquiry on the topic. Yet from pushing these inquiries, we
have sometimes found possibilities for contacts between the families that
they themselves had overlooked.
For example, in the case of Push pa (in India) I found that although the
two families concerned in the case had never met, they had bought their vegetables at the same market, which was a place where the subject's family

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

might have overheard talk about the gruesome murder of a Si~ girl .by her
husband, to which Pushpa referred in her statements. I do not think this happened, but it was a definite possibility.
In another Indian case, that of Sunita Khandelwal, I learned that the
subject's uncle had had a slight acquaintance (through his business) with the
father of the previous personality. The two families immediately concerned
in this case lived in towns located about 250 kilometers apart, and each was
being completely honest when they asserted that they had never even been
to the other family's town, much less heard of that family's existence. However, the subject's uncle and the previous personality's father had met in
connection with their businesses - both were jewelers - in the city where the
previous personality had lived. (They had no social relationship.)
In a third Indian case (already mentioned several times), that of Parmod Sharma, I learned that the subject's uncle had sometimes bought biscuits at a shop in Moradabad (about 125 kilometers from where Parmod
lived) that had been owned by the previous personality of this case and was
still, when the case developed, run by members of his family.
In all three of these cases, I eventually concluded that the subjects' families had not learned normally about the details of the previous lives; but I
had a stronger conviction about this after I had examined and reasonably
excluded the possibilities that we discovered for normal communication
between the families.
The information obtained about the subject's behavior falls into two cat-

~gories. First, we learn everything we can about the child's manner of speaking about the previous life and about the circumstances that appear to
stimulate his utterances concerning it. Does he show strong emotion when
he speaks about the previous life? To what extent does he ask or demand to
go to the family he seems to remember? Does he make comparisons between
the present and previous families? Second, we learn of whatever observations
members of the subject's family may have made about unusual behavior he
has sh?wn th~t seems related to his statements about the previous life. Such
behav10r, which I discussed in chapter 5, may include unusual fears, likings,
aptitudes and skills, tastes for food or dress, or attitudes of humility or hauteur toward other persons.
We next compare the subject with his parents and siblings, so that we
can try to estimate how unusual his behavior is in the family. We also search
for models of it in his environment and for specific experiences that might
account for it, such as a history of the child's having been burned that might
explain a phobia of fire.

The Information Obtained During Interviews with the Previous Personal-

ity's Family. When we meet members of the family the child has talked about,

6. Methods of Research

139

we ask them to evaluate the accuracy of all the child's statements about the
previous life. His parents usually say that they have verified the most important of them and perhaps all of them, but I attach great importance to making our own independent verifications. On a number of occasions the parents
have claimed that a child's statement was correct when it was not. (This can
be innocent; during the usual excitement associated with the first meetings
between the families, it is easy for participants at such meetings to neglect
or misunderstand derails.) Occasionally also, informants for the previous
personality's family may tell us about correct statements the child had made
that the child's family had not heard or had not mentioned when they talked
with us.
From the family of the previous personality we also learn what we can
about his character. In doing this we often have to work against the almost
universal tendency to magnify the virtues of the dead and diminish their
vices. (Fortunately, many human attributes that pertain to these cases are
morally neutral - deserving neither blame nor praise - and hence we can
expect informants to report them candidly.) The deceased person's relatives
may also tend to harmonize their reports of his personality with what they
know about unusual behavior on the subject's part, and the subject's family
may embroider their reports of his behavior in order to make it seem closer
to that of the previous personality than it was. It is a mistake, however, to
think that the principal informants for these cases are always enthusiastic
about them and therefore always trying to improve their reports of them. On
the contrary, it is rare to find both families eagerly supporting a case; one or
the other may - for various reasons - regard it negatively or with indifference, and sometimes both families do. And yet if both families do accept the
case as authentic, they may unintentionally smooth out the wrinkles of discordance in their observations and reports to us. Here again, observers more
detached from the case, such as neighbors, can often help us more than the
persons closely associated with the subject and previous personality.

SECOND AND LATER INTERVIEWS

tend to become absorbed in the interviews and may forget that the
informants - especially busy housewives - often have other things to do. I
nevertheless try, sometimes under the prodding of my associates, to end the
interviews before the informants have become exhausted or annoyed. (Interviews of vexatious length do not seem to happen often, because the informants nearly always welcome us back warmly for further interviews.)
In any case, a period of withdrawal from the subject's family is desirable until we have interviewed informants for the previous personality's side

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

of the case and reflected on the information already obtained. Moreover, after
leaving the scene of an interview I invariably think of additional questions
that I should have asked during it; sometimes I think of these questions soon
afterward, but sometimes I think of them only much later. If the questions
thought of after an interview seem important, they usually lead to further
visits from me and my associates.
A published case report requires an orderliness that we cannot expect
the informants to provide as they speak to us, often in gushing streams of
uninterrupted talk; I have to sort out all the information obtained and
arrange it as coherently as possible. The drafting of a case report frequently
exposes additional questions that I failed to ask and thus may stimulate
another interview.
I have other motives for returning besides that of obtaining information I should have obtained earlier. Later interviews enable us to check the
consistency of what the informants say. This does not mean that inconsistencies are necessarily marked against them: they may have remembered
some additional details after we left; they may have come to think differently
about a detail they had mentioned earlier; or a more skillful way of putting
a question the second time may elicit a more reliable answer. On second and
later visits we can also sometimes meet informants who were away at our first
visit. One may compare the accumulation of information about a case to the
building up of a mosaic: many items, some seemingly insignificant in themselves, gradually fit together and allow a picture of the whole to be seen.

QUESTIONNAIRES

During the course of these investigations, my associates and I have

developed questionnaires that have proven useful in focusing on particular
aspects of the inquiries.

On~ of the~e questionnaires explores in detail an informant's beliefs

about remcarnat1on, including such matters as when and how it may occur,
to whom, and for what purpose.13
We use another questionnaire for making systematic inquiries about
masculine and feminine behavior in cases of the sex-change type. With other
questionnaires, we have tried to systematize the inquiries we make about the
unusual behaviors that so many of the subjects show in connection with
their statements about previous lives. We use one of these questionnaires to
inquire about "Japanese" traits shown by subjects in Burma who say they
were, in previous lives, Japanese soldiers killed there. Another questionnaire
inquires about dominance in twins.

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141

Psychological Tests
Do the children who remember previous lives differ from other children
in respects other than having such memories? In the early days of studying
these cases I was single-mindedly concerned about examining the evidence
of a paranormal process that the cases of these children could provide. Other
important aspects of the cases - even birthmarks and birth defects, as I have
explained - drew little of my attention.
My first and longtime interpreter in Sri Lanka, the late E. C. Raddalgoda, used often to remark that among the children of a subject's family, the
subject was the most intelligent, the brightest, he would say. The subject's
siblings would often gather around our group during our interviews, and E.
C. Raddalgoda would talk with them as well as with our subject. My ignorance of Sinhalese made it impossible for me to judge this matter for myself.
It gradually seemed more important to me, however, and I resolved to try
to obtain more objective evidence of distinctive features in the personalities
of our subjects.
Accordingly, in 1973, I arranged for a collaboration to implement psychological tests of subjects in India. Dr. Erlendur Haraldsson and Dr. L. P.
Mehrotra (one of my longtime colleagues in India) began working as a team
in the testing of subjects in northern India. Children of the same age and
sex who had no memories of a previous life were compared with the subjects. The project started well and the team had tested several subjects and
their peers when Dr. Haraldsson was badly injured in a vehicular accident.
He did not fully recover for several years, and when he did he became fully
absorbed in other projects.
I also turned away from the project of psychological testing. The most
I did in that direction was to administer to the subjects of some cases of the
sex-change type the extended Draw-a-Person Test. 14 This may contribute
helpful information about the subject's sexual identification (gender identity).
The main information that the test provides comes from the child's selection, on two free choices, of the sex of the person he draws and from the sexual characteristics represented in the persons drawn.
In the 1990s Dr. Haraldsson returned to the project of psychological
testing. This time he chose to study children in Sri Lanka, where he had
already been investigating fresh cases for five years, after I had interrupted
my own research in Sri Lanka in 1987.
Children in the peak years of expressing their memories (usually two to
five years old) are too young for the concentrated attention that nearly all
psychological tests require. The children to be tested should be between
seven and thirteen years old. For a group of adequate size Dr. Haraldsson

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CHILDREN WHO REMEi'v1BER PREVIOUS LIVES

did not have enough children of the right age from cases he had investigated.
He therefore included in the testing a sufficient number of children whose
cases I had investigated when they were younger. He initially tested twemythree children and their peers; later he enlarged the group to thirty.
The Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale, Raven Progressive Matrices, and
Peabody Picture Vocabulary were administered to the children. The first of
these allows an estimate of a child's susceptibility to leading questions and
misinformation; the other two tests indicate respectively the child's ability
to reason clearly and the extent of his vocabulary.
The mother of a subject (or other close relative) was asked to complete
the Child Behavior Checklist, which is a questionnaire designed to record
observations of a child's abilities and any behavioral problems. The children's
schoolteachers were asked to complete a similar questionnaire, the Child
Behavior Checklist-Teacher's Form. (All the tests were translated into Sinhalese.)
The results (published in two papers by Dr. Haraldsson) confirmed E.
C. Raddalgoda's judgments about the superior intelligence of the subjects.
Compared with their peers the subjects had better memories, had greater verbal skills, and performed better at school. The tests, however, showed much
more. The subjects were not more suggestible than their peers. The parents
of the subjects judged them to have more behavior problems than the paren~s of the marched children thought they observed in their children. About
this the schoolteachers did not agree with the parents of the subjects. They
reported the subjects to be perfectionistic, bur socially active and having
good relations with other children. At home the subjects were distinctive in
their families because of claiming to remember a previous life. This and the
unusual associated behavior of many of the children may have made their
parents perceive them as having behavioral problems; for the schoolteachers, however, the subjects seemed "gifted."
Perhaps the most important result of Dr. Haraldsson's research with psyc~ological tests derives from the comparison of the subjects and their peers
with reg~rd to suggestibility. Thar the subjects are not more suggestible than
ocher children weakens the argument sometimes put forward that the subjects narrate fantasies from which other child refrain.

WRITTEN AND PRINTED DOCUMENTS

In the study of these cases, written and printed records have particular
importance, although they are unfortunately rare. They supplement memory
and often correct it. Thus we cry to examine (and copy if possible) diaries,
horoscopes (for birth dares), hospital records, birth and death registrations,

6. Methods ofResearch

143

reports of postmortem examinations, and any other written or printed material that has recorded some detail before the case developed or has fixed it
with more certainty than memory alone usually can. In a few cases the parents or other relatives of the subjects have written out their own accounts of
what a child said while he was at rhe phase of talking most about the previous life, or soon afterward. These records are especially precious documents
in the study of a case.
FOLLOW-UP INTERVIEWS

In recent years we have given increasing attention to observing the further development of the subjects, and this provides us with still another reason for lacer visits. In the follow-up interviews we cry to answer the following
questions: Has the child stopped talking spontaneously about the previous
life? If so, when did he cease to speak about ir? What seemed to influence
him to stop talking about it? Has he forgotten or has he just given up expressing what he still remembers? Does he continue to show unusual behavior
related to the previous life, even if he appears to have forgotten his imaged
memories of it? To what extent has his remembering a previous life influenced
his relations with other members of his family and with persons outside ir?
Have the memories he had of a previous life helped or hindered his overall
adaptation in rhe present one?
The reader of the foregoing description of the methods of conducting
this research may raise the question, indeed he or she should raise the question, of the value of the methods. This leads me to rhe final topic of this chapter, investigations by independent investigators.

Replication Studies
The methods for investigating these cases char I adopted and have
described have received some criricisms. 15 Some of these are ill-founded and
betray ignorance of techniques of interviewing and of the particular circumstances of these cases. It has been alleged, for example, chat my dependence on interpreters vitiates or even nullifies my observations. If such critics
had ever worked with interpreters themselves they would know that an investigator can easily monitor and, if need be, correct what an interpreter has said
from comparing the answer given with rhe question that the investigator
posed. When answer and question do not correspond satisfactorily, one
repeats rhe question until they do.
More rational criticisms emphasize the possibility char crypromnesia

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

and paramnesia (in short, faulty memories) on the part of the informants
might account for the cases. I have already presented my answers to these
suggestions earlier in this chapter. Instead of repeating these I will turn to
the only answer that can ever satisfy critics of a project of scientific research:
replication of the research by independent investigators.
For many years I had exceedingly able interpreters and assistants in
India, Sri Lanka, and several other countries. Unfortunately, they all had regular jobs and other obligations; they helped when I was in the field, but
could do little when I was not. For a decade I searched for some colleague
or assistant who would work with me (or independently) on the investigation of the cases. Eventually, Dr. Satwant Pasricha joined me in 1974, first as
an interpreter while she was a graduate student, and later as a colleague. More
than a decade later, Dr. Antonia Mills began to investigate the cases, first in
British Columbia and then in India. Almost at the same time Dr. Jiirgen Keil
and Dr. Haraldsson also began investigating cases. Dr. Keil has studied them
in Thailand, Burma, and Turkey; Or. Haraldsson has studied them in Sri
Lanka and Lebanon. None of these colleagues has been able to devote full
time to the research.
These four investigators have used the methods I have described, but
each has modified and improved them as they thought appropriate. The
results they obtained and their conclusions are best studied in their own
publications, which I have listed in the references to this book. Suffice it to
say here that all four of them, in the words of Dr. Haraldsson, "have come
~o the conclusion that some of them [the cases] do require a paranormal
16
mterpretation." Dr. Haraldsson then asked the question: "Which paranormal Interpretation?" I defer discussion of this important topic until a later
chapter of this book.
Here I wish to add that each of the four mentioned replicators has
extended the research beyond the simple accumulation of more cases of the
same ?eneral type. Each has sought, in different ways, to enrich our understandmg of the cases and the processes that generate them. Dr. Pasricha has
compared the cases in northern India with the much rarer ones of south
India, and she has investigated new cases with birthmarks and birth defects.
Dr. Mills has also investigated cases with birthmarks (in British Columbia),
and she has made an extensive study of the relationships between kinship and
apparent reincarnation among the tribes of northern British Columbia. Dr.
Keil has made a special study of "silent cases" in Turkey, and he has initiated
a longitudinal project to observe the manner and extent of parental influence on preverbal infants identified (from dreams and birthmarks) as a
deceased person reborn. Dr. Keil (with Dr. Jim Tucker) has also extended
the investigation of the cases having what we call "experimental birthmarks."

6. Methods ofResearch

145

Finally, as I described in an earlier section of this chapter, Dr. Haraldsson

has used psychological tests and questionnaires to learn about features of
personality in which the children who claim to remember previous lives
differ from other children of the same age, sex, and community.
At the beginning of this chapter I explained that, when I first began to
study these cases, I quickly found a large number of them; they have continued to be abundant ever since. However, I also learned in that same early
period that finding and investigating cases was far easier than deciding how
best to explain them. In the next chapter I shall describe my approach to the
analysis and interpretation of the information we obtain about the cases.

CHAPTER

The Analysis and

Interpretation of the Cases
In describing my methods for conducting this research, I mentioned my
inability to choose between the thorough investigation of a small number of
individual cases and a more superficial study of a larger number. If this ind~
cision was unwise, it has at least led to our being able to analyze the cases m
two ways. We can examine individual cases and try to find for each the best
interpretation (or interpretations); we can also search a large series of cases for
recurrent features and ask ourselves about the meaning of any that we find.
I shall consider these two types of analyses successively, but before coming
to them, I must first explain why I think we have data worth analyzing.

The Reliability of the Testimony

. ! ha~e already explained

that, by giving careful attention to the

idenuficanon and avoidance of errors in translation and to the careful recording of what informants say, I have tried to pass responsibility for the accuracy of t?e data to the informants. Only a small amount of our data derives
from written sources,1 and we cannot directly observe much in these cases
2
ourselves. We obtain at least 90 percent of our information by listening co
the oral testimony of informants. The value of what we learn in this way
depends on the accuracy of the informants' statements. This, in turn, means
that we must evaluate the reliability of their memories and appraise whatever tendencies they may have to distort, in their communications to us,
whatever they do remember. I shall here say something about the accuracy
of the informants' memories, bur shall defer until a later section of the chapter
146

1. The Analysis and Interpretation ofthe Cases

147

my discussion of motives on rhe part of the informants to distort rhe testimony.

We need to appraise an informant's ability to remember accurately
events that happened days, weeks, months, and sometimes years before the
dare of his telling me and my associates about them. To what extent can we
depend on testimony of this kind? Numerous experiments have shown how
extremely unobservant some persons can be. Experiments that demonstrate
this usually consist of staged scenes, often violent ones, about which witnesses
are asked to write reports from memory later. Subjects in such experiments
may completely fail to observe and remember important details, and they may
get others badly confused. Yet these same experiments also show that witnesses may be wrong about some derails but correct about others and correct in reporting the main events they observed. Moreover, since the main
events, such as a staged scene of violence, did really occur, the mixing up of
details in reports about them cannot be used to deny this. Lawyers recognize this in their appraisal of eyewitness testimony of accidents; a witness may
be wrong about which of two automobiles involved in an accident had the
right of way, but correct in saying rhat both were speeding and that they
crashed together. Critics sometimes forget this point and suggest that an
event about which a witness muddled some of the derails may never have
occurred at all. 3
I have a further reason for discounting experiments in eyewitness testimony as necessarily discrediting the reliability of the data in the cases I have
investigated. These experiments all require the observer to notice and remember details about an event that occurred once and during a few minutes only.
A single occurrence and a brief duration are features also of one type of evidence in these cases: the recognitions often attributed to the subjects that
occur in a flash and one time only. I am, therefore, not surprised - and have
frequently mentioned in my reports - rhat eyewitnesses of recognitions often
disagree about just what rook place when a subject is said to have recognized
a person known to the previous personality in a case. The frequent o.ccurrence ofleading questions and other types of cueing of adults, as I mentioned
earlier, further reduces the value as evidence of mosr recognitions.
Other types of events in rhese cases, however, are not analogous to the
staged scenes that have shown defects in eyewitness testimony in such circumstances. For example, the subject of a case nearly always repeats his statements about the previous life, often over several years and frequently so often
chat he makes himself a nuisance in his family. Similarly, the associated
unusual behavior - of demanding specially prepared food, cross-dressing, or
whatever it may be - also usually continues over years, and often for even
longer than the child's statements. These repetitions and prolongations of

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

utterances and unusual behavior tend to fix the memories of such events in
the minds of those who observe them.
I do not deny that inaccuracies often occur, and the detailed case reports
that I have published are sprinkled with notes about discrepancies in the testimony of different informants. My principal defense against such errors has
been the use, whenever feasible, of two or several informants for the same
event. In this way I think I have been able to understand many of the discrepancies. What is more important, however, I think I have obtained a satisfactorily accurate account of the main events of the case, even when
informants have made mistakes about some details.
I should like to try to remove a common Western prejudice concerning informants' memories, which is that the memories of uneducated persons, such as Asian villagers, are worse than those of educated persons. I am
sure this opinion is wrong. Accuracy of memory derives from many factors,
but education has not been identified as one of these.
The foregoing remarks are only preliminary. I shall discuss further the
reliability of the informants' testimony in considering different explanations
for the individual cases.
However, before coming to these explanations I shall take up the important question of how we decide when we think we have identified the single
deceased person to whom the subject's remarks could apply.

The Identification of the Correct Previous Personality

One of the first questions to settle about a case is whether the subject's
statements have been verified or can be verified, if this has not already been
done. In short, has a deceased person been found, or can such a person be
found, the facts of whose life correspond to the statements (and also to the
behavior) of the subject? In this respect the cases seem to fall into three
groups .
. First, there are cases in which the subject gives so Ii ttle specific information about the previous personality, especially proper names of people and
places, that no corresponding person can be traced. We sometimes forget that
without our names we would not lose our identity, but other persons might
lose their ability to identify us. Consider, for example, the difference in
specification between "Sir William Robertson, a British general of the First
World War," and "a soldier called Robertson." One could easily trace the first
Robertson, but not the second one. Of the latter we do not even know
whether he belonged to the British, Canadian, Australian, or United States
armies, or for that matter, the French foreign legion, nor do we know during

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149

what period he may have lived. Unless we had some other narrowing clues
we should probably not even attempt to trace such a man, because the
inevitable result would be the discovery of many soldiers called Robertson,
any one of whom might be the person we are trying to find. The case of a
subject who could furnish no better identifying information about the previous life he seemed to remember would remain unsolved. 4
However, if a subject of a case can precisely locate the previous life geographically and can state two or three other adequately specific details, we
may solve his case, even though he mentions no personal names. I studied
such a case in Sri Lanka in 1986. The subject, a boy called Sidath Wijeratne,
stated no personal names, but he said that he had lived at Balapitiya, where
he had dealt in fish and had owned a green Jeep. Balapiriya is a small coastal
town about 100 kilometers from where Sidath lived. Only one person in Balapitiya owned a green Jeep, and he was a fish merchant. Sidarh's few other
statements about the previous life exactly fitted this man's life, and I consider the case solved.
The case of Dolan Champa Mitra (in India) is another that I consider
adequately solved despite Dolon's inability to include personal names among
her numerous statements about a previous life. She gave the name of the city,
Burd wan, where she said she had lived, stated many accurate derails about
the life of a young man who had lived there, and eventually located the house
of this man's family. Inside the house she made a number of recognitions,
some of them under conditions that I consider satisfactory.
In the second group of cases, we achieve verification but some doubts
remain about whether we really have found the right deceased person. In this
group the subject furnishes enough specifying information to permit tracing a deceased person who fits his statements. The more specific and the more
numerous the child's statements are, the more confident we can become that
we have found the correct person; but for one reason or another, some doubt
may linger.
Concerning the identification of the correct deceased person in the case
of lndika Guneratne, I remained for several years in doubt. lndika, like
Dolon, gave the name of the city of the previous life (in his case Matara, in
Sri Lanka); bur he mentioned only one other proper name, that of a servant
called Premadasa. Fortunately, he referred to wealth and to owning elephants,
details that narrowed the search considerably. Even so, seventeen details that
lndika had mentioned applied correctly to two wealthy citizens of Matara
who had owned elephants. Other items Indika had stated were incorrect for
one of those men, but fitted the second; a clinching detail was that one candidate had had a servant called Premadasa, whereas the other candidate had
not. Only a careful examination of both men's lives enabled me to feel

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

confident about the one to whom lndika's statements applied and therefore
to feel justified in considering the case solved.
I have mentioned the applicability of many of lndika's statements to two
different men in order to show the trap into which unwary parents (and
investigators) may fall if they think too quickly that a child's statements
apply to a particular person when they may apply as well, or almost as well,
to many other persons. I think that this sometimes happens when parents
become too eager to achieve closure in considering to whom a child's statements about a previous life may refer.
We can sometimes observe such attitudes among rhe Druses of Lebanon.
Although parents of subjects in India usually do nor hurry to look for the
family about whom their child is talking- rhey may put this off until they
can no longer tolerate the child's insistent demands to be taken to the family- parents in Lebanon seem often to feel pressed to find the family of rhe
person about whom their child is talking, and this may lead to mistakes. So
may an equally strong desire of many grieving Druse persons to find where
a deceased family member has been reborn. Ir is important therefore to recognize cases in which the identification of the correct deceased person must
remain in doubt.
.In .the cases belonging to the third group, the subject has stated so many
specifying names and so much other detailed information that we can
confidently assen that his statements refer to one deceased person and could
not r~fer. to any other. The children of Burma seem particularly adept at
establishing the identity of the person whose life they remember. They often
state the name of that person together with the names of his spouse and parents an? murderer, if there was one. Among my cases, however, the record
for stanng proper names is held, not by a Burmese child, bur by Suzanne
~hanem of Lebanon. I recorded a (probably incomplete) list of fifty-nine
Items she had stared about the previous life that she remembered. Her statements included the n ames o f twenty-three members o f t l1e ram1
c
1 y to w h"ic h
she referred
and
two

d
l
l
b
.
.
acquaintances. Moreover, she place a
ur one o f t h ese
persons in their proper relationship to Saada, the woman whose life she
remembered.

The Analysis of Individual Cases

In considering individual cases we need to ask ourselves: Could the
subject of the case have acquired his information about the previous life normalJy? If, in addition to his statements, the child shows unusual behavior
apparently related to them, we also need to ask whether he might have devel-

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151

oped such behavior as a result of imitating other members of his family or

as a result of experiences he had since his birth.
When we ask the first of these questions, we can see immediately that
in two large groups of cases the child's statements can rarely provide any evidence of paranormal processes; these are cases in which no person has been
found whose life corresponds closely enough to the subject's statements
(unsolved cases) and those in which the person identified as having this correspondence lived in the subject's family or close to where it lived ("samefamily" or "same-village" cases). In unsolved cases the question rarely arises
of our deciding that the child has information he could not have obtained
normally, because his statements remain unverified. 5 In the same-family and
same-village cases we can almost never obtain convincing evidence that the
child had not been exposed normally to the details of which he had knowledge. (Cases of these two groups may, it is important to note, have features
other than the child's statements - unusual behavior or birthmarks, for
example - that warrant our attention.)
I shall, therefore, in the remainder of this section, discuss the appraisal
of cases in which the two families live in different communities and their
members say that they had no previous acquaintance with each other before
the case developed. We call these long-distance cases, but this phrase does
not imply that we are measuring the value of a case only by the number of
kilometers separating the families. In a country like India, for example, families living in neighboring villages, bur belonging to different castes, may be
more isolated socially than families of the same caste living a hundred kilometers apart.
Given, however, a case in which the two families concerned live in separated communities, we must assess possibilities for normal comn.mnic~tion
between the families concerned. There are several types of cases 111 which a
child might seem to show unusual knowledge about a distant family, even
though the knowledge had been obtained by some normal mea~s.
.
The most obvious possibility for normal acquisition of the 111formatt~n
is fraud. Hoax cases do occur from time to time. I have studied two cases m
India chat were definitely hoaxes (prepared by che subjects) and have learned
of two other faked cases, one in Lebanon and one in lsrael.<i
Perhaps I have been hoaxed in some cases without knowing chis. I cannot deny that chis may have happened, but I think it can only have happened
rarely, if ever. My confidence in chis assertion comes from familiarity with
the circumstances and motives of the people among whom these cases are
usually found. The average villager in Asia and Africa does not have time _ro
devise and perpetrate a hoax. He sometimes begrudges the time we cake for
our interviews; a hoax and its related cover-up would take far longer. One

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

can see no profit in money from a case and usually none, or only the slightest, in local fame. Moreover, with the multiple interviews that I usually conduct, a fraud would require the cooperation of numerous witnesses, any one
of whom might forget his rehearsed lines or defect from the other conspirators. The child designated as subject of the case would also need to be
drilled, because we have sometimes heard subjects repeat, more or less exactly,
the statements their parents said that they had made. I mentioned earlier that
I have occasionally heard adults prompting children subjects; although I
strongly disapprove of this, it has never seemed to me to be more than an
expression of the prompting adults' eagerness not to have the child let them
down in front of strangers, when they know that the child could, if he would,
tell the strangers (my associates and me) what they themselves have often
heard him say.

If we can eliminate fraud, we should next consider gross self-deception

in the development of a case. I have studied a few cases in which it appears
that the entire case developed out of the wishes of the people concerned. In
these cases the previous personality is typically a famous person of the community, the country, or the world. During our days of investigating cases in
south-central Turkey, Reat Bayer and I learned of no less than three Alevi children who were identified as being the reincarnations of President John F.
Kennedy. The father of one of these children, Mehmet Alkan, had dreamed
of President Kennedy a few hours before the birth of a son (in November 1965),
and he named the son "Kenedi" (giving the name a Turkish spelling). In
November 1967 Reat Bayer and I met the two-year-old Kenedi, and his father
told us that he was saying that he was President Kennedy. I am sure that
!"1eh~ec Alkan was unaware of the likelihood that he was imposing another
identny on his son; this was not a hoax even though Mehmet Alkan, and later
Kenedi, picked up some kudos in their ~illage. (At that time President Kennedy
~as the best k~own and most highly regarded American president among foreign peoples since Franklin D. Roosevelt.) There is a sequel. In 1985 Dr. Can
Polat learned of the case of Kenedi Alkan and met him. He was then a young
man of about twenty. He firmly believed chat he had been President Kennedy
in a previous life. He claimed to remember a few details about Kennedy's life,
such as that he had been rich, married, and had two children. He showed Dr.
Polar a birthmark- on his chest, the wrong place for anyone claiming to be
the reincarnation of John F. Kennedy. Cases of this type are relatively uncommon in my experience, and I think they are fairly easy to expose.
If we exclude fraud and self-deception, as I think we can in nearly every
case, we are still left with two other, far more subtle, ways in which observers
may incorrectly credit a child with unusual knowledge of a person who had
lived far away.

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153

The first of these involves an unobserved transmission of the information to the child by persons who knew the previous personality. For example, a visitor from another community may come to the child's house when
his parents are away, and, while the subject is playing unnoticed on the floor,
the visitor may tell a servant of the family about a man who had been murdered where the visitor lives. The child could absorb this information and
later incorporate it into a fantasied previous life. We can easily imagine variations of this process. The child's parents may themselves have learned about
the deceased person and forget later that they had done so; in the meantime,
however, the child may have obtained the information from the parents,
either normally or by telepathy.
A person who obtains some information normally and later forgets that
he has done so is said to show "cryptomnesia" or "source amnesia." (I
described and gave examples of this in chapter 3.) I consider the possibility
of cryptomnesia in almost every case I study. The results of inquiries have
occasionally surprised me. As I have penetrated a case more deeply, I have
sometimes found that, even though the two immediate families were unacquainted before the case developed, they turned out to have one or more
mutual friends; in other instances, they had more possibilities for indirect
communication with each other than they had earlier realized. In the last
chapter I mentioned three cases (those of Sunita Khandelwal, Pushpa, and
Parmod Sharma) in which the two families concerned had had (or might have
had) some slight contact with each other. I found no evidence in any of these
cases that information about the previous personality had passed from one
family to the other, but I could not decisively exclude the possibility that
this had happened.
I am, however, sure that cryptomnesia is not the correct explanation for
most long-distance cases. In the first place, in many cases in which I have
pushed inquiries just as far as I did in the cases of Parmod, Pushpa, and
Sunita, I have not found even the slight links between the families that I
found in those cases. 7
However, there are other objections to cryptomnesia as an explanation
of these cases. First, I do not think a young child can assimilate from a single overheard conversation the information needed to compose a credible set
of previous life memories. (I assume his exposure to the information occurred
only once; otherwise, if it happened repeatedly, the child's parents would, I
think, have known about it.) At the age when the subjects first talk about the
previous life, they often lack the vocabulary they need for communicating the
images they seem to have. It is doubtful, therefore, although not impossible,
that such a young child could understand the words the average adult would
use in describing, say, a murder that the family had learned about.

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CHILDREN WHO RE1v1Elv1BER PREVIOUS LIVES

A further objection to cryptomnesia as an explanation - at least for

some cases - comes from the knowledge shown by some subjects of private
affairs that were not known outside the previous personality's family and
could nor therefore have been disseminated as rhe publicly known derails of
a sensational murder might be. I have already given one example of such a
private matter in chapter 4, where I mentioned Gopal Gupta's knowledge of
Shaktipal Sharma's attempt to borrow money from his wife. Two other excellent examples figured in the cases of Swarnlara Mishra and Erkan K1li<;.
Swarnlata mentioned an occasion when the previous personality in her case
and another woman had gone to a wedding in a village (which she named),
where they had had difficulry finding a latrine. Erkan Kd1c; knew that a watch
the previous personality in his case had given to a friend had tooth marks
on ir. 8
My lase objection to cryptomnesia seems even weightier than any of
chose I have already mentioned. These cases consist of much more than a display of information communicated in words, and any interpretation of them
must include the unusual behavior that most of the children show in relation to what they say abouc the previous life. In the case of Pushpa, for
example, lee us assume that in the vegetable marker she had heard talk about
the fatal stabbing of the Sikh girl whose life she claimed to remember. This
overhearing might explain the knowledge she had about the Sikh girl, but it
could not explain her strong identification with that girl, and it could nor
account for her unusual interest in the Sikh religion (her family being Hindus), her phobia for knives, and her strong attachment to the family of the
murd.ered girl. Such behavior is part of an entire role; it is an aspect of personality tra~scending mere verbal knowledge. One may argue that if Pushpa
came to believe that she had been stabbed in a previous life, a phobia of knives
woul~ become a natural expression of rhar belief. One might similarly try to
explam her. ocher behavior as expressions of her strong conviction that she
r~ally had lived the previous life she claimed to remember. This interpreratwn, h~wev~r, would leave rhe remaining question of why a child would take
on the identity of a murdered girl in rhe first place.
Although I chink cryptomnesia an improbable explanation for the cases,
I cannot say the same of paramnesia, which is the technical word for distortions and inaccuracies in the informants' memories. I think that if I were
going to coach a critic of these cases, I should advise him to concentrate on
w~atever evidence he can find of the unreliability of the informants' memones.
To understand how paramnesia may occur, or at least one way in which
ic may occur, we need to consider again a child's first utterances about a previous life that he seems to remember. Let us suppose that his parents, hearing

1. The Analysis and Interpretation ofthe Cases

155

him make a few statements, begin to give them a coherence that they may
not have had. They think of the sort of person about whom the child might
be talking. Then they start searching for such a person. They find a family
having a deceased member whose life seems to correspond to the child's
statements. They explain to this family what their child has been saying
about the previous life. The second family agrees that the child's statements
might refer to the deceased member of their family. The two families
exchange detailed information about the deceased person and about what the
child has been saying. From enthusiasm and carelessness, they may then
credit the child with having stated numerous details about the identified
deceased person, when in fact he said very little, and perhaps nothing specific,
before the two families met. In this way a myth of what the child had said
might develop and come to be accepted by both the families. How far will
such an explanation take us?
It certainly seems the best one for some cases. I mentioned above that
the strong desire of many Druse persons to trace a deceased person into a
new incarnation or to learn a living person's past identity may lead them to
close prematurely the question of identification in a case. When a Druse
dies, his family nearly always wishes to know where he has been reborn, and
when a Druse baby is born, his family nearly always wishes to know who he
was in his previous life. Thus, the eager family of an infant barely speaking
may meet the equally eager family of a deceased person whose members are
still grieving for him. It would be surprising if two such families did not
sometimes incorrectly agree on slender evidence that they had made the right
match of infant and deceased person, when they had not done so. Later, they
could honestly believe the child had said much more about the previous life
before the two families met than he had said. The additional details thus
accreted to the case would give it an appearance of having stronger evidence
than it had.
Nevertheless, when we test this explanation in many cases, including
some Druse ones, it seems inadequate. First, it could not app~y to tho~e
cases in which someone had made a written record of what the child had said
before his statements were verified and before the two families concerned had
met. In such cases, we know that the child really did say before the families
met what they later said he had said. Unfortunately, these cases are still few
(less than 1. 5 percent of all cases) compared with the large number in which
no such record was made. 9
In other cases, however, my associates and I have reached the scene of
a case within a few weeks or months of the first meeting between the families concerned, wand probably the informants' memories had faded little during this interval. In other instances this meeting has taken place after the child

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

has been talking about the previous life for a year, or maybe several years.
Throughout this period the typical child has repeated many ti mes his main
statements about the previous life. I have already said that this repetition
would tend to fix what the child had been saying firmly in the minds of listening adults, and it seems unlikely that these memories would be much
altered by meeting the other family. Serious distortions in remembering what
the child said in most such cases would require the informants to have more
impaired memories than there is any evidence of their having. The defect,
moreover, would have to affect more than one person, because for many
cases several informants have corroborated each other (with some discrepancies about details) as to what the child said before the two families met.
One may argue nevertheless that motives for shaping the case in a particular way may be strong enough to produce distortions in memory of the
magnitude required. There is no doubt that such motives occur in some
cases. The parents often wish their child's statements about the previous life
proven correct; a confirmation of their accuracy would vindicate the family
against doubts that gossiping neighbors may have expressed. And as I have
mentioned, a family that has lost a loved member may show faulty judgment
in appraising a child's statements, out of a wish to believe that the deceased
member has returned to life, if not with them, at least in another family.
Against cases of these types, however, we can set as many more in which
the families concerned either are indifferent to the case or adopt negative attitudes toward it. I have already pointed out that many parents find the child's
statements uncongenial for one reason or another. They may believe it can
harm him to remember a previous life; they may fear they will lose him to
the other family; they may be reluctant to have anyone verify statements the
~hild has made. about another life that was, compared with theirs, lived either
m very poor circumstances or in very prosperous ones; or they may dislike
any enc~ura~ement of behavior that they find unattractive in the child and
that venfication of his statements might enhance . 11
For their part, the members of the previous personality's family may be
less rea~y to. endorse the case than we might expect on the basis of their beliefs
and their gnef considered alone. I have already mentioned that some of them
(particularly wealthy persons) are afraid that the subject's family means to
exploit them. Others dread discreditable revelations that the subject may
make about their family. Still others_ paradoxically perhaps - fear that
exposure to the subject will reawaken the grief they continue to have for the
deceased person . 12
For these diverse reasons it often happens that one or the other of the
families concerned has no wish to have the subject's statements verified. Such
persons would tend to minimize, nor exaggerate, the child's accuracy. In

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157

sum, paramnesia, whether from ordinary forgetfulness with the passage of

time or from motivated distortion of memories, may affect the accuracy of
some informants' reports and may occasionally account for an entire case,
but I do not think it an adequate explanation for most cases.13
Three analyses that we conducted provide some assurance that we can,
in general, rely on the memories of informants for the essential features of
the cases.
In the first analysis I studied nineteen major discrepancies that I found
when I compared what one informant (or sometimes more than one) said
about the location of wounds in the previous personality with either a pertinent medical document (such as a postmortem report) or the statements of
one or more other informants who I judged were more reliable. Half the errors
occurred because of confusion between left and right. In some instances the
error was unimportant; in others it was not. In four cases, however, informants did not mention an actual concordance between a birthmark and a
wound, which I would have failed to learn about at all, if I had not obtained
a medical document. Among forty-nine cases for which I did obtain a medical document, the informants were correct in eighty-eight percent of cases
and wrong in twelve percent.
In the second analysis (to which I referred in Chapter 5) Dr. Sybo
Schouten and I compared two series of cases in India and Sri Lanka. The
first series consisted of twenty-one cases in which someone, usually a member of an investigative team, had made a written record of the subject's statements before they were verified. We call these "B" cases (for Before). We
compared the statements recorded for the subjects of these cases with those
of eighty-two otherwise comparable cases for which a written record was
made only after the concerned families had met. We call these "A" cases (for
After). We found that "A" cases had a significantly lower total number of
statements than the "B" cases. The percentage of correct statements did not
differ significantly between the two series. These results tell against the
hypothesis that after the families meet the informants become confused about
just what the subject said before they met and tend to give him more credit
for being correct than he should receive.
In a further study Dr. Ji.irgen Keil and I compared information he
obtained for fifteen cases with the information that I had obtained for the
same cases when I studied them, on average, more than 20 years earlier. We
scored them on what we call a "paranormality rating scale," which grades our
judgments about the likelihood that the subject could not have obtained
correct information about the previous personality by normal means. With
one exception, we found that the informants had not altered the essentials
of the cases with the passage of time so that they then seemed more

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

paranormal than they had earlier appeared to be. The exc~ption was n_or
necessarily an embellishment; it might have resulted from the mformants failing to tell me about an important detail that they remembered after I had
completed my study of the case.
Although these analyses bring reassurance about the credibility of most
informants, even when they recount events that happened some years before
our interviews, the reassurance is only general; it in no way frees us from the
need to appraise the accuracy of each informant as best we can.
Fraud, cryptomnesia, and paramnesia are rhe three main explanations
we can offer for these cases that do not suppose some process, such as telepathy or survival of death, that is regarded as paranormal in Western societies.
The word "paranormal," as I explained in chapter 1, refers to concepts that
are not yet assimilated into the main body of Western science. Before discussing these paranormal explanations, I shall briefly evaluate one more normal explanation that is frequently advanced for these cases. I refer to
"inherited memory" or "genetic memory."
When the interval between the death of the presumed previous personality and the subject's birth is sufficiently long, the subject could be a
descendant of the previous personality and therefore could, in principle,
inherit memories of his life. The derailed images that most of the subjects
of these cases describe, however, far exceed the kind of memory that is usually credited to inheritance. When we use the phrase "inherited memory" or
the word "instinct," we are usually thinking about spiders that spin webs and
birds that build nests without being taught to do so. Our concept of such
instinctive behavior does nor usually suppose that the spider or the bird has
conscious images of previous webs spun and nests built. Such activities are
better subsumed under what I call behavioral memories. However, perhaps
the communicating sounds of animals, like the songs of birds, have some faint
resemblance to the imaged memories of past events that rhe subjects of these
cases demonstrate. If this is so, we could allow that the subjects might inherit
imaged memories as well as behavioral ones.
There remain, however, graver objections to genetic memory as an
explanation for most of these cases. First, the interval between death and birth
(in cases we have so far reported) is usually extremely short and rarely more
14
than five years. A subject born in a different family just a few months or
years after the previous personality's death could not possibly be a descendant of rhe previous personality.
Furthermore, genetically transmitted memories could never include the
memory of an event that occurred after the conception of che previous personality's children through whom the memories might descend. le follows
that memories of a person,s death could not be rransm i tted genetically, and

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159

yet the majority of the children of these cases remember - even when they
remember little else - how the previous personality died. Ir may help the
reader to consider here the case (summarized in chapter 3) of Mary Magruder,
who had a recurrent nightmare of being chased by an American Indian who
seemed intent on scalping her. I said earlier that we might explain her case
by inherited memory, but there is an essential condition for the use of this
interpretation. If the girl attacked by the Indian escaped her pursuer, and later
had children, they might have inherited the memories of her ordeal and these
might have continued to pass down ro later descendants until they reached
Mary Magruder. If the Indian caught and killed her, however, such memo15
ries would not have descended through any of her children already born.
Turning now to explanations that include some paranormal process, I
recognize three principal ones that deserve attention: extrasensory perception, possession, and reincarnation. I explained in chapter 3 that we have
almost no independent evidence for reincarnation apart from the cases that
my colleagues and I have investigated; and therefore I would not accept it
as the best explanation for any case until I had eliminated, so far as I could,
all other explanations, including paranormal ones. Of these latter I shall first
discuss extrasensory perception and possession.
During the first years of my research on these cases, I cook extrasensory
perception more seriously as a plausible explanation for them than I don.ow.
I still consider it an important possibility, bur I no longer give it the weight
that I formerly did.
I have two main reasons for this change of opinion. First, the chil.d
subjects hardly ever show, or have credited to them by their families, any evidence of extrasensory perception apart from the memories of a previous life.
I have asked many parents about such capacities in their children. ~ost of
them have denied char the child in question had any; a few have said that
their child had occasionally demonstrated some form of extrasensory perception, bur the evidence they provided was usually seamy. I cannot understand how a child could acquire by extrasensory perception the considerable
stores of information so many of these subjects show about a de~eased ~er
son without demonstrating - if not often, at least from time to nme - similar paranormal powers in other contexts. 16
In addition, as I have said more than once already, a case nearly always
includes more than rhe verbal statements chat the child makes about the previous life. For one to several years, and sometimes for much longer, most of
the subjects show behavior chat is unusual for their families, but that marches
what we could learn or reasonably infer about the behavior of the previous
personality.
Many of the subjects respond with strong emotion and in appropriate

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

ways to stimuli related to the previous personality. For example, ismail

Altmkil1c; clapped with joy when he learned that the murderers of the man
whose life he remembered had - after particularly lengthy legal proceedings - been judicially hanged. I mentioned earlier that other subjects, for
example, Imad Elawar and Sukla Gupta, were brought to tears by the mere
mention of some untoward event in the life of a person of whom the previous personalities in their cases had been fond. One may suppose that individual emotions may be communicated by extrasensory perception, and
indeed there is evidence for this, bur much more is at issue in the behavioral
responses that I am discussing. The child shows a syndrome of behaviors that
in the more developed instances amounts to a facsimile of the previous personality's character. (In chapter 5 I gave some examples of such syndromes.)
We have no grounds for thinking that processes of paranormal cognition can
reproduce, in effect, an entire personality transposed to another physical
body. Experimental parapsychology certainly offers no evidence for extrasensory perception of the kind required, and other types of spontaneous cases
only rarely offer parallels.17
Leaving aside the question of the incommunicability by paranormal
processes of a complex group of behavioral responses, the subject's imitation
of another person requires a strong motive on his part. In most cases, however, we cannot find any such motive. The unusual behavior of the subject,
as I have shown, frequently embroils him in conflict with his family without bringing him any concomitant benefits. It has been suggested that my
knowledge of the subjects' personalities is too shallow to reveal such dark
motives. That may be possible, bur the demand for more searching inquiries
may be insatiable. Those who make this suggestion should expose the hidden motives themselves in actual cases instead of abstractly assuming them.
I also cannot find in most of the subjects' parents any reason why they
should wish to impose a different personality on their child, assuming they
had somehow obtained the necessary information - whether normally or by
extrasensory perception.
In the paragraphs above I have supposed that the extrasensory perception invoked in this explanation would occur between the subject of the case
and living persons who knew the previous personality. (He might need some
supplementary clairvoyance for reading obscure documents not easily accessible that sometimes figure in the cases.) The variant of paranormal cognition known as retrocognition supposes no living agents as the source of the
subject's information; instead, he draws this from a hypothetical "universal
memory" on which all events are somehow inscribed. However, retrocognition has the weaknesses, when applied to these cases, of other forms of extrasensory perception. For example, it does not explain why the subject shows

7. The Analysis and Interpretation ofthe Cases

161

such a remarkable paranormal talent only in one situation: that of seeming

to remember a previous life.
Advocates of extrasensory perception need to include in their explanation the birthmarks, birth defects and other physical abnormalities that figure
prominently and relevantly in many of these cases. They can perhaps do this
by bringing in the concept of maternal impressions to which I alluded in
chapter 5. By combining extrasensory perception and maternal impressions
one might seem to cobble an interpretation of the cases that would make the
idea of survival otiose. Apart from the topheaviness of this assemblage it
seems quite insufficient to account for the intense identification of the subject with the previous personality. Whoever adopts this interpretation has to
suppose that the subject's mother first obtains all the necessary information
by telepathy from the surviving relatives of the concerned deceased person.
In many cases, but not in all, the mother has seen or heard about the wounds
on that person; the images of them could, in principle, become imprinted
on her gestating baby. Does she also impose on the fetus, or perhaps the baby
after its birth, the imaged memories and the behavior unusual for the baby's
family but characteristic of the deceased person? I cannot believe it. William
of Ockham's razor would surely slash through such conjectures.
I have come now to possession. For several centuries the idea that a discarnate personality might take over or "possess" a living person has been
unfashionable in Western intellectual circles, but from time to .time this. idea
18
has been proposed as an explanation for cases suggestive o f remcarnat10~.
Possession seems to me an important alternative explanation for the cases with
anomalous dates (of death and birth), to which I briefly referred in chapter 5. There are also some cases, such as those of Ravi Shankar Gupta and
Sujith Lakmal Jayaratne, in which the subject's mother was two or three
months pregnant when the previous personality died. If we believe that co~
ception and early embryonic development require the association of some discarnate mind or soul with the developing physical body, we could also
subsume these cases under possession.
I do not, however, favor the interpretation of possession for the standard cases suggestive of reincarnation. I say this for several reasons. First, the
concept of possession fails to account for the almost universal amnesia that
overtakes the subjects between the ages of four or five and seven or eight.
Why should all possessing personalities quit their victims when the children
are at about the same age? Second, the frequent stimulation of the subject's
memories by visits to the family and community of the previous personality seems better explained by mental associations than by possession. Third,
the subjects are usually ignorant of changes that have taken place in people
and buildings since the previous personality died; I should have expected a

162

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LI\'ES

possessing discarnate personality not to be omniscient, but to be more aware

of such changes than the subjects are. Fourth, the interpretation of possession fails to account for the occurrence of birthmarks and birth defects apparently related to previous lives. Whatever the origin of these, they clearly
antedate the subject's birth; and if we say that possession starts at conception, or even during embryonic life, I fail to see how the concept differs from
that of reincarnation. I shall next turn to a discussion of the merits of reincarnation as an interpretation for these cases.
Reincarnation, as I said earlier, is the last interpretation we should
accept for the cases, and we should adopt it only after we have eliminated
all the alternative explanations, for each of which we have some independent
evidence. All the cases that I have investigated have some flaws, and some
have many. Moreover, their blemishes are of different sorts. Of some cases
it can be said that we reached the scene too late, by which time important
memories had faded or become distorted. In others, one can imagine some
previously overlooked connection between the families concerned. In still
others, one can discredit the testimony because we observed some prompting of the subject by an adult or found important discrepancies in the testimony. One may ask, nevertheless, how reasonable such criticisms are and to
what extent they cover all the cases. When we do this we find that judgments
about them depend greatly on the initial stance the person judging adopts
toward reincarnation. A person who already believes in reincarnation will
probably overlook flaws in the evidence or minimize them; a disbeliever, on
the other hand, may magnify them and justify rejecting all the cases because
of them. The situation resembles that of different persons regarding a bottle containing some wine. Some may say that the bottle is half full, others
that it is half empty.19
.
This is not a situation without hope of resolution. Further investigations 1:1ay provide evidence pointing more definitely toward the correct interpret~tton. For example, we may find more cases in which someone has made
a wrmen record of the subject's statements before they are verified. I do not
think I could have been more eager to find such cases or more disappointed
that we have so far found so few. Still, there may be further steps we can take
in this endeavor. 20
We may also obtain better data from the further investigation of cases
with birthmarks and birth defects, and perhaps from some other types of
cases, such as those of the sex-change type and those occurring among twins.
(I shall say more about these types of cases in chapters 8 and 9.)
I may have a duty here to say what interpretation of the cases I myself
favor. I have no preferred interpretation for all the cases, and I do not think
any single one of them offers compelling evidence of reincarnation. Yet I can

7. The Analysis and Interpretation ofthe Cases

163

say that I think reincarnation is, for some cases, the best interpretation. I am
not claiming that it is the only possible interpretation for these cases, just
that it seems the best one among all those that I have mentioned. 21
I have already disclaimed any expectation that this book by itself will
convince any reader that reincarnation may occur. My more modest hope is
that it will lead some readers to study my other books in which I have given
detailed case reports. If you, the reader of this book, should turn to my others, I exhort you to give your attention unstintingly to the details of the
cases. "More details. More details. Originality and truth are found only in
the details," Stendhal has one of his characters exclaim.22 I agree, with the
addition that details provide more than just the interest of the cases; they contain the key to their interpretation.
After you have read my detailed case reports, I do not think you will
say there is no evidence for reincarnation, although you may certainly say
that you find what we have unconvincing. If you reach that point, I think it
fair to ask you: "What evidence, if you had it, would convince you of reincarnation?"

The Analysis of Large Series of Cases

In chapter 1 I mentioned the value of examining large numbers of cases,
and I quoted Kant approvingly as having said that although individua! cases
raised doubts in his mind he found his doubts lessened when he considered
all the cases together. I sh~ll now discuss this point at greater length and with
regard to the cases of children who remember previous lives.
More than a century and a half ago, Whately stated the advantages of
c
.
drr
esses of the same
.
searc h mg 10r concurrent tesnmony from merent wnn
events:
.

r negnive of several
.
.I t 1s man1fesc that the concurrent tesnmony, posmve 0
:
' . h . d

s with 1t a we1g t 111 ewicnesses, w 1en there can have been no concert carne
~
pendent of chat which may belong co each of chem considered scpar<~tely. For

as
r h oug I1, 111 sue I1 a case, each of rhe wHnesses
s J1ou 11
c be even considered
.
.
wholly undeserving of credit, still chances might be incalculable aga111sr their
all agreeing in the same falsehood.

In the above passage Whately referred to the value of separate concurrent t~s
timonies concerning the same event. As he pointed our, h~wev:r: the principle applies equally well to separate testimonies concernmg different, bur
similar, events:

164

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

The remark above made, as to che force of concurrent cescimonics, even chough
each, separacely, mighc have liccle or none, bur whose accidental agreemenc in
a falsehood would be excremely improbable ... may be exccnded co many arguments of ocher kinds also .... E.G.[sic] If any one out of a hundred men chrow
a stone which strikes a cercain object, chere is but a slight probabilicy, from chat
face alone, char he aimed ac char objecc; bur if all che hundred chrew scones
. d ac 1c.
. '3
which struck the same objecc, no one would doubt t I1at t h ey aime

Writers of an earlier generation of investigators sometimes used a different metaphor to describe the combined strength of a series of cases. It was,
they said, like that of a faggot of sticks; the sticks may all have individual
weaknesses, but these weaknesses are in different parts of the sticks, and
when all are bound together in a faggot, it has a greater strength than any
individual stick. 24 (Some critics have said that a chain with a weak link,
which for these cases would be eyewitness testimony, offers a more appropriate analogy.)
Applying the faggot principle to the present cases, we can search large
numbers of them for similar features. To the extent that we find such recurrences we shall gain confidence in the authentici ry of the cases taken as a
whole. The concordance in the accounts of widely separated informants
(having no communication with each other) points to some natural phenomenon as responsible for the similarities in the cases. We can thus delineate a standard case or type. 25 Individual cases may deviate more or less from
the standard one, but we may suspect as inauthentic any case that departs
too far from the range found in cases judged to be genuine.
If the cases of children who claim to remember previous lives are a natural phenomenon, we should observe similar features in such cases not only
between c.ultures, but within a single culture over a period of time. Dr. Satwam Pasncha and I studied two series of cases in India whose subjects had
been bo~n two generations apart. Later, Dr. Keil and I compared two series
of cases m. Turkey wh ose su b'Jeers were born about one generauon

apart. In
both studies we found that the main features of the cases recurred in the temporally separated series of cases.
The study of large numbers of cases has another value no less important than that of assisting us to detect inauthentic ones. By establishing a type
of case, we can relate its features to knowledge we have of other processes
and to cases of other types; and these comparisons may eventually lead to
our understanding the processes involved in the newly identified type.
Here I must add another warning. The haphazard ways in which information about cases reaches us - which I hope I have fully exposed - tell us
that the cases we have studied may not be representative of all naturally
occurring ones. However, we are entitled to ask whether the cases we have

7. The Analysis and Interpretation of the Cases

165

are unrepresentative in important ways or only in unimportant ones, and I

shall address this question later.
I have already mentioned (in chapter 5) several of the recurrent features
of the cases, such as the usual ages of the child's first speaking and of his no
longer speaking spontaneously about the previous life. Here I shall mention
some other recurrent features.
The first of these finally explains why, as I mentioned in a note to the
Preface for the first edition of this book, I have used masculine pronouns in
referring to the subjects of the cases: the majority are males. In a series of
1,095 cases, 62 percent of the subjects were male and 38 percent female. We
have found a similar lopsided proportion of males (66 percent) to females
(34 percent) among the previous personalities. With one exception, this
difference occurred in the cases of all cultures. 26 I discuss possible reasons for
it in chapter 10.
One of the most interesting, and potentially most important, of the
recurrent features is the high incidence of violent death among the previous
personalities of the cases. We found that among 725 cases from six different
cultures, 61 percent of the subjects remembered previous lives that ended in
violent death. 27 This incidence far exceeds the incidence of violent death in
the general populations of the countries where these cases occurred. But we
need to ask whether it might arise from biases in the reporting of cases to us.
Violent deaths attract more attention than natural ones, and our informants
may have remembered longer and better the cases in which violent death
figured than those in which the previous life recalled had ended naturally.
We were able to study indirectly the influence that violent death might
have on the reporting of cases through a comparison of two series of cases in
India. The cases of the first series were collected unsystematically over a
period of about twenty years. Emry into this series depended on the casual,
unforced memories of informants who for one reason or another notified one
of my associates or me about a case. There were 193 cases in this series. The
nineteen cases in the second, much smaller, series were detected during the
systematic survey in the Agra District (which I first mentioned in chapter 5).
Informants were selected randomly and asked to search their memories for
any case of the reincarnation type they could remember. In the larger, unsystematically collected series, the incidence of violent death in the previous life
was 49 percent; in the smaller series it was only 35 percent. The difference
suggests that some of the high incidence of violent death in the larger series
may be due to informants' remembering cases with violent death more than
they remember those with natural death; however, an incidence of 35 percent violent deaths still far exceeds that in the general population of India,
28
which (for the comparable period) was less than 7 percent.

166

CHILDREN WHO R.ErvtEMBER PREVIOUS LI\'ES

The high incidence of violent death in these cases seems therefore to be

a natural feature, not an artifact of reporting. The prominence of violent
death among the cases of all cultures in which I have investigated these cases
seems to me one of the most important features of the data. I shall resume
its discussion in chapter 10 when I consider factors that may make some lives
more memorable than others. I shall also discuss it further in connection with
unsolved cases, which form the remaining topic of this chapter.
The unsolved cases differ from the solved ones in three fearures. 29 First,
the subjects of unsolved cases remember the name of the previous personality much less often than do the subjects of solved cases. This is not independent of the failure to solve the case, because, as I explained earlier, finding
a person corresponding to the child's statements requires that he state at least
some proper names, and when he fails ro mention the name of the person
whose life he claims to remember, it becomes more difficult to solve the case
than when he does.
The second difference between solved and unsolved cases also seems to
have a simple explanation. The subjects of unsolved cases stop talking about
the previous lives they remember much earlier than do the subjects of solved
ones. The former stop talking about the previous lives at an average age of
less than six years, whereas the latter go on speaking about them until an average age of almost seven and a half years. In chapter 5 I attributed this differe~ce to the greater attention and encouragement to speak that other persons
give the subject of a solved case. In contrast, the parents of a child who
makes unverified statements about a previous life can rapidly lose interest in
~hat he is saying, and so he tends to stop speaking about it. Also, the subjects of_s~lved cases nearly always exchange visits with the other family, and
these vistts would keep the subject's memories in his consciousness and
thereby postpone their fading.
Third, the subjects of unsolved cases remember the death in the previous life as violent much more often than do the subjects of solved cases.
Among solved cases a verified violent death occurred in 51 percent of the
cases, but 91 percent of the subjects of the unsolved cases said the death they
remembered had been violent. The question arises of whether the subjects
of unso.lved cases may be imagining a violent death. Since what they say is
not venfied, they may be narrating nothing but fantasies, but it is also possible that some subjects of this group have had vague memories of a real previous life, which they have embellished with a fantasy of violent death.
Perhaps, however, the subjects of unsolved cases are not fantasizing.
Instead, they may be remembering real previous lives, but with less verifiable
detail (and perhaps also with more errors) than the subjects of solved cases.
Although unsolved cases differ from solved ones in three important features,

7. The Analysis and Interpretation of the Cases

167

they resemble the solved ones in three other features. The subjects of unsolved
cases begin to speak about the previous life at the same age as do rhose of
solved cases, and rhey mention the manner of dying in the previous life and
show phobias relared to the death just as often as do the subjects of solved
cases. These similariries suggest that the unsolved cases belong to the same
species, or ar leasr to rhe same genus, as the solved ones.
Rerurning for a moment to the group of cases as a whole - solved and
unsolved ones - 72 percent of the subjects remembered rhe previous personaliry's manner of dying, but only 63 percent remembered his name.
Among solved cases (in which the mode of death was ascertainable) 94 percenr of the subjects remembered the mode of dearh when it was violenr, bur
only 52 percent remembered it when it was natural. Among solved cases 76
percent of the subjects remembered the previous personality's name. Ir
appears, rherefore, thar if reincarnation occurs and a person dies violenrly
and reincarnates with only a few memories of the previous life, the violenr
death is more likely to figure among those memories rhan the person's name.
This development repeared in numerous cases might parrly accounr for the
much higher incidence of remembered violenr dearh among unsolved compared with solved cases. (I am not suggesting, however, that ir is rhe only
factor contributing to this important difference between the solved and
unsolved cases.)
This concludes all I can say at present about the analysis of large numbers of cases. In previous publications I have sometimes called rhe recurrent
features rhar we have identified in rhe cases of all culrures (so far srudied) by
the somewhar grandiose and possibly misleading rerm "universal." I have nor
meant to imply by this word that the identified fearures occur in every case,
but they are found with a high frequency in the cases of every culrure rhat
we have so far examined for rhem. Other fearures of rhe cases vary from one
culture to another much more than do the ones I have mentioned in this
chapter. I shall describe some of these culture-bound features in the next
chapter.
Before ending chis chapter, however, I wish to raise the quesri01~ of
how we should explain the recurrent features of rhe cases char I have JUSt
reviewed. le seems impossible that rhe similarities in rhe cases from widely
separated cul cures arose from knowledge che informants had of cases in cultures outside their own. Reports of cases published in the newspapers and
magazines of Asia and Africa are nearly always confined to local cases. The
newspapers and magazines of one country almost never publish reports of
cases in another country. Some of our informants have had a little information about one or two cases of their own country other than the one for which
they furnished information. They have learned about these either through

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

oral communication in their community or from reading reports of other

cases in a magazine or newspaper. They had no knowledge of recurrent features in series of cases. There have been no publications of data from large
series of cases that the average Asian informant for these cases could have read.
Thus the informants have no model to which they might try to make a case
conform, either to accord with their own beliefs or perhaps to suit what they
think investigators would like to hear.3 If, however, they are not adapting
their accounts to match others, we are warranted in believing that they are
describing a natural phenomenon.

CHAPTER

Variations in the Cases

of Different Cultures
In this chapter I shall consider two aspects of the relationship between
the cases and cul tu re: variations in the incidence of reported cases in different
cultures and variations in their features in different cultures. These topics are
not completely independent, but I think it appropriate to discuss them separately.

Variations in the Incidence of Reported Cases

in Different Cultures
I have emphasized that we know something about the incidence of
reported cases, but almost nothing about the real incidence of cases. Nevertheless, even within the group of reported cases we find important differences
from cul tu re to culture. I have also said that cases are reported much more
~requently in cultures having a belief in reincarnation than in those without
It. Anyone doubting this has only to compare the abundance of cases among
the Druses of Lebanon with their scarcity- near absence, I could sayamong Christians of Lebanon in neighboring villages, or even in mixed villages where Druses and Christians live almost side to side. Similar differences
occur in the incidence of reported cases among the Christians and Buddhists
of Sri Lanka and among the Hindus and Moslems of India. Cases do occur
among the Moslems of India (as they occasionally do among Christians of
Lebanon and Sri Lanka), but only with extreme rarity.
The most obvious explanation for these differences is that culture facilitates the development of cases. I agree with that, because if parents believe
169

170

CHILDREN WHo Rn.tEMBER PREv1ous L1vi-:s

that reincarnation is possible, they will allow a child to talk about a previous life without thinking him mad or silly. Cultural influences, however, can
lead to the suppression of cases just as much as to their promotion, and we
cannot ask why so many cases occur in Southeast Asia, parts of western Asia,
and West Africa without also asking why so few occur in Europe and North
America. Parents who disbelieve in reincarnation may have just as much
influence over their children as those who believe in it.
I think there must be factors other than the acceptance of reincarnation
that lead to the development of more cases in some parts of the world than
in others. What might they be? If we assume for the moment that the
influence of reported cases known to us is approximately proportional to the
real incidence of cases in different pans of the world, we cannot account for
the different incidences on the basis of a simple connection between belief
and the occurrence of cases. If there were nothing more to be considered, we
should expect a much higher incidence of cases in Western countries where,
on average, more than 20 percent of the population believe in reincarnation.
Although I believe more cases are suppressed in the West than in Asia, I do
not believe that the much lower frequency of cases in the West derives only
from more suppression there than in Asia. (We have seen that approximately
40 percent of cases in India are suppressed, and yet the cases occur abundantly there.)
We are led, therefore, to conclude that the countries and cultures where
the. ~ases are found abundantly must have some other important factor that
facilnates the development of cases. Or perhaps there are several such factors.

~he peoples where the cases frequently occur have (in general)
tures
a.

In

these fea-

common (in addition to the belief in reincarnation):

The~ remember the dead more than we do in the West. Living persons
con~ide: dead ones as being still present, active, and capable of intervening m terrestrial affairs; it is thought that they need our help and we
need theirs.

b.

They also remember living persons more than we do in the West. Family ties ar~ stronger and more obligatory. When one of them becomes
~enrally di, the family consolidates with the patient against the illness;
in the West the family of a mentally ill patient rends to extrude him from
its circle of amity. Nor surprisingly, the rate of recovery (and duration
of recovery) from serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, is
markedly higher in underdeveloped countries compared with highly
1
industrialized ones. We might even regard the corruption that often
dismays the modern Western visitor among these peoples as a form of

8. Variations in the Cases of Different Cultures

c.

d.

e.
f.

g.

171

family assistance. To abandon corruption and supersede it with loyalty

to a larger group, say the community or nation, may weaken family ties.
Their concept of causality embraces many more events than do concepts
of causality in the West. They have no idea chat corresponds to Western
ideas of "chance," "luck" and "randomness." Instead, events always happen because someone - be he good or evil - wishes them to happen or
has deserved that they should happen. This feature pertains particularly
to illness. Traditional healers, shamans, and other persons having similar roles would lose their clientele rapidly if they announced that a disease was just bad luck or happened by accident. Always they will say it
is due to sinfulness on the part of the afflicted person, failure to worship
ancestors properly, jealousy of ochers who have invoked malignant spir2
its against him, and numerous other personal reasons - but not chance.
They believe more than do Western persons that distantly separated persons can communicate with each other. Thus, telepathy and related
experiences that Western persons designate as paranormal they regard as
normal, even though unusual. They often regard dreams as truth-celling
and believe that the living can sometimes meet the dead in dreams. The
concept of privacy as we know it in the West has hardly begun to develop
in the countries of which I am speaking. This may reflect poverty and
overcrowding more than choice. Be that as it may, if there is no shutting out of other persons from your normally conducted affairs, perhaps
this helps you to be more open to telepathic communications in which
other persons reach into your mind without the use of the normal senses.
They value verbal skills less than we do in the West; they may thereby
preserve mental imagery better.
Time passes differently among them. A Westerner may find the lack of
"time sense" among Asians and Africans vexatious, but they may chink
his dock-ridden punctuality pathetic.
Among these peoples there is less to be done, or at any race, less sense
than in the West that one must be doing something all the time. This
gives more time for reflection and perhaps allows memories - of the present life as well as of any past ones lived and remembered - to come into
consciousness.

These factors seem to me to favor the kinds of experiences that we in

the West consider paranormal - not just memories of previous lives, but
many other types of related experiences: telepathic impressions, poltergeists,
apparitions, and others. I am not one to lament the loss of past simplicities,
but everyone who thinks about these differences should ask himself whether
the West may have lost as well as gained in making its technologi,al advances.

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

I may not have identified the critical factors that account for the more
abundant occurrence of cases in some parts of the world compared with others. Some of my readers may think of other distinguishing features. I shall
be satisfied concerning this matter if I have thwarted an intention to say
casually that the belief in reincarnation alone sufficiently explains the different
incidences of reported cases in different countries. There must be more to
be learned about the causes of these differences.
If I am correct, however, in delineating the features I have mentioned
as important, they do not by themselves suffice to produce large numbers of
children who remember previous lives any more than does the unaided belief
in reincarnation. Most of the people living in vast tracts of Asia, Africa, and
Latin America have the same beliefs and attitudes that I have described, and
yet they have few cases. Most of them, however, do not believe in reincarnation; it is not part of orthodox doctrine among either Sunni Moslems or
Christians. In sum, the occurrence of frequent cases seems to require both
the belief in reincarnation and some other factor or factors; neither, alone,
is sufficient to generate numerous cases.
Before leaving this topic I shall mention two other factors that may be
in play. First, it is possible that, if reincarnation occurs, the belief in reincarnation itself may be carried over from one life to another. In chapter 1
I discussed the concept of behavioral memory as applied to cases of the rein~arnation type. In that chapter I also alluded to the possibility of our having subliminal cognitive memories that we have carried over from previous
lives, and I gave the example of knowing how to speak a language. Later, in
chapter 5, I said that strongly held attitudes - such as about being a woman,
a Fre~chman, a Moslem, or a white person - might be reinforced by similar existences in successive previous lives. Here I wish to add to these examples.that of beliefs, including the belief in reincarnation itself. This could be
car~ted ?ver from one life to another and become stronger with each incarnatton m a culture favorable to it. It would not need to be remembered
explicitly, only as an intuition; it could pass from one life to another as a mental set or frame to which other, more distinct memories could be related. If
a child is born with a belief in reincarnation carried over from a previous life,
he has at hand a conceptual scheme into which he can fit any imaged memories of a previous life that he also happens to have. On the other hand, a
child who does not have such a framework may reject any imaged memories
he has of a previous life and, in effect, suppress himself.
I know that something like self-suppression of apparent memories of a
previous life does sometimes occur, because some Western subjects have told
me that as young children they had clear mental images of scenes and events
in some other time and place, but that at that age they could not understand

8. Variations in the Cases ofDifferent Cultures

173

what significance these images might have. They ignored (and concealed)
them, but did not forget them. Years later, they read for the first time about
reincarnation and then thought that perhaps the puzzling images of scenes
and events they had had when much younger could have been memories of
a previous life. 3
Second, the interval between death and reincarnation may be shorter
in countries having a high incidence of reported cases than it is where cases
are reported less often. We find some evidence of a longer interval in the cases
of Western Europe and North America than occurs in those of Asia, but we
still have too few verified Western cases to justify a strong assertion about
this difference.
We have found some anomalous occurrences of cases in the same culture, broadly considered. I will mention two examples in India.
The first anomaly is the comparative paucity of cases reported from
south India compared with their abundance in the north. We have files on
more than 400 cases from northern India and on only eight from southern
India. (The disproportion far exceeds the difference in population between
the two regions.) So far as we can tell from such a small number of south
Indian cases, they have the features familiar to us in the cases of the north.
How can we explain this great difference in ascertainment of cases between
the two regions of India?
The languages of the southern four states are Dravidian, not Sanskritic
like those of the north. The religion of both regions, however, is th~ sam:
Indeed, southern Indians are arguably more ardent, on the whole, m thelf
practice of Hinduism than their northern compatriots.
It seems unlikely that children who speak about previous lives are suppressed more in the south than in the north. At one time I thought we could
attribute the disparity in reports to differential reporting of cases ~y newspapers in the two regions. This may contribute some part to the d1ff~rence,
because the Hindi-medium newspapers of the north have immense circulations that can support more reporters than the regional newsp~pers of ~he
south can afford. In the 1960s and 1970s we obtained our first mformat10n
about more than a few cases in the north from newspaper reports. This is no
longer true. Instead, we learn of most cases through our own inquiries from
"subagems" and from villagers who are informants for another case.
The second anomaly in cases oflndia arises from the occurrence of considerable numbers of cases in which the subject is a Moslem who recalls a
previous life as a Moslem, a Moslem who recalls a previous life as a Hindu,
or a Hindu who recalls a previous life as a Moslem. By "considerable numbers" I mean the twenty-six cases that Dr. Antonia Mills reported, to which
several more instances have been added since the publication of her paper in

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CHILDREN WHO RH.1EMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

1990. This seems like a small number. If belief is important in generating

cases, however, they should not occur at all among Moslems in India, most
of whom are members of the Sunni division of Islam, who do not believe in
reincarnation. In Turkey, predominantly a country of Sunni Moslems, we
have learned of only two cases among Sunni Moslems of that country. I
explained earlier that many modern Moslems in India must have descended
from Moslem converts to Hinduism. These great religions have understandably continued to influence each other. Indeed, the Sikh religion derived
from an attempt to meld the best features of both. Perhaps these mutual
influences have allowed these unusual cases to occur and to be reported to
us.
To conclude this section I will mention a possibility that may seem
bizarre, but is nevertheless conjecturable. The descriptions I have given of
many cases show that they are often fraught with distress, even turmoil, for
the subjects. Could memories of a previous life be then a defect? Could some
genetic variation account for the high prevalence of cases among the Druses
of Lebanon and their near total absence among their close Christian and
Moslem neighbors? Could a similar defect account for the huge difference
in the prevalence of cases in north India compared with that in south India?
I cannot do more than pose these questions, hoping that my successors will
find ways to examine their relevance.

Variations in the Features of Cases in Different Cultures

In the last chapter I mentioned several features that occurred in the
cases of all cultures where I have studied them. The incidence of these features does vary somewhat from one culture to another. On the whole, however, the variations are slight; otherwise I would not have ventured to describe
these features as "universal." In some other features we find much greater differences from culture to culture, and I shall now describe some of these.
One such feature is the frequency with which the subject and previous
personality of a case belong to the same family. (As I mentioned earlier, I
call these same-family cases.) Cases of this group formed the majority of all
solved cases that I investigated in Burma, in Thailand, among the nontribal
cases of the United States, among the Igbo of Nigeria, and among the Tlingit of Alaska. They occurred much less frequently in India, Lebanon, Sri
Lanka, and Turkey.
Among same-family cases of the Tlingit, I found a distinctive feature:
the way in which the two persons concerned in a case are related. In about
75 percent of the cases they are related on the side of the subject's mother.

8. Variations in the Cases of Different Cultures

175

This accords with the matrilineal organization of Tlingit society; a Tlingit

derives through his mother, not his father, both his membership in one of
the tribal moieties and that part of his status that he inherits. 4
Among the same-family cases of the Igbo of Nigeria, on the other hand,
I have found the opposite type of relationship between the subjects and previous personalities of the cases. The Igbos have a patrilineal society- so
much so that preliminary genealogies sent to me by an assistant in Nigeria
frequently showed no women whatever. In keeping with this, I found among
forty-three Igbo same-family cases that the subject and previous personality were related on the father's side in thirty-two (74 percent) cases and on
the mother's side in only eleven (26 percent) cases. 5
In Burma women have a social status equal to that of men, and among
Burmese same-family cases the subject and previous personality are related
with about equal frequency through the subject's mother or father.
Announcing dreams also occur with markedly different frequencies in
the cases of different cultures. They are common among rhe cases of the
Tlingit and other tribes of northwestern North America, in Burma, and in
Turkey. They almost never occur among the Igbo or in Sri Lanka and
Lebanon. An announcing dream is more likely to be remembered if the
dreamer recognizes the person in the dream. It is possible that in a country
like Sri Lanka, where there are almost no same-family cases, persons may have
had announcing dreams in which someone completely strange to them
appeared; rhc person was not recognized, and the dream was therefore quickly
forgotten. 6 The cases of India support this interpretation. In that country,
with rare exceptions, announcing dreams occur only in same-family cases.
The absence of announcing dreams in rhe cases among the Druses of
Lebanon accords with the Druse belief that reincarnation occurs instantly at
death. Druses do nor believe that a soul or mind can exist incorporeally prior
to the Day of Judgment, and so they do not believe in rhe possibi,!ity of dis:
carnate souls. A deceased Druse could not participate in a standard
announcing dream, because he has, in rhe Oruses' view, already been reborn
in an infant's body. 7
The foregoing topic leads naturally to that of variations found in
different cultures in the interval between the death of the previous personality of a case and the subject's birth. Among the cases we have examined,
this interval varies from only a few hours to twenty years or more, although
8
the median interval among 616 cases in ten cultures was fifteen months. In
accordance with this wide variation, the members of most cultures believe
that no fixed duration exists for the interval between death and rebirth.
The Druses and the Jains (of India), however, believe that the interval
is rigidly fixed for everyone. They assert that a soul cannot exist unattached

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

to a physical body, but they differ in the beliefs they hold about when a
deceased person becomes associated with his next physical body. For Jains,
this occurs at the moment of the conception of the next body, and they therefore expect always to find an interval of approximately nine months between
the death of a person whose life a subject remembers and the birth of that
subject. Our collection of cases contains too few Jain cases to permit our saying that they always fit the Jains' expectation. 9
The Druses, on the other hand, believe that when a physical body dies,
its associated soul becomes immediately attached to a newly born physical
body, that is, to the body of an infant just delivered from its mother. The
Druses acknowledge no exceptions to the rule, and if an interval - even of
a day- occurs between the death of the previous personality and the subject's birth, they assume that an "intermediate life" filled the gap, even if the
subject does not remember it. Such a life would have been that of a person usually a young infant or child - who died at an age corresponding to the
length of the interval. Occasionally, Druse subjects have slight memories of
such intermediate lives, but most of them have none whatever.
Subjects of other countries, particularly India, sometimes claim "intermediate lives" and may narrate detailed, but usually unverified, memories of
them. Examples occurred in the cases of Swarnlata Mishra, Gopal Gupta,
Pushpa, and Manju Tripatti. All these intermediate lives are unverified.
I am inclined to think that Swarnlata Mishra remembered a real previous life, because she demonstrated recitative xenoglossy that seemed to derive
from the intermediate life she remembered. On the other hand, I believe that
Gopal Gupta's claimed intermediate life (in London, England) is at least
~artly a fantasy, which he first communicated in response to a direct question about what had happened (to him) during the eight-year interval
between the death of Shaktipal Sharma (the previous personality in his case)
and his (Gopal's) birth.
I remain in doubt about the best interpretation for the intermediate life
described by Manju Tripatti, who lived in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. She
remembered the previous life of her paternal aunt; her memories of it
included some verified details, although these were of little value evidentially
because Manju might have learned normally about her aunt. Manju was not
born until twelve years after the aunt's death. She said that during this period
she had been reborn far away in Srinagar, Kashmir. She described scenery
and other features, such as the houseboats, that one might see at Srinagar,
and she gave enough details about this life so that members of our team made
two separate efforts in Srinagar to solve this feature of the case, but we all
failed. Manju's memories of an intermediate life may have been all fantasies. Or they may have been a mixture of some real, although unverifiable

8. Variations in the Cases ofDifferent Cultures

177

memories of a previous life, supplemented with fantasies, as I think some

other unsolved cases are.
Pushpa said she had been the son of a temple priest during the approximately four years between the death she remembered in the (principal) previous life and her birth; she stated no verifiable details about this intermediate
life.
This brings me to another feature in which cases of different cultures
show marked variations. I refer to memories of experiences the subjects claim
to have had in a discarnate state between death in the previous life and
rebirth. In chapter 3 I mentioned that such memories may be either ofterrestrial events occurring after the previous personality's death or of experiences in a discarnate realm, and I gave some examples of these types of
memories.
The recall of intermediate terrestrial events occurs sporadically in the
cases of all cultures. The event of which the subject claims later to have
knowledge is often the funeral or some feature of the burial of the deceased
person whose life he remembers. 10 An event occurring in the subject's family just prior to his conception may also figure in these memories.'1
Claimed memories of experiences in a discarnate realm also occur sporadically in the cases of all cultures, but they occur much more frequently in
Burma and Thailand than elsewhere. 12 Why this should be so, I cannot say.
At one time I attributed it to the fairly widespread practice of meditation in
Burma and Thailand. Buddhist meditation is said to clarify the mind andincidentally, but not as a goal in itself- to facilitate the recall of previous lives,
including sojourns in a discarnate realm. However, the previous personalities of the subjects who have had these memories have not all been meditators; nor were they all exemplary characters.
I also think it unlikely that the high incidence in Thailand and Burma
of claimed memories of a discarnate realm has a necessary connection with
Theravada Buddhism. Theravada Buddhism is the dominant religion in
Burma and Thailand, but it is dominant also in Sri Lanka, and few subjects
there claim to remember anything of the interval between death and rebirth.
Still another variation between the cases of different cultures occurs in
the claims about rebirth in the body of a nonhuman animal. The Buddhists
and Hindus of South Asia believe that humans may be reborn as nonhuman
animals and then again as humans, and I have occasionally learned of claims
to remember a previous life as a nonhuman animal. (I discuss this topic in
a section of chapter 10.) I have never learned of a case of chis type outside
South Asia, unless we consider as exceptions one or two vague secondhand
reports that I heard in Turkey.13
I come finally to what seems to me the most important variation in

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CHILDREN WHO REMErv1BER PREVIOUS LIVES

features of the cases of different cultures, that in the incidence of cases of the
sex-change type. The proportion of such cases varies greatly among cultures;
it ranges from 50 percent of all cases among the Athabaskan of the Canadian Northwest Territories to the complete absence of such cases in Lebanon,
and among tribes of southeastern Alaska (Tlingir) 1' 1 and British Columbia
(Haida, Tsimsyan, and Girksan). For many years I thought that there were
no cases of this type in Turkey. Dr. Ji.irgen Keil, however, learned of one such
case and investigated it. The incidence of sex-change cases in Turkey must
be extremely low. The incidence in other countries falls between the mentioned extremes. For example, it is 3 percent in India, 9 percent in Sri Lanka,
13 percent in Thailand, 15 percent in the United States (nontribal cases), and
26 percent in Burma.
When I questioned informants of countries where sex-change cases
occur, they told me that sex change from one life to another is possible, but
when I questioned informants of cultures where such cases do nor occur, they
told me that it is impossible. (Sometimes they stared their opinions with some
asperity, as if I ought to have known without having to ask.) I must admit
that occasionally informants of rhe regions where sex-change cases are not
fou~d showed a momentary hesitation before they pronounced emphatically
against the possibility of sex change. I do not know what could have made
them waver, because it is in the highest degree unlikely that they could ever
have seen a sex-change case or even have heard of one until they mer me.
In all bur one of the cultures where sex-change cases occur, girls who
remember previous lives as males occur more often - still considering
re~orred. cases - than boys who remember previous lives as females. Since
this lopsided ratio appears so consistently, it might almost be regarded as one
of the "universal" features of rhe cases, although one restricted to cultures
where sex-change cases are found.is
. It is easier to detect variations among the cases in different cultures than
to interpret them. I shall offer two possible interpretations without meaning
to suggest that no others could exist. In considering these interpretations I
shall use the sex-change cases as my example, partly because of their importance and partly because I have much more data about this type of variation
among the cases than about other culture-bound variations. To introduce
what I shall say, I shall take the reader back across some ground already traversed.
Cultures are set apart not only by their social and economic practices,
but by the beliefs that the members of a culture share. Belief or disbelief in
reincarnation is a distinguishing aspect of some cultures. The various groups
believing in reincarnation have developed different subsidiary beliefs about
how it occurs and about what can and cannot happen in connection with

8. Variations in the Cases of Different Cultures

179

reincarnation. (Christians should find nothing surprising in this if they

remember that among persons trying to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ
some believe in the Immaculate Conception and others do not.) The larger
belief and the associated subsidiary beliefs form part of the cultural heritage
passed from adults to children at each generation. Although instruction in
religious beliefs begins in childhood, it continues through the later years of
childhood and beyond. Some adults - and some children also - reject the
religious beliefs of their elders and convert to other beliefs. The majority,
however, accept uncritically the beliefs that are inculcated during their childhood instruction and frequently repeated to them later. By the time most
people come to die they have fairly hardened concepts about what does or
does not happen to a person at death; they tend to reject as unsound or positively wrong concepts that differ from those they accept. A person may even
stigmatize as "impossible" some experience or claim that seems discordant
with his beliefs. Among Western persons, I have encountered numerous
examples of this attitude with regard to reincarnation itself, but it also appears
often among persons who believe in reincarnation and who have fixed ideas
about how it occurs. For example, Jains to whom I have mentioned the cases
with the feature of birthmarks find these laughably absurd; with their belief
that a soul instantly enters a new physical body at the moment of death, they
cannot accept that a mark on a new body might somehow derive from a corresponding wound on a dead one.
Similarly, Druse parents might deride a child who claimed to have lived
a previous life as a member of the opposite sex. (This is an imaginary ex~m
ple; I have never heard of a Druse child who claimed to have had a prevwus
life as a member of the opposite sex.) Parents would nor need srrong measures to suppress such a child; children can take hints as well as adults, .and
sometimes better. Just as a Christian child may suppress glimpses he thmks
he has of a previous life, so a Oruse child might conceal, and subsequently
entirely forget, memories he had about a previous life as a person of the
opposite sex. In this way no cases of the sex-change type would appear ~mo~1 g
rhe Druses, and their absence would tend to strengthen the Druses belief
that sex change could not occur from one life co another: in short, that it is
impossible.
The foregoing explanation may adequately account for the absence of
sex-change cases among the Druses. They form a rather compact group socially; they are somewhat dispersed geographically now - and printed
scriptures embody the essential elements of their beliefs. We cannot say the
same for the tribes of northwestern North America, who do not believe in
the possibility of sex change (except the Athabaskan). They cer.tainly have
no written codification of their beliefs; their religions are transmmed orally.

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

Moreover, the tribes of northwestern North America are spread over thousands of square miles of British Columbia and Alaska. They have had no
paramount chief or universally sanctified shaman whose particular beliefs
became promulgated as a truth for all to believe in. No one has paddled up
and down the channels and rivers of Alaska and British Columbia telling his
tribal neighbors that you cannot change sex from one life to another.
This being so, the question arises of whether the belief that sex change
is impossible has been transmitted by means of reincarnation itself. I suggested earlier that, if reincarnation occurs, the belief char it occurs may be
carried over from one life to another. Now I am suggesting that beliefs about
how reincarnation occurs and what may happen from one life to another may
also be carried over from one life to another.
In short, premortem beliefs, held tenaciously enough, may influence
postmortem events, including the circumstances of the next incarnation. 16
Such beliefs may resemble posthypnotic suggestions and be implemented
with the same compulsion. If a person dies believing that he cannot in
another incarnation become a person of the opposite sex, perhaps he cannot, even if he can reincarnate.
We can consider further the sequence of possible events if, say, a woman
dies and is reborn as a man in a culture, such as that of the Tlingit, with a
str?n~ belief in the impossibility of sex change. In the first incarnation as a
Tlmgn. man, the subject of this imagined case might preserve subliminal
memories of the previous life as a woman, and, even if he had no imaged
~e.~ories of that life, he might remain open-minded with regard to the possibilny of sex change. After several successive lives as a man, however, the
memories of the life as a woman would probably become more and more
attenuated and correspondingly less and less influential on the man's attitudes
toward sex change in later incarnations. Ultimately, he might come to feel
de.eply from ~ithin himself that sex change was impossible, even though he
might otherwise have some inclination to question the prevailing beliefs of
Tlingit culture.

Th~ possibility that beliefs can act as powerful releasers and inhibitors
of experiences after death and in another incarnation has far wider applications than any it may have for the sex-change cases. I shall consider a few of
these in later chapters.

CHAPTER

The Explanatory Value of

the Idea of Reincarnation
I~ chapter 6 I mentioned my surprise on first learning about the unusual
behavior that most of the subjects of these cases showed and that seemed to
correspond with behavior that the previous personalities were reported to
~ave sho_wn or might have been expected to manifest. I only gradually realized the importance of such unusual behavior for the evaluation of paranormal processes in the cases. It took me even longer to appreciate that these
behavioral components have another value, in addition to their contribution
~ 0 . the evidence of reincarnation. I refer to the possibility that reincarnation,
if 1t occurs, may explain unusual behavior of types not adequately accounted
for by current understanding in psychology and psychiatry. Beyond this,
reincarnation may even help to explain some presently puzzling b.iologi.cal
and medical phenomena. In this chapter I propose to review ways m which
I think reincarnation may help our understanding of some unsolved problems in psychology, biology, and medicine.
.
Before I come to the specific matters that I believe the idea of remcarnation can help us to understand better, I have to ask my readers to ma~e
an additional assumption. (I have already asked you, for the purposes of this
chapter, to assume that reincarnation does, in fact, occur.) This is that,
although only a small number of persons have imaged memories of events
in previous lives, many other persons may have behavioral memories or physical features derived from a previous life without having any imaged memories that might explain why or how they acquired these.
A few of the cases I have already mentioned may have prepared you for
this assumption. I refer to instances in which a subject continued to show
behavior (such as a fondness for particular foods) related to the previous life
181

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

after he had lost the imaged memories of that life. However, you may defer
accepting this assumption until after you have considered the examples I
shall present in this chapter. I shall take these (with rare exceptions) from
the cases of subjects who had both imaged memories of a previous life (usually verified ones) and related unusual behavior. If you think it reasonable to
consider the unusual behavior of these subjects a type of behavioral memory accompanying their imaged memories, you may also consider favorably
the possibility that other persons have behavioral memories without having
any imaged ones.

Unusual Behavior of Childhood

In considering the examples of unusual behavior that I shall now
describe, you should understand that, in general, the following conditions
pertain to the behavior in question. (I think it necessary to say "in general,"
because I have not always been able to make my inquiries related to the
behavior as thorough as I wished.) First, the behavior is unusual in the subject's family; other members of the family do not show it at all or show it to
a much smaller degree than does the subject. Second, I have not learned of
~ny (postnatal) experience the subject has had that could explain the behavior; nor have I learned of any model in his family or neighborhood whom
he might have imitated in acquiring the behavior.

PHOBIAS OF INFANCY AND EARLY CHILDHOOD

. In earlier chapters I have described, with examples, some of the phobias that we find in these cases. In a series of 387 children who claimed to
remember a previous life, phobias occurred in 141 (36 percent). (I published
a separate paper on these phobias.)
I also mentioned earlier that some subjects show a phobia before they
have learned to speak and can explain it (as derived from a previous life) to
their parents. Furthermore, some subjects continue to have the phobia after
they have forgotten the imaged memories of the previous life that seemed to
explain it.
The phobias commonly relate ro the mode of death in the previous life.
They occur as often in subjects with unverified memories as in those with
verified ones. Ma Tin Aung Myo, whose case I summarized in chapter 4,
offers a good example of a subject with unverified memories who had nevertheless a marked phobia - in her case, of airplanes. Phobias may even occur
in subjects who have no imaged memories whatever. In such instances the

9. The Explanatory Value of the Idea of Reincarnation

183

phobia may be combined with one or more other features of the case to support a j udgmenr that a particular deceased person has been reborn. Derek
Pitnov, a Tlingit of Alaska, is an example of such an assessment. He had no
imaged memories of a previous life, but he had a birthmark in a particular
location that matched a fatal spear wound his great-great-granduncle had
received, and he had a lifelong fear of bladed weapons.
Although most of the phobias in these cases relate to the instrument of
the previous personality's death, some subjects show phobias of the place
where the death occurred or of places resembling it. Si.ileymen Zeytun, a subject in Turkey, had memories of a man, Mehmet Coman, who had drowned.
Si.ileyman was afraid of water in general, but he was especially afraid of the
place at the River Seyhan (in south-central Turkey) where Mehmet Coman
had drowned. Necati \:aylak, another subject in Turkey, showed a marked
fear when (as a young child) he was asked ro cross a bridge at which the man
whose life he remembered had been killed in an automobile accident. Ravi
Shankar Gupta similarly showed a phobia of the place where the child whose
life he remembered had been murdered. 1
Not all subjects who remember previous lives that ended violently have
corresponding phobias. Gopal Gupta, who remembered being shot in a previous life, had no phobia of guns, and Bongkuch Promsin, who remembered
being stabbed, had none of knives or daggers. However, we find a similar
unevenness in the occurrence of phobias following accidents and injuries
that occur within a person's present life (ifl may use that expression to make
a distinction). Some persons seriously injured in a vehicle (or by one) never
go near another, whereas other persons may ride comfortably in one at t~e
earliest opporruni ty after the accident. Perhaps some of the differences. 111
responses to injuries and other traumas of this life may result from varyll1g
experiences in previous lives. If a person drowned in a previous life an.cl then
nearly drowned in this life, he might be more likely to develop a phobt<~ aft~r
the near-drowning than would someone who had no history of drown 111 g 111
a previous life.
Some deaths seem to involve more suffering than others, and the amount
of suffering as death approaches and arrives may influence whether or not a
phobia develops. However, I have found that phobias occur after a variety
of modes of death. For example, among forty-seven cases in which the previous personality drowned, a phobia of being immersed in water occurred
in thirty ( 64 percent), and a phobia of snakes occurred in thirteen (43
percent) of thirty cases in which the previous personality had died of snakebite.
Child psychiatrists know that many children have phobias that neither
the psychiatrists nor the children's parents can explain. These phobias do not

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

derive from any known trauma or imitate a similar fear in a family member.
Some psychiatrists attribute otherwise inexplainable phobias to a symbolic
displacement of a fear of some person onto another person, an animal, or an
object. Freud's case of Little Hans, who had a phobia of horses, provides an
example of such tortuous reasoning. Freud believed char Little Hans's fear
of horses masked a terror of his father, but Lierle Hans had had frightening
experiences with horses, which were enough to account for his fear of them
without invoking any other explanation. 2
If we confine a search for rhe traumas stimulating phobias to this life,
we shall probably fail to explain many of them, and we should look elsewhere
for the causes of these. Although a few phobias of childhood may have a symbolic significance, we should consider rhe possibility char a relevant trauma
may have occurred in a previous life.
The authors of a study of fifty clinical cases of childhood phobia of water
found that in twenty-eight (56 percent) cases the child's parents could report
no traumatic experience with water or a model within the family that could
account for the phobia. 3 These children showed the phobia of water at their
first contact with it. Could they have shown subliminal memories of drowning or near drowning in previous lives? Our verified cases of persons who
remembered a previous life that ended in drowning and who had a phobia
of being immersed in water make this a question worth asking.
UNUSUAL INTERESTS AND TYPES OF PLAY IN CHILDREN

When a child shows some unusual play activity (or other expressions
of ~n~su~l interests), psychologists and psychiatrists commonly attribute this
to imitation of his elders or to a need to express covertly feelings and attitude~ that h~ can~oc verbalize. For example, playing at being a soldier may
pr~vide a child wnh an acceptable way of expressing aggression. Playing at
bemg a doctor enables a child to identify with an older member of the family, the child's father perhaps, who is a doctor. Many children show early in
life an interest in the work they later cake up as adults. Among great musicians one can find numerous examples of parental influences that seem to
explain adequately the early expression of interest and skill in music. For
example, the fathers of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Elgar were
all musicians. Bue Dvofak's father was a butcher, Delius's a businessman,
Mendelssohn's a banker (albeit a cultured one), and Handel's a barber-surgeon. The case of Handel seems particularly instructive. His father opposed
Handel's interest in music, which he showed in early childhood. His mother
gave him no effective support, and although an aunt encouraged him, her
influence seems insufficient to have counteracted by itself the stern opposition

9. The Explanatory Value of the Idea ofReincarnation

185

of Handel's father. The family had no known ancestors with an interest in

music.
The prison reformer, Elizabeth Fry, showed in her youth the piety and
concern for "the lower classes" that later became her life's work. Florence
Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, expressed her later vocation in
early childhood by doctoring her dolls. Both of these women developed and
pursued their special interests against the traditions and inclinations of their
families.
Some persons of outstanding accomplishment have announced in childhood what they intended to do when they grew up. For example, Heinrich
Schliemann, who excavated Troy, said when he was less than eight years old
that he was going to find Troy. Jean-Franc;ois Champollion, the founder of
Egyptology, expressed an interest in this subject when he was still a child.
According to his recollections later, he had determined to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphics when he was not yet twelve. Michael Ventris, who deciphered Linear B, the script of the Mycenaeans, purchased and studied a
German book on Egyptian hieroglyphs when he was only seven, and when
he was fourteen he vowed to try to decode the then undeciphered Mycenaean
writing.
Among saints who have given early evidence of their life's work, St.
Catherine of Siena was unusually precocious, although not unique. In early
childhood she played at being a hermit and fasted and scourged herself; at
seven she solemnly dedicated her life to Jesus. St. Catherine's father was a
dyer of Siena, and although he and his wife were pious persons and did not
oppose their daughter's religious vocation, nothing in their lives can ade
,
quately explain her development as a saint. 4
The expression early in life of interests that are unusual ma child s family does not occur only among persons who later distinguish thems~lves. We
find ordinary children of ordinary parents showing interests that differ from

ent Several
t h ose t h at might be expected in someone from t h e1r environm
examples of such persons have been brought to my attention. One of them
showed a fascination with watches and a competence in repairing them that
had no basis in any influence from his family. Another, who was raised in
the interior of the United States, had a fascination for the sea and ships,
although other members of his family did not have the slightest interest in
seafaring. A third child of this group was a white American boy who showed
an unusual partiality toward American natives. He liked to wear their tribal
dress, and in any controversy dividing natives and white persons he invariably sided with the natives. No member of his family shared his enthusiasm
for native Americans, and his attitude made him somewhat of an outsider.
None of these children had any imaged memories of previous lives.

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

Current theories of personality cannot adequately explain the interest

in their lacer vocations char the persons I have mentioned showed, both at
an early age and against the indifference or opposition of their families. Ir
seems to me appropriate to consider the possibility that these interests derived
from previous lives, even though none of the persons had any imaged memories of such lives.
In support of chis suggestion, I can cite children from rhe cases I have
studied who did have such imaged memories and who also showed early
some unusual interest that seemed co derive from the remembered previous
life. Corliss Chockin, Jr., was one such child, and I mentioned in chapter 4
the interest that he had in engines, something that he evidently did not
acquire through inheritance or from imitating his father, who had little or
no interest in engines.
The children (usually girls) who remember rhe previous lives of persons
with strong religious interests frequently show precocious piety. This behavior may manifest itself in a family whose ocher members are also devout, as
in the case of Ratana Wongsombat; but sometimes, as in Disna Samarasinghe's case, the child belongs to a family whose other members regard religion with indifference or discasce. 5
Less amiable traits may also appear in the behavior of some children.
In two instances children who remembered previous lives as thieves engaged
in picking pockets and ocher larcenies. 6
Many subjects have expressed in their play che vocation of the previous
personality. I gave numerous examples of such play in chapter 5.
UNUSUAL APTITUDES AND UNTAUGHT SKILLS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD

A few subjects have shown in early childhood some unusual aptitude

or untaught skill. Corliss Chotkin, Jr., whom I mentioned in the preceding
secti?n, had ~ore than an interest in engines; he seemed to know how to
repair them without having been instructed in chis. Susan Eastland's mother
said that Susan sometimes seemed to know, without being caught, how co
do things she had not done before. 7
I muse note, however, the scantiness of evidence chat child prodigies
derive their skills from practice in previous lives. To the best of my knowledge no child prodigy in the West has ever attributed his skill to a previous
life, and few of Asia have done so. I have, however, studied two subjects in
India who were said to have recited in childhood lengthy passages of scriptural verses they had never learned (in childhood) and who remembered the
lives of devoutly religious persons who had learned the scriptures thoroughly.
By the time I reached these cases, one subject was a young woman, and the

9. The Explanatory Value ofthe Idea ofReincarnation

187

other was a middle-aged woman. In view of their ages, it did not seem feasible to me to try to learn exactly either what scriptures they had recited without instruction when they had been young children or what normal exposure
to the scriptures they might earlier have had. However, the careful study of
similar cases when the subjects are still young children might provide support of the idea that child prodigies have studied and learned their skills in
previous lives. 8
ADDICTIONS AND CRAVINGS

Some subjects have surprised and amused their elders by requestingeven demanding - an intoxicant, such as alcohol, tobacco, or cannabis derivatives. They claimed to remember previous lives in which these substances
solaced them, and they saw no reason why they should not resume their use.
Their tastes for the intoxicants seemed in no instance explicable by imitation of their parents, who, so far as I could learn, either did not take the drug
demanded by the child or, if they did, did not approve of a young child's
doing so. 9
Subjects of these cases sometimes express in play the addictive habit of
the person whose life they remember. For example, two children who remembered the lives of alcoholics gave amusing imitations of how a drunken person staggers around and collapses. One of these children was Sujith Lakmal
Jayaratne, whom I mentioned earlier in connection with the phobias he had
of trucks and policemen.

TEMPERAMENT

Psychologists use the word "temperament" to designate features of a person's behavior that remain more or less constant throughout his life regardless of particular stimuli. With a musical metaphor we could say th:y are ~he
ground bass above which the various melodies are played. One dimension
of temperament is the general level of physical activity. Another is t~le persistence with which one pursues some undertaking despite interrupt10ns. A
third is irritability or the tendency to lose one's temper readily in response
to frustration.
Students of temperament have found that infants even a few days old
show marked differences in this respect; indeed some expressions of temperament, such as the level of activity, may manifest and be observed in
fetuses. The causes of differences in temperament have received comparatively
little study, and 110 expert claims full understanding of them: some experts
admit to baffiement about the differences. 10

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

In several cases I investigated, informants emphasized similarities of

temperament-such as a high level of physical activity or a quick temperin a subject and in the person whose life the subject claimed to remember.
lmad Elawar and Disna Samarasinghe were said to have quick or "hot" tempers that corresponded to similar features in the persons whose lives they
remembered.
PRECOCIOUS SEXUALITY

Some subjects of these cases when still young children have overtly
expressed sexual interest in the wife, mistress, or girlfriend of the previous
personality. Others have made precocious sexual advances to members of the
opposite sex who resembled the partners of the previous lives. I have found
this type of behavior only in subjects who remembered the previous life of
a person who died during the usual years of maximal sexual activity, that is,
youth and young adulthood.
In chapter 4 I described behavior of this type in Bongkuch Promsin. 11

GENDER-IDENTITY CONFUSION

The children who say they remember previous lives as a member of the
opposite sex frequently show, when young, traits that are characteristic of the
~laimed former sex. They may reject, or act as if they rejected, the anatom~ca~ sex of their bodies. A girl, for example, may assert that she is a boy and
insist on dressing in boys' clothes, playing boys' games, and being addressed
as a boy would be.12
I have followed some of these children into their teens and young adulthood or later. The majority gradually accept their anatomical sex, give up
cross-dressing, and become normal in all respects. A small number, however,
have not adapted so well; they have remained fixed in rhe gender role of the
sex of the previous life and usually are correspondingly unhappy.
In summarizing the case of Ma Tin Aung Myo I mentioned the obduracy with which she insisted- even in adulthood - that she was a man, not
a woman. In chapter S I mentioned another subject of a sex-change case, Rani
Saxena (of India), and described her tenacious persistence in using masculine verb forms when speaking Hindi. I shall now give some additional information about her case. She remembered the previous life of a prosperous
lawyer of Benares. She was born in Allahabad in a family remotely connected
with that of the Benares lawyer, bur of much more modest resources. From
an early age she had derailed accurate memories of the lawyer's life in Benares.
(A reliable firsthand informant told me that she once recognized a person

9. The Explanatory Value of the Idea ofReincarnation

189

unknown to her, but well known to the deceased lawyer, by his voice alone
and before she had even seen this man; she was in a room of a house he visited, and she heard him speak before she saw him.)
Despite her strong masculine orientation, Rani was ultimately married
by an arrangement of her family, according to the Indian custom. Rani's
unusual behavior made it impossible for her family to find an economically
satisfactory husband for her, and after her marriage she lived in desperate
poverty. She bore two children and brought them up as a good mother,
albeit a somewhat reluctant one. The Benares lawyer had selfishly exploited
women, and Rani believed that God had put her in a female body so that
she could experience life as a woman. However, she showed an ambivalent
attitude toward her situation. On the one hand, she said that she could see
God's justice in putting her into a female body and obliging her to live in a
clay hut; on the other hand, she also still thought of herself as fully and
properly male, and she pined for the rich life in Benares that she still remembered.
Cases such as those of Ma Tin Aung Myo and Rani Saxena resemble
those that Western psychiatrists label "gender-identity confusion" or "gend~r dysphoria." Some investigators of this condition have incriminated. a
biological factor (such as Klinefelter's syndrome) but cannot thereby exp.lam
all cases. 13 In some cases the parents, having hoped for a child of a pa~ucu
lar sex but having obtained one of the opposite sex, have guided the childsometimes unconsciously- to assume the sexual identity they wished for
the child. Yet this explanation also does not fit all cases of gender dysphoria.14 Some patients with this condition have exonerated their parents from
any responsibility for it. A male patient may say, for example, that from early
childhood, almost as soon as he could think, he thought he should have .been
in a female body, and he may specifically remember that his parents d~sap
proved of his attempts to dress in girls' clothes or otherwise behave like a
girl. IS
The common occurrence of some gender-identity confusion among the
subjects of sex-change cases that I have studied allows met? sug?est that P.erhaps the condition of other persons afflicted with gender-identity confus1?n
(and homosexuality) derives from previous lives as members of the opposite
sex. As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, this mig~t occ~r even
when the person concerned has no imaged memories of a prev10us life.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEMBERS OF ONE-EGG TWIN PAIRS

In our collection of cases there are forty-two pairs of twins; one or both
of these twins remembered a previous life. In about two-thirds of the pairs,

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CHILDREN WHO R.Erv1EMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

one twin remembered more about a previous life than the other. In some
instances only one of the twins has had memories of a previous life; and sometimes this twin said that the other twin was with him or her in the previous
life, even though the second twin did not remember this.
In thirty-one of the forty-two cases of twin pairs a previous personality was satisfactorily identified for both twins. (Among the other twin pairs
one or both of the twins' cases remained unsolved.) Among the thirty-one
solved cases, the previous personalities had had a familial (sometimes marital) relationship in twenty-two cases and had been friends or acquaintances
in the remaining nine cases; in no instance had the previous personalities been
strangers.
In chapter 4 I gave an illustration of these relationships in the summary
of the case of Gillian and Jennifer Pollock, who remembered the lives of
their own older sisters, Joanna and Jacqueline. Similarly, Ramoo and Rajoo
Sharma, twins of India, recalled previous lives as twin brothers in another
village. In a third case, Ma Khin Ma Gyi and Ma Khin Ma Nge (of Burma)
recalled the previous lives of their own maternal grandparents. Ma Khin Ma
Gyi was thus claiming to have been a man in her previous life, and she
showed (as a young child) cross-dressing and some characteristics of her
grandfather.
Sivanrhie and Sheromie Hettiaratchi (both females) remembered the
previous lives of two young men who had been close friends and homosexuals. (These twins were thus both subjects of sex-change cases, and, as in most
other such cases, they both showed strong masculine behavior.)
In their relationships with each other, the twins who remember previo~s. lives often adopt attitudes consonant with those of the previous personalm~s. Thus, Gillian Pollock acted toward Jennifer like an older sister, and
Jennifer was correspondingly dependent on Gillian. (Joanna, with whom
Gil!ian identified, had been five years older than Jacqueline.) Similarly; Ma
Khm Ma Nge fussily dominated Ma Khin Ma Gyi, just as her maternal
grandmother had tried to control her husband.
Two Burmese twins, Maung Aung Cho Thein and Maung Aung Ko
Thein, remembered the life of the owner of a rice mill (a woman) and that
of a rice farmer who had brought his paddy to chis mill. The behavior of the
twins (who are almost certainly of the two-egg type) toward each other
reflected the somewhat haughty demeanor of the wealthy female millowner
and the deferential attitude of the paddy farmer. We found this kind of dominant-submissive relationship in all eleven of the twin-pair cases for which
we had sufficient information about the roles and behavior of the subjects
and previous personalities.
Identical or one-egg (monozygotic) twins 1(' seem to provide an excellent

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191

opportunity for separating genetic factors from environmental ones as causes

of various individual differences, abnormalities, or diseases. Investigators of
behavior and mental illness have given special attention to one-egg twins who
were separated soon after birth and reared aparr. 17 To simplify slightly, behavioral differences between such twins are attributed to the influences of their
separate environments, and similarities are attributed to their common
generic material. In general, whether they have studied one-egg twins reared
together or those reared separately, investigators have emphasized their similarities rather than their differences. Reincarnation may contribute to a better understanding of both.
Let us consider first the similarities between one-egg twins. They have
a higher rate of concordance for schizophrenia than do two-egg twins. Many
psychiatrists believe this difference in concordance reflects genetic factors
rhar underlie such behavior, although they have not asserted this without
challenge, and the matter is still debated. 18 I suggest that the similar behavior of one-egg twins (whether reared apart or reared together) may derive,
ar least in part, from their having had previous lives together; in these they
might have developed similar habits and attitudes that persisted when they
reincarnated. If two men who have been criminals together die and reincarnate as one-egg twins, we should not be surprised if both become criminals

again.
Now let us turn to the differences between one-egg twins, especially
those reared together. Like identical twins reared apart, they have identical
genetic material. Dissimilarities in their behavior may derive from differences
in the attitudes of their parents toward the individual twins. For example,
one twin is sometimes appreciably smaller and weaker rhan the_ othe~, and
this twin is likely to evoke solicitude, or perhaps some other special.amtude,
not shown to the other twin. Investigators have also attributed the differences
reared roger h er to t h eir
not h av 1'ng had exactly the
b etween one-egg twms
same environment in the uterus. It is suggested, for example, that after the
division of the single egg from which rhe GVO embryos developed, one e~1 bryo
received a better blood supply (or was otherwise favored). An expl_anauon of
this type is invoked in cases of one-egg twins when one has a ~1r.th def~ct
and the other does not. As an example of this we may consider cleft lip, which
is a birth defect occurring in about one baby of every 2,000 born. The
marked difference in the concordance for cleft lip between one-egg and twoegg twins provides strong evidence of a genetic factor in this birth defec:.
Among two-egg twins, if one twin has a cleft palate, both have the condition in 8 percent of cases; but among one-egg twins, if one has the condition, both have it in 38 percent of cases. However, as nea~ly two-t~irds of
one-egg twins do not show this concordance, some other factor besides the

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

genetic one must be responsible when cleft lip occurs in only one of the
twins. 19 It is for these cases that some investigators invoke the explanation of
a deficiency in the blood supply to one twin or some other local uterine
abnormality during the embryonic development of the lips.
Yet perhaps differences in the uterine environment of the two embryos
may not tell the full story of the dissimilarities between one-egg twins. In
addition to variations in blood supply before birth and differences in the attitudes of their parents toward the twins, a third factor may be in play: behavioral memories from previous incarnations. I can illustrate this possibility
with a case of one-egg twins that I studied in Sri Lanka.
The twins, lndika and Kakshappa Ishwara, look somewhat different,
and they would not be as easily confused with each other as are many oneegg twins. I know, however, that they are one-egg twins from tests (of blood
groups and subgroups) carried out at the University of Virginia with blood
drawn from the twins and members of their family, which I brought with
me when I returned from one of my visits to Sri Lanka.
From their early childhood lndika and Kakshappa manifested markedly
different behaviors, which I shall describe below. When they became able to
speak, lndika gradually narrated details of a previous life that he said he had
lived in another town in Sri Lanka, located about fifty kilometers from where
the twins were born. The life he recalled was that of an innocent, studious
schoolboy. lndika stated a number of names and other unusual details that
permitted tracing a family to which he seemed to be referring. Members of
this family confirmed that nearly everything Indika had stated about the previous life was correct for a young boy, Dharshana, they had lost. At the age
of eleven, Dharshana had developed a serious (evidently infectious) disease
and died within a few days. (The records of his admission to the hospital where
he had died had been destroyed by the time I instigated a search for them.)
Before lndika began to talk about the previous life he remembered,
Kakshappa had tried to tell his family about one that he said he remembered.
He said that he had been shot by the police, and he mentioned a place, Elpitiya. (In chapter 5 I mentioned that Sri Lanka had a serious insurgency in
the spring of 1971, and the army suppressed it with considerable loss of life.)
The other members of the family thought Kakshappa's statements amusing,
and they ridiculed him, so that he stopped talking; they thus learned nothing more about the life he said he remembered. Before Kakshappa's family
unintentionally suppressed him, he had not given enough details to permit
verification of the previous life to which he had been referring. Elpitiya was
well known to have been a center where the insurgents of 1971 had gathered,
and some of them had been killed there. It is also only a few kilometers from
the town where Indika said that he had lived.

9. The Explanatory Value of the Idea ofReincarnation

193

lndika was a gentle, bookish boy. He had a definite dignity and expected
respect from others that seemed more appropriate for the life he remembered
than for the circumstances of his family, since the previous family in his case
was more prosperous than his own. Also, Dharshana had been the only son
in his family. Kakshappa, on the other hand, could fairly be described as
"tough." His talk was likely to focus on guns and bombs, never on books;
indeed, he resisted going to school (when he first went). He also showed a
pervasive fear, and he ran away and hid from strangers, behavior that
reminded observers of the way the Sri Lanka insurgents of 1971 tried to conceal themselves from the police until they were ready to strike.
It is possible that once Indika and Kakshappa had spoken about the two
quite different previous lives they remembered, they became cast by their
family in two roles to which they then tended to conform more and more.
This might have led to some further polarization of their behaviors and
informants' reports about them. Although this may have happened to some
extent, it seems reasonable to suppose that some of their disparate behavior
expressed behavioral memories from the different previous lives that they
remembered. 20 In 1982, when lndika and Kakshappa were just ten years old,
I met them again and learned that the differences in their personalities had
become much less marked. For example, Kakshappa was enjoying school and
doing almost as well there as Indika was. However, in a dispute Kakshappa
was inclined to resort to violence, whereas Indika was not.
Before leaving the subject of twins, I wish to mention the oppor~u~ity
for further investigations along these lines provided by cases of conJomed
(often called Siamese) twins. An early investigator of twins, Newm~n,
observed that members of Siamese twin pairs tend to differ in per.sonal_ny
even more than do the members of ordinary (separated) one-egg twm pam.
Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins, who lived in the middle of the
nineteenth century, showed vivid differences in personality. Chang was
inclined to be cross and irritable; Eng, good-natured. Chang drank alcohol,
often excessively (especially in their later years), whereas Eng was .a teerotal~r.
What one liked to eat, the other detested. 21 Since members of a Siamese twtn
pair, like members of other one-egg twin pairs, have identical genetic material and since, even more than separated one-egg twins, they also have closely
similar environments, we might expect the members of conjoined twin pai.rs
to resemble each other more than do members of separate one-egg twm
pairs, but they do not. Although neither Chang nor Eng ever said anything
suggestive of memories of previous lives, I conjecture that the marked
differences in their personalities may have arisen from their having had
different behavioral memories (for example, of drinking alcohol or not drinking it) that derived from previous lives.

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

If a reader now concludes that I am invoking the possibility of previous lives to explain both some of the differences and some of the similarities
between one-egg twins, I agree that I am doing that.
CHILD-PARENT RELATIONSHIPS

In earlier parts of this book I mentioned, with examples, the frequent

desire expressed by the subjects of these cases to visit the previous family. I
suggested various motives for this longing, such as a wish to be again with
the spouse of the previous life or concern about the welfare of the previous
personality's young children. Here I shall discuss another motive for the
child's wanting to be with the previous family. This is the strong conviction
some subjects have that their previous parents were better than the parents
now available to them. They sometimes distinguish the previous parents
from the inadequate substitutes with whom they find themselves by giving
the former some descriptive title, such as "my real parents." In chapter 4 I
described such attitudes in my summaries of the cases of Shamlinie Prema
and Roberta Morgan. 22 Even when the subject's parents provide well for
him - both materially and emotionally- he may long to be again with his
"real parents." The wish to see the other parents may derive in such cases
from some residual attachment co the parents of the previous life or a concern about their welfare.
From whatever motive it may arise, a child's repeated references to other
parents, his frequent comparisons between chem and his parents, and his
often-expressed wish chat he be allowed to go to the other parents may result
in his alienation from his family. The degree of such estrangement naturally
depends upon the duration of the child's references to the "real parents," the
noisiness of his demands to meet chem, the starkness of the comparisons he
~akes, and- not lease - his parents' tolerance for all chis unpleasant behav!Of.

If reincarnation occurs, friction between a parent and child may derive

from another type of relationship in the child's previous life. I refer to cases
in which a child claims that, in the previous life he remembers, he was equal
or senior in age to a parent.23 He may, for example, say that he was his
mother's grandfather and, what is more important, behave as if he still is.
What follows from this behavior may depend, at least in part, on the mixtures of kindness and selfishness that characterized the grandfather's attitude
coward his granddaughter and hers toward him.
A strained relationship may also occur between a subject and one parent if the subject claims to have had a special relationship in a previous life
with the other parent. In chapter 4 the case of Michael Wright illustrated

9. The Explanatory Value of the Idea ofReincarnation

195

this possibility; I also mentioned there (in note 14) three cases in which the
subject claimed to have been the first spouse of one of his or her parents. The
case ofTaru Jarvi in Finland produced many awkward moments. She claimed
to have been her mother's first husband in the previous life, and she made
some effort to rid her family of her father on the grounds that she and her
mother did "not need him." 21
In a few cases the subject has claimed to have had in the previous life a
relationship with a parent, not of blood ties with affection, but of animosity and even of hatred .25 I have so far published only one derailed report of
such a case, that of Zouheir Chaar of Lebanon. He remembered the life of
a farmer, Jamil Adnan Zahr, who had quarreled bitterly with Zouheir's
mother over rights to irrigation water they should have shared on adjoining
properties. Each had accused the other of stealing the precious water.
Observers of Zouheir's case thought it included some justice for both Zouheir
and his mother. Almost as soon as Zouheir could speak, he began to accuse
his mother of stealing water from him. His mother handled his arracks
adroitly, and over a few years Zouheir's rancor gradually abated.
In Zouheir's case he stated the basis for his grievance, and his moth~r
could remember the quarrels about the irrigation water, even though she did
not admit to having been in the wrong. In other cases, however, a child may
show unprovoked animosity toward a parent without giving any reason for
it. If this happens in a culture favorable to the idea of reincarnation, the parent can respond constructively through believing that the child's hostility perhaps derives from a previous life rather than from any wrong the parent. l~as
done to the child since it was born. In contrast, Western parents unfamiliar
with the concept of reincarnation may find themselves nonplused an~ hurt
cc

.
1ber offendmg or
bYa su lkY or unarrecnonate
duld whom they cannot remen

h
dl'
I

.
h
mis an mg. n some instances of this type, t e parents ma.y well have. overlooked some deficiency in their handling of the child; yet m others 1t may
b e won h w l111 e for them to consider the possi'b'l'
i tty t l1at a rrirudes from
.
.a pre
lc

.
1
t'onsh1p
wtthout
1
vious ne (or lives) have been brought mto the present re a
h er parent or c h'ld
any image d memones
o f the earlier shared expee1t
i l1 avmg
riences that generated the attitudes that now perplex them.
.
For many years some psychiatrists blamed certain serious mental ill-.
nesses, such as schizophrenia, on mishandling or rejection by the parents ot
the patient when he was a young child. In thus condemning the pa~ents, the~e
censors overlooked how successfully many of the parents of a sch1zophre111c
patient had raised other children. They also ignored the frequent observations of the patients' mothers that a child who later became a ~atie~t l~ad
behaved differently toward her, almost from birth, compared with his siblings. He would not, for example, relax and cuddle up to the parent when

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

picked up. Child psychologists and psychiatrists now recognize that children
differ in their responses to their parents at birth and even before they are born,
but the origin of these differences is usually assigned to a genetic factor or
to events during gestation. I think we should look still farther back for the
origins of at least some of the impaired relationships - and some of the good
ones also - between parents and their children.
APPARENTLY IRRATIONAL AGGRESSION

Ifl am right in suggesting that reincarnation may help to explain some

aspect of the relations between parents and children, it may also help to
improve our understanding of behavior in relations outside the family. I am
thinking here of apparently irrational antagonisms shown by some persons
toward other persons or toward whole groups of persons. The high incidence
of violent death among the previous personalities in these cases has given
excellent opportunities for studying the apparent carryover from one life to
another of attitudes of vengefulness, such as might be expected of a victim
toward his murderer. As we might predict from what we know of people's
reactions toward experiences in one life, some subjects show forgiveness
toward the persons who they say murdered them in a previous life, but others do not. Several child subjects have spoken openly about revenging themselves on the assailants of the previous life when they became big enough to
do so. In chapter 4 I described how Bongkuch Promsin would beat a post
in anger and call out the names of Chamrat's murderers as he did so. As such
children become older, their vengefulness usually recedes, and a more tolerant attitude toward the previous personality's murderer succeeds it.
When a subject does show an attitude of vengefulness, his animosity
may extend to the entire group of which the previous personality's assailant
was a member. The subject may show antagonism toward, say, all policemen,
all Bedouins, or all Moslems.26
From adverse generalizations about vocational, tribal, and religious
groups, it is only a short step to hatred of entire nations and races. Perhaps
the obvious normal source for the transmission of such attitudes from one
generation to successive ones suffices: I am thinking here of the manner in
which children may learn at a parent's knee to take his enemy as theirs. From
such oral transmission, presumably, Southerners hated Yankees, Frenchmen
hated Germans, and MacDonalds hated Campbells throughout decades or
centuries. But international and interclan animosities may not be transmitted solely by the telling of tales to children. If reincarnation occurs, the
hatred that a person killed by a member of another nation may feel toward
all people of that nation might be carried over into his next life. I know of

9. The Explanatory Value of the Idea ofReincarnation

197

no verified case that exactly illustrates the process I am conjecturing; but certain unverified Burmese cases offer some support for it. I refer to those cases of which we now have twenty-four - in which a Burmese child has remembered
a previous life as a Japanese soldier killed in Burma during World War II. (Ma
Tin Aung Myo, whose case I summarized in chapter 4, is an example.) Many
of these children had traits that are unusual in Burmese families, but characteristic of]apanese persons, especially Japanese soldiers. 27 Some of these subjects showed a special interest in Japanese persons who occasionally came to
Burma when the subjects were children; and seven were reported to become
angry when British or American persons were mentioned in their presence.

BIRTHMARKS AND BIRTH DEFECTS

We know almost nothing about why a person who has a birthmark has
it in one place instead of another. Several authors have published pedigrees
of families in which different members had a birthmark at the same site. Such
reports are extremely rare, however, and dermatologists have no explanation
for the location of most birthmarks. The cases of some children who remember previous lives provide an explanation for the location of some birthmarks.
Birthmarks, unless large and disfiguring or likely to become cancerou.s,
are of little importance or interest. We cannot say this of birth defects. Esumates of the incidence of birth defects vary- according to how carefully
babies are examined and what the examiners count as a defect- but 2 percent of all live births seems about right. (I reviewed the sources for this estimate in my 1997 monograph.)
Birth defects are obviously a major problem in health. They also ~re
sent a baffiing one for physicians. Again, estimates of the "known causes of
birth defects, such as infections, certain drugs, genetic factors, and alcohol
vary widely. Altogether however they account for less than 60 percent and
'
'
.
h
perhaps for as few as only 30 percent of all birth defects. Experts assign t e
remainder to the category of "unknown cause." I hope to have shown the
reasonableness of adding previous lives to the list of their possible causes.

Other Abnormalities That Reincarnation May Explain

ABNORMAL APPETITES AND ATTITUDES DURING PREGNANCY

Many women experience unusual cravings or aversions for particular

foods during pregnancy. A few pregnant women have noted other changes
in their feelings and behavior from those that they believe are normal for
themselves.

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CHILDREN WHO Rf.MEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

Extensive physiological and anatomical changes occur in a pregnant

woman. In addition, her relations with the people around her necessarily
become altered, especially those with her husband and her children, if she
has any. A pregnancy may bring unusual joy and well-being, bur it can also
bring discomfort, anxiety, and even dread. The vast biochemical and psychological changes that accompany the smoothest of pregnancies may account
for most of the unusual appetites that pregnant women have noted in themselves. I should therefore not have included this topic here if I had not learned
of some cases in which pregnancy cravings or aversions on the part of a subject's mother corresponded to the subject's later appetitive preferences and,
in some instances, to similar preferences reported by informants for the previous personality of the case.
In the case ofBongkuch Promsin (summarized in chapter 4), the mother
of Chamrat (whose life Bongkuch remembered) had had, during her pregnancy with Chamrat, the same craving for a special type of noodles that was
later shown by Chamrat, by Bongkuch's mother during her pregnancy with
Bongkuch, and by Bongkuch himself. 28
Maung Myint Tin (a Burmese subject whose case U Win Maung studied) remembered the previous life of an alcoholic, and he himself showed a
strong craving for alcohol when he was young. Pertinent to the present topic
was his mothds report that for the first four or five months of her pregnancy
with Maung Myint Tin she had had an almost overpowering desire to drink
alcohol herself; she only controlled this with great effort during the latter part
of her pregnancy.
. A few of the subjects' mothers have also reported having noted during
their accustomed behavior. Disna Samarasinghe's mother was one of these. She said that during her
pregn~ncy with Disna she felt unusually devout and wished to hear monks
chanrmg more than she ordinarily did; Disna, as a young child, was remarkable for her precocious piety, and she remembered the previous life of a
woman who had meditated much. Ornuma Sua Ying Yong's mother found
she was unable to gamble at cards during her pregnancy with Ornuma.
although ordinarily she relished this activity. Ornuma showed unusual piety
as a young child; among her expressions of this trait, she strongly objected
to her mother gambling at cards and made herself tiresome with her interferences among her mother's circle of card players.
A Tlingit informant told me about different experiences she had had
when pregnant with her four children. During three pregnancies she was
strongly interested in music and each of the children born of these pregnancies was musical. During her fourth pregnancy she was not especially
interested in music, but cooked and sewed - more than usual, I understood:

~heir ~regnancy with the subject other changes from

9. The Explanatory Value of the Idea ofReincarnation

199

the child of this pregnancy was not musical but was interested in cooking
and sewing.
I obtained all the reports of these changes in behavior after the births
of the subjects (and after the cases had developed), although in some instances
the mother's husband (and subject's father) corroborated her statements
about her altered behavior. I should also emphasize that reports of cravings
or other unusual changes in the mother during pregnancy occur in a small
percentage of cases only; in most cases when I inquire about them the mother
(or other informant) reports that she noticed nothing of the kind when she
was pregnant with the subject.
My informants may have modified their reports of the mother's cravings or other changes in order to harmonize them with observations of the
child's later behavior. We could also suppose that the child had received
encouragement from his mother to accord his behavior with her pregnancy
experiences. Furthermore, it is possible that the mother's abnormal appetite
was communicated paranormally to her fetus and impelled in it a similar
appetite that persisted after birth. This may have happened in one case: The
subject's mother reported having had pregnancy cravings that later corresponded to food preferences of the subject, but these cravings did not correspond to any appetites the previous personality of the case was known to
have had.
My observations about certain behavioral changes in pregnant women
are merely preliminary. However, I think that they justify further investigations, which should include prospective studies of the relationship between
pregnancy cravings (or other behavioral changes in a pregnant woman) and
subsequent behavior shown by the child born from the pregnancy. In the
meantime, we can continue to entertain the possibility that a personality who
is going to reincarnate may sometimes impose on a pregnant woman some
of his appetites and attitudes.
LEFT-HANDEDNESS

The use of one hand in preference to the other appears to derive much
from social training; adults who prefer using the left hand are far less numerous than are children who do. Childhood training appears, therefore, to
favor preferential use of the right hand, and many persons who have inclined
in early life toward left-handedness gradually adapt to equipment, tools, and
other objects that favor right-handed persons.
Some left-handedness appears to be congenital; it has, at any rate, been
observed early in infancy. This and other evidence suggests a hereditary factor in the occurrence of left-handedness. However, when the trait occurs in

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

two or more generations of the same immediate family, it may be difficult to

separate the influence of a genetic factor from that of imitation of a lefthanded parent by a child. Perhaps in some cases we should invoke both a
genetic factor and the influence of imitation.
Hand preference is a type of skilled behavior. Threading a needle, for
example, is a skill, and doing so better with one hand than with the other is
a further specialized development of the basic skill. It seems likely that hand
preference-whether of the right or the left hand- gives an advantage; presumably it enables us to do better something like threading a needle that we
would not do so well if we did not "allow" one hand to practice the action
more than the other and thus become more expert than either hand would
be if both practiced the action equally. If this is so, we might expect that a
person would carry over a hand preference from one life to another, and I
have found a small amount of evidence suggesting this. My associates and I
have obtained information about eleven cases in which the subject was lefthanded and the previous personality was also said to have been left-handed.
I should mention that in two of these eleven cases, I obtained conflicting testimony concerning whether the previous personality had been lefthanded; in three other cases the subjects' statements were not verified, so we
have only their statements that the previous personalities of their cases were
also left-handed. Moreover, in five of the cases, the subject and previous personality belonged to the same (immediate or extended) family, and in these
cases we cannot exclude a genetic factor. (Corliss Chotkin, Jr., was one of
these subjects.)

It seems legitimate to ask why everyone does not use his right hand preferentially. This is another way of asking how left-handedness started and
what causes it to persist. I am far from daring to offer a comprehensive
answer to these questions, but we do have grounds for some conjectures
related to reincarnation. In the first place, a right-handed person who loses
his right arm or hand usually adapts to his new condition and becomes lefthanded. This is what the great British admiral Lord Nelson did. He was
wounded at the battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797, and his right arm
was amputated. Afterwards he learned to write passably well with his left
hand. 29
Presumably, someone like Lord Nelson who became left-handed by
necessity would, if he were reborn, have a congenital disposition toward lefthandedness. (In this suggestion I assume that the hand that was more practiced at the time of death would become dominant in the next incarnation.)
I know of only one case that directly supports this conjecture. It is that of a
young girl in Burma, Ma Khin Sandi, who was identified as the reincarnation of her maternal grandmother. Ma Khin Sandi was left-handed, but her

9. The Explanatory Value of the Idea ofReincarnation

201

grandmother was not, nor was anyone else in the family. However, the grandmother had a stroke with paralysis of her right arm for the last several months
of her life, and I conjecture that a behavioral memory of a useless right arm
may have led Ma Khin Sandi to use her left arm preferentially.
Three other cases in Burma touched on the question of how left-handedness may develop. In all three of the subjects of these cases, several fingers
of both hands were congenitally malformed or completely absent. These
birth defects, according to the statements of the subjects and other informants, corresponded to slashing wounds of the fingers (made with swords)
that the three previous personalities received just before they were killed. It
happened that in each of the subjects the right hand was more defective, and
hence less useful for holding objects, than was the left. These three subjects
were, therefore, left-handed. They all cold me that they had been righthanded in their previous lives. (I could not verify these last statements,
although I did verify other details of what these subjects said about the previous lives they remembered.) If a future child should claim to remember
the lives of one of these subjects (after they die), I should expect that child
to be left-handed.

THE UNIQUENESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL

The uniqueness of the individual3 is a topic of never-ending interest

and conjecture. We often speculate about the origins of physical and personal traits in members of our families and in our friends. We may say casually that a daughter in a family received her blue eyes from her grand~1 oth~r
and her stubbornness from her grandfather. In the informal conversatwns m
h en"tanceofa
. h remar k s of this type occur, the speakers assume t h e 111
w h IC
.
wide variety of physical characteristics and behavioral traits. If '!"e ~ish to
explain some unusual quality that occurs in a member of a fam~ly wi.th no
known other member having it, we may attribute the quality to mhentance
from some distant ancestor, even an imaginary one.
.
.
Geneticists tell us that an individual's uniqueness (at birth) denves
mainly from the random distribution of chromosomes that occurred during
the formation of his parents' gametes (sperm and egg) before his father's
sperm began its journey to his mother's egg that it fertilized .. Th~ parent~'
chromosomes derived before that from a similar random somng mto their
parents' gametes (germ cells) before they were conceived. According to this
view, our uniqueness arises from the randomly sorted chromosomes dealt to
us from among the chromosomes that were dealt to our parents from among
the chromosomes dealt to them, and so on back forever. Ultimately, the
unique combination of qualities each of us has is a matter of chance, just as

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

is a hand in a card game that we may be dealt after someone has shuffled the
cards.
If there were no evidence suggesting that reincarnation may occur, I
should probably be content with the idea that our innate capacities derive
from the chance shuffling of genes. Because we do have some evidence, however, it is possible that an individual's uniqueness derives not exclusively
from his genetic makeup but also (at least in part) from experiences of predecessor personalities in previous lives. I have to admit immediately that an
advocate of reincarnation must also make assumptions in accounting for
most specific instances. It will, however, be worth mentioning some examples; if they are not as good examples as we might wish, they can at least illustrate what we might look for in further research.
Some of the children whose cases I have studied show combinations of
traits that are unusual in their families but can be understood as deriving from
the experiences of a single previous life. Disna Samarasinghe showed an
unusual piety and also a precocious knowledge of household chores, such as
cooking rice and thatch weaving; these corresponded with traits in the person, Babanona, whose life she claimed to remember. Similarly, Lalitha
Abeyawardena, when she was a young child, played at being a teacher and,
like Disna, showed an unusual interest in religious practices. Nilanthie, the
woman whose life she claimed to remember, had been a schoolteacher and
a person of renowned devoutness.3 1
Are there, however, any instances in which we can plausibly claim that
different traits manifested in one life may have derived from two or more previous lives? Unfortunately, we have few examples of subjects making credible claims to remember more than one life; we have even less evidence of
more than one previous life being verified. I can, in fact, think of only two
examples that may illustrate the point I am trying to make, and in each of
these the second life remains unverified. For what rhey are worth, however,
I shall refer to combinations of traits that occurred in two subjects who each
claimed to remember two previous lives, one verified and one unverified.
Swarnlata Mishra (to whose case I have earlier referred briefly) made
many statements that proved correct for the life of a woman called Biya, who
had died in 1939, nine years before Swarnlata's birth in 1948. Biya had been
married and a mother of children before her death. I think it reasonable to
suppose that Swarnlata's strong tendency to care lovingly for other persons
derived from Biya's experiences as a wife and mother. (This suggestion does
not deny that Swarnlata's mother provided a model for such behavior.)
Swarnlata also claimed to remember a short "intermediate" life that she said
she had lived in Sylhet, which is now in Bangladesh. She claimed that in this
life she had learned Bengali songs and dances, which she performed without

9. The Explanatory Value of the Idea ofReincarnation

203

being taught to do so. Although I have not verified the life in Sylhet, it is
certain that neither Biya nor Swarnlata, living as they did in areas of central
India where Hindi is spoken, could have learned Bengali songs and dances,
so it seems reasonable to suppose that if Swarnlata had had a previous, "intermediate" life in Sylhet, she learned the songs and dances during it. {Bengali
is the predominant language of Sylher.)
Parmod Sharma remembered two previous lives. One of these, that of
a successful businessman named Parmanand, was verified. We might trace
to this life a precocious acumen in business matters that Parmod showed. Parmod also remembered an earlier (unverified) life as a sannyasi, or holy man.
Both Parmod and Parmanand were notably religious persons compared with
other members of their families; it seems reasonable to suppose that this trait
in Parmod may have derived originally from the previous life as a sannyasi
and been strengthened during the life of Parmanand.

The Limits of Genetics and Environmental Influences

I cannot make the explanatory value of reincarnation seem more attractive by pointing out the defects of the two explanations that now dominate
~ttempts to understand human personality: genetics and envi:onmental
mA.uences. I have already said that I regard the idea of reincarnanon, ~ot as
replacing established knowledge in genetics and from studies of envtronmemal influences, but as supplementing that knowledge. However, zealo~s
for both genetics and environmental influences have made claims (for their
c
i"d eas ) t h at are far more extravagant than any I am ma k"mg for reiniavonte

- may believe
carnation;
some of their readers - as well as some o f mme
32

that more has been proven for these causes than has been.
The claims made for a genetic contribution to schizophrenia provide a
good example of the large gap between such claims and the data said to sup.
.
f
l d" der have presented
port t h em. I nvestigators of the genencs o menta isor
the case for a genetic factor in schizophrenia so convincingly t~at s.ome textbooks of psychiatry teach it as an established fact. Cited invesngatwns compared the incidence of schizophrenia in different persons and groups of
persons with special attention to their generic closeness to eac~1 other and ,to
the similarities or differences in their environments. The mam support tor
the idea of a genetic factor in schizophrenia in recent years has come from
comparisons of twins (of both types) reared together an~ apart; a.nd from
comparisons of the different incidences of mental illness m the children of
schizophrenic parents adopted away from them (and hence presu.mably free
from any noxious parental influence on their development) and m adopted
children whose parents were not schizophrenic

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

These kinds of investigations contain numerous sources of potential

error. To begin with, schizophrenia is not a disorder for which we have as
yet any objective indicator, such as measurements of blood sugar provide for
the diagnosis of diabetes mellirus. Different psychiatrists sometimes disagree
in their appraisal of the same patient, even when they have an opportunity
to examine him at the same time. Such unreliability of diagnostic assessment
may well be greater when the psychiatrists cannot examine the patients, but
instead use hospital or other records and histories furnished by other persons. (This has happened in many of the criticized investigations.) Moreover,
the lack of precise definition of schizophrenia encourages loose criteria of
inclusion, so that persons identified as having "borderline disorders" or "schizophrenia spectrum disorders" have been accepted into a series.
In twin studies errors may arise in the determination of zygosity
(although these are much reduced by examinations of blood groups and subgroups and of DNA). The appraisers of psychiatric status may not always be
as ignorant of the twins' zygosity as they should be, which is completely
"blind." Further errors can arise in assessing the environments of twins who
are ostensibly raised apart or together. Sometimes twins said to have been
raised apart have been found to have been raised by different members of the
same family; in such instances the twins continue to meet each other to the
point where it is doubtful whether their environments could be regarded as
significantly different. A further source of error occurs in the tendency for
social agencies (and families themselves even more so) to select adoptive parents from the same social stratum as the biological parents, which tends to
bring about a similarity between the environments in which two twins ostensibly separated are raised. Another source of error works in the opposite
direction. Parents who wish to adopt a child must be unusual in some
respects, such as in not having a child of their own and in having an unusually strong desire to be parents. A child adopted away from his family may
on this account alone receive an upbringing quite different from that of a
child remaining with his biological parents.
Critics who draw attention to these sources of error do not minimize
the difficulties in investigations of this type; they only insist that published
reports of investigations have failed to show that the investigators have surmounted the difficulties. Perhaps the amount of work lying ahead of geneticists in this field can be best demonstrated by drawing attention to the results
of recent studies of twins. The best of these studies show a higher concordance of schizophrenia among monozygotic compared with dizygotic twins,
but they also show a high discordance among monozygotic twins (who have
the same genetic material). In fact, the co-twin of a monozygotic twin judged
schizophrenic is more likely to be judged normal than otherwise.13

9. The Explanatory Value of the Idea ofReincarnation

205

Even if all could agree that biological relatives have a higher incidence
of a given abnormality- let it be obesity, schizophrenia, or criminality- this
would not convince me that a genetic factor was the best interpretation of
the data. In discussing similarities between one-egg twins I suggested earlier in this chapter that habitual criminals in one life might, if reincarnation
occurs, find themselves linked as twins and repeat similar criminal behavior
in a later life. In the same way obesity in several members of a family may
not derive only from a genetic tendency to large bulk; it could also derive
from familial habits of overeating that began in previous lives. Even alleged
genetic factors in schizophrenia (if substantiated) remain open to alternative
interpretations. The responses to stress that tragically unfold in the illness
we call schizophrenia may derive from a combination of inflexibility toward
changing situations and a tendency to blame other persons for one's hardships; such attitudes are spread within families, and if members of a family
having them have lived previous lives together and reincarnate together, we
should expect them to manifest the same or similar behavior and to suffer
the consequences in mental illness. All that is familial is not necessarily
genetic. Nor is it necessarily environmental, and I turn to this interpretation next.
If advocates of genetics as an explanation of differences in human personality have overstated their claims, so have proponents for the effects of
environment, especially during the early years of life. For at least two generations clinical psychologists and psychiatrists enunciated the doctrin.e that
the experiences of the first few years of life were crucial to the formatton of
human personality and, by implication, to the later occurrence or absence
of mental disorder. If fact, this belief has a much longer history than th~t of
either psychoanalysis or behaviorism, but the adherents of these two d~ctrmes
committed themselves to it along with their otherwise radically different

to explain everything about human persona l"tty. It ts c.unous that

c1aims
adherents of both psychoanalysis and behaviorism accepted ":tth unusual
dogmatism - even for them - the only concept that they held m common:
that of the ineradicable influence of experiences during the first few years of
life.
By the 1950s cracks had begun to appear in the flimsy edifice of theory
and practice built on this assumption, for it has proved to be no more than
that. Particularly damaging to claims about the primary import~nce of the
early years of life has been the publication of reports of some children who
have been neglected or mistreated during those years, but whose later development, in a different environment, has been normal. Careful observation
failed to demonstrate the irreversible damage to the personality that doctrine
had predicted. A further source of difficulty for believers in the primacy of

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

early experiences arises from marked differences in intelligence and other

aspects of personality between monozygotic twins reared together. The environmental influences that could bring about the observed differences have
not been identified. It is merely supposed that they are too subtle to have
been detected so far, and investigators are now hunting for what they optimistically call microenvironmenral influences. The very word "microenvironmenral" seems incongruous in relation to the macroscopic differences in
personality that are to be explained. It betrays a fixed belief that what you
are looking for must be where you are looking. 34
Developmental psychologists have also pushed their investigations farther and farther back toward the days and weeks immediately after birth, and
they have even begun to consider the influence of an infant's experiences during gestation. The results of these investigations also have not always conformed to expectations. For example, it has been found that infants show a
wide variety of individual behavior almost immediately after birth that cannot readily be accounted for by any identified experience they had before
birth, or after birth and before the first appearance of the behavior. 35
The advocates of genetics and of environmental influences have in common that each thinks of the other party as the only adversary; claims are made
and.faults are found by members of both groups without any awareness that
a thud explanation for the gaps in knowledge awaits further examination.

CHAPTER 10

Sotne Further Questions

and Topics Related

to Children Who
Retnetnber Previous Lives
In this chapter I shall consider some questions that are frequently asked,
or that should be asked, about the cases that I have investigated. I have considered other important questions in previous chapters, but the miscellaneous group to which I shall now turn includes questions as important as
any already discussed.

Reincarnation and the Population Explosion

The present human population of the world amounts to approximately
six billion persons. Since the end of the eighteenth century, when the mo_dern rise in population began, world population has probably increased si_xfold. It continues to increase at a rate that has made some persons otherwise
interested in reincarnation doubt whether there could be enough minds to
animate all the human bodies that may soon exist.
Persons who raise this question seem ro make the gratuitous assumption that there must be a perfect correspondence between the number of
physical bodies that have existed and can exist and the number of human
minds animating them. There are, however, other assumptions and speet1lations that one might make on this subject. One would be that new individual human minds are created as needed and attached to human bodies.

207

208

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

Another is that human minds may split or duplicate so that one mind can
reincarnate in two or more bodies; the Inuit, the Igbo of Nigeria, the Tibetans, the Haida of Alaska and British Columbia, and the Gitksan of British
Columbia all believe this. 1 Still another possible assumption is that minds
presently incarnated in human bodies have been promoted from previous
incarnations in nonhuman bodies; Hindus and Buddhists believe this, and
I shall discuss the belief in the next section.
Even if we make the first assumption I mentioned above - that of a close
numerical matching between human minds and human bodies - we do not
need to reject the idea of reincarnation solely because of the huge increase
in population that has occurred during the past two centuries.
A somewhat conservative estimate of the number of human beings who
have lived on the earth since recognized humans became distinguished from
their hominid ancestors yields the figure of eighty billion. 2 This allows us to
think that each of the six billion persons presently alive may have had, on
average, thirteen incarnations; but this calculation involves the further
assumption that the interval between death and rebirth has remained fixed,
whereas it is just as likely to have fluctuated from time to time. There may
have been periods when few minds were incarnated and many more were
existing in a discarnate state, waiting for a terrestrial incarnation, or perhaps
hoping to avoid one.

If we could take the cases already investigated as representative of the

population as a whole, we might believe that the rate of reincarnation could
not increase much. As I explained in chapter 5, the interval between death
and presumed rebirth varies widely, but the median interval among 616 cases
was only fifteen months. These cases, however, may not be representative for
several reasons, to one of which - the high incidence of violent death among
them - I have already referred. Another reason is this: The short interval
between death and presumed rebirth may have contributed to the development of a case. In the analyses we have made so far, we have found no correlation between the length of interval between death and presumed rebirth
and the abundance of memories that the subject of a case expressed. If, however, memories fade with time in a world of discarnate minds - as they do
in our familiar one -we would rarely find cases having verified memories
when the interval was greater than the outer limits found in the cases
presently known to us, which is (with a few rare exceptions) about twentyfive years. If reincarnation were to be delayed for longer periods than that,
memories might attenuate markedly, and no identifiable cases from such
incarnations would occur for our epidemiological studies.
Ir also remains possible that for a major portion of all existing minds
the interval between death and rebirth is longer - perhaps much longer -

10. Some Further Questions and Topics ...

209

than what we have found in the cases that have come to our attention so far.
This in turn means that many discarnate minds may be awaiting reincarnation and could thus contribute to an even greater increase in the world's
population than we have seen during the last two centuries.
With a mere 2,500 cases providing data, I am somewhat embarrassed
to engage in the speculations of this section concerning billions of human
beings who have all disappeared without a trace. I excuse myself because so
many persons have raised the question of the population's increase with me,
and I think I should show that I have given it some attention.

ls There Any Evidence for Reincarnation Among

Nonhuman Animals?
Hindus and Buddhists believe that nonhuman animals reincarnate and,
further, that humans may reincarnate as nonhuman animals if they merit this
by misconduct. After the demerit has been expiated in an incarnation as a
nonhuman animal, another incarnation as a human may occur. These concepts ~ay seem to burn away any remaining difficulties that the popul~tion
explosion poses, since there exists a large reservoir of nonhuman animal
minds presumably ready for, or working toward, incarnation in human bodies. Some difficulties would remain, however, because Buddhists and most
Hindus believe that killing animals is wrong and likely to bring on the punishment of rebirth as a nonhuman animal; assuming the belief to be correct,
h t t h erefore expect a balance of numbers to b e mamtame
d between
one mig
human and nonhuman species.
.
. l
1 hip between
the
I n c h apter 8 I discussed
the apparently circu ar re anons
.
.
f

f
stive
of
remcarnab elie m remcarnation and the occurrence o cases sugge
tion: the belief facilitates the development of cases, and the cases tend to
strengthen the belief. I pointed out, however, that the belief al~ne does n~t
some reg10ns than 111
account cror t h e occurrence of cases more firequent lY m
0 .thers, and I offered some speculations about other fact.ors t~at may potentlate paranormal processes, including memories of prev10us. lr:es. Th~ present topic provides additional evidence that a belief alone is msuffic1ent to
generate cases. If it were, we should find in South Asia just as many claims
of nonhuman animal rebirth as we find claims of human rebirth. In fact,
claims of nonhuman animal rebirth are exceedingly rare in South Asia, and
almost completely absent elsewhere. After I overcame an initial prejudice
against such cases, I conscientiously recorded notes of whatever anyone
wished to tell me about them, and yet I have notes about fewer than thirty
cases of claimed nonhuman animal rebirth altogether. Most of them have as

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

their subject a human who has said that he had an incarnation as a nonhuman animal. Sometimes such an animal life occurred as an "intermediate"
life between another human life and the subject's present one. As an example of this I summarized in note 13 of chapter 8 the case of Ma Than Than
Aye. 3 Occasionally, informants designate a living animal as the reincarnation
of a deceased human. (A dream provides the basis and usually the only support for such a conjecture.)
The cases of claimed lives as nonhuman animals can, in the nature of
things, offer little evidence of the kind that we have found in the ordinary
human cases, and most of them provide no evidence whatever - merely the
subject's unsupported claim that he had such an incarnation.

Why Does Not Everyone Remember a Previous Life?

I have put the heading of this section in the form of a question that persons having some acquaintance with these cases frequently ask. We cannot,
I need hardly say again, even begin to answer the question. We have no evidence that everyone has had a previous life from which memories might
derive. We may, however, make the assumption - for the purpose of considering this topic - that if one person reincarnates, everyone does so or may
do so, even though most people remember nothing whatever about any previous lives they may have had. We can then reverse the question and ask what
we know about circumstances that appear either to facilitate or to inhibit the
occurrence of memories that seem to be authentic. We can try to discern in
them recurrent features that will give us hints at least of why some children
have memories of a previous life, although most do not. In this section I shall
attempt to do this. With as little repetition as I can manage, I shall gather
together some pertinent information and interpretations from previous chapters and introduce some new ones. I shall consider in order the following topics: what lives are most likely to be remembered; what kinds of persons, if
they reincarnate, are most likely to remember a previous life; and what ocher
circumstances seem to assist or co block the emergence of memories.
THE LIVES MOST LIKELY TO BE REMEMBERED

I have already discussed (in chapter 7) the high incidence of violent

death among the deceased persons figuring in these cases. I said chat in 725
cases from six different cultures, 61 percent of the previous personalities had
died violently. I have also explained why I believe chat the high incidence of
violent death in the cases reflects a real factor in the generation (and fixation)
of the memories and not merely an artifact in the reporting of the cases.'1

JO. Some Further Questions and Topics ...

211

The circumstances that usually accompany a violent death deserve attention no less than the violence itself. Violence is usually accompanied by
extreme physical suffering, except when a victim loses consciousness almost
instantly from an injury to the head or neck. In addition, violent deaths are
nearly always sudden and unexpected. 5 In wartime soldiers die violently, but
they expect that this may happen to them, whereas persons who die in private murders, village tumults, and vehicular accidents do nor expect to die
at the rime they do. We should also remember that young persons die violently more often than older ones; a violent death is usually an early one.
Therefore, when we appraise the effects of a violent death on a person who
experiences one and apparently survives to have memories of it, we must rake
account not just of the violence as such, but of all the associated elements,
such as the accompanying physical suffering, the unexpectedness of the death,
and its prematurity.
For all the prominence of violent death in these cases, it must take more
than a murder (or another type of violent death) to start a case. I say this
because unless our cases are much more underreported than I think they are,
the incidence of cases is far below that of violent death among the peoples
where we find cases. In other words, of all the persons who die violently, only
a handful have lived lives that a subject of one of these cases lat~r r~me~
bers. I shall return to the question of what makes some lives endmg 111 vwlence more memorable, so to speak, than others. Before doing that I shall

personment1on
some su b groups within the nearly 40 percent o f prevwus
alities who died naturally.
When we examine the previous personalities who died naturally. we
can distinguish several groups among them. Although we have not ~er made
analysis
. of the numbers .m eac h o f t h ese grou ps ' I believe
that
a quantitative
..
.
together they would comprise the majority of the previous personalmes dymg
natural deaths.
. d , nlly did so suddenly,
0 ne group of these deceased persons w h o d 1e
n,nu '
that is, within twenty-four hours of being apparently well or not ~xpect~d
t I1e near future. Su nil Dutt Saxena, t h e su b"JeCt 0 fa case 111 India '
. In
to d ie
remembered the life of a man who died this rapidly when he was in his early
sixties. On the morning of the day he died, he seemed well and had attended
to some business normally. Toward noon he became ill, and he was dead by
early evening, probably of a heart attack. 6

Another group of the deceased persons figuring in these cases who died
natural deaths were those who died young, by which I mean under the age
of twelve. We must interpret this observation cautiously, becaus~ the countries of Asia where the cases are found most abundantly have a high mortality in childhood compared with countries of the West. Even so, I think that

212

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

among all the deceased persons figuring in the cases, children form a group
that is out of proportion to the numbers of children {compared with the
numbers of adults) who die in the countries where I have studied these cases.7
Still another group were those of persons having what I call "unfinished
business." 8 The best examples are mothers who died leaving infants or young
children needing care. 9 Also in this group are some persons who had debts
to pay (or to collect) when they died.
In another group of cases we can characterize the previous personalities
as engaged in "continuing business." Typical examples of this group were
prosperous businessmen intently absorbed in their businesses and in the
accumulation and spending of the wealth associated with these. A retired person, no longer ambitious to earn more money, could not qualify for membership in this group, but an active merchant could. 10
If we now consider these five groups of persons who died either suddenly (whether violently or naturally), in childhood, with unfinished business, or with continuing business, we can see that all their lives ended in a
state of incompleteness. Ar the time of death they might all, for different reasons, have felt entitled to a longer life than the one they had had, and this
in .turn might have generated a craving for rebirth, perhaps leading to a
quicker reincarnation than that among persons who died replete with life,
so to speak, and at its natural end. 11
When we examine individual cases, we can often find two or more of
the factors I have mentioned occurring at the same time. For example, some
of th~ previous personalities who died violently also were young children at
the time they died, and some of the persons with unfinished or continuing
business died violently or naturally but suddenly. 12

THE KINDS OF PERSONS MOST LIKELY

TO REMEMBER A PREVIOUS LIFE IF THEY REINCARNATE

.
In the preceding section I described types of lives, especially those having unusual circumstances at the time of death, that the subjects of these cases
seem frequently to remember. We have seen, however, rhat people living the
lives and dying the deaths of the types described are much more numerous
in the general population than are the cases. We should, therefore, look for
other factors influencing the remembrance of previous lives.
One might ask: What sort of a person, if he died and reincarnated,
would be most likely to remember a previous life? Unfortunately, I can say
little in response to this question.
Perhaps the most obvious category of persons likely to remember a previous life might be that of persons with unusually good memories. The most

10. Some Further Questions and Topics ...

213

obvious questions, however, are the most often overlooked, and I have given
attention to this one only recently. I can, nevertheless, mention two pertinent cases in Lebanon that I happened to be studying at the same time. One
is the case of Suzanne Ghanem, to which I referred in chapter 7 in connection with the large number of proper names (of the previous life) she had
been able to state. Suzanne also stated an equal number of other details,
making her one of the leading subjects with regard to the total number of
details of the previous life recalled. I inquired about the memory of Saada
(the previous personality of Suzanne's case) and learned that she was recognized in her family as having had an unusually good memory, especially for
the names of people. The subject of the other case, Said Zahr, was making
statements that his father thought referred to the life of a well-known Druse
sheikh. One of the sheikh's sons learned about the case, made some study of
it himself, and took me to meet the subject and his family. The sheikh had
been an eminent person and greatly venerated. Much about him was common knowledge among the Druses; moreover, a family's prestige would
mount if its members could say that rhe sheikh had been reborn among
them. For these two reasons rhe sheikh's son adopted an attitude of extreme
reserve toward the case and could not shake a suspicion that the subject's
father had coached his son, although there was no direct evidence of this. At
one point in our discussion of rhe case, I commented on the paucity of the
subject's statements; he seemed to remember extremely little about the previous life. To this the sheikh's son replied: "Thar might be a fearure in favor
of the case's authenticity; my father had a very bad memory." If we assume
that the case was authentic and best explained by reincarnation, we could
say that if the sheikh's memory had been even worse than it was, he would
have remembered nothing at all in his next incarnation.
.
In chapter 6 I referred to Dr. Erlendur Haraldsson's observat10n, from
testing children in Sri Lanka, that the subjects of cases on the whole had .better memories than their peers who did not claim to remember previous lives.
It is, however, not enough to have a good memory in this life in order to
remember a previous one. Otherwise, we should have expected some of the
great mnemonists to have remembered previous lives, and there is not even
a hint that any of them did. 13 We might then turn ro other mental qualities
that might facilitate remembering a previous life. The mental clarity that
accompanies the serenity of spiritual development may be such a factor ..
In chapter 3 I referred to the longstanding belief in Buddhism and Hinduism that spiritual development, through meditation and meritorious d~eds,
clarifies the mind and enhances memory. The tulkus of Tibet are said to
remember the previous lives of spiritually evolved lamas. These lamas had
led, for the most part, fairly ordinary monastic lives, and nearly all of them

214

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

had died naturally. One might say of them that, although the events of their
lives were not memorable, the persons who had lived these lives were remarkable and may have carried the mental clarity they attained by their spiritual
practices into another incarnation.
I mentioned in chapter 5 that I have little direct experience with cases
among Tibetan lamas, and I cannot testify from firsthand knowledge to the
claims made on behalf of any individual tu!ku. However, I have studied a
few cases of children in other cultures who remembered the previous lives
of persons who had been unusually pious and generous. Some of them had
meditated, others had not; all had died natural deaths. The subjects of these
cases themselves often showed precocious piety and generosity when they
were young children, thereby suggesting that they had behavioral as well as
imaged memories of the previous personality's spirituality. I earlier mentioned, in other connections, Disna Samarasinghe and Ratana Wongsombat,
who were outstanding examples of this small group of subjects. 14
Among the cases involving pious previous personalities, the interval
between death and presumed reincarnation was just as short, on the average, as it was in the cases with violent deaths or with natural deaths associated with any of the circumstances I mentioned that might lead to an early
rebirth. Therefore, the lives of the pious previous personalities figuring in
our cases may have been remembered because, for presently obscure reasons,
the interval between death and birth was short in their cases.
OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES THAT SEEM TO FACILITATE OR
INHIBIT THE 0CCUilH.ENCE OF MEMORIES OF PREVIOUS LIVES

I have already emphasized the warming or chilling effects that parents

may have on a child who has memories of a previous life that he would like
to express if anyone is willing to listen. I have also mentioned the possibility that the belief in reincarnation may itself be carried over from one life to
another. To a child born with such a belief, any memories that he may have
of a previous life will make sense; co one born without it they will not.
In some cases we can identify a mental shock as possibly stimulating or
suppressing memories. I have already suggested (in note 15 of chapter 8) that
the shock of a young girl who remembered that she had recently been in a
man's body and realized that she was now in a female one might evoke additional memories and thus account for the lopsided ratio of girls who recall
previous lives as men compared with boys who recall previous lives as women.
Shock may account for another lopsided ratio that we have found among
our cases in India. A substantial number of Indian subjects recall previous
lives in socioeconomic conditions distinctly different from their own. (We

10. Some Further Questions and Topics ...

215

call these promotion cases and demotion cases.) Among these subjects rwothirds recall better material conditions and only one-third recall worse conditions.15 A critic knowing little of India and eager to subsume these cases
within a familiar psychological theory may suggest that unhappy Indian children imagine previous lives in better circumstances as a solace for the squalid
conditions in which they find themselves. Several facts point away from this
interpretation, however, and suggest that the correct one may lie elsewhere.
First, although promotion cases are fewer than demotion ones, they do occur,
and in considerable numbers. Some of them are as authentic as correspond~ng demotion cases, and they require explanation just as much as do those
mvolving demotion. Second, a child obtains no credit for remembering in
India a previous life in better circumstances than his own; on the contrary,
he will be judged to have done something sinful (in a previous life) that
earned the demotion. Third, any comfort from the fantasy of having been
rich is more than canceled in most demotion cases by the trouble the subjects bring on themselves through their boasting, refusal to eat the family's
food, complaints about their poverty, and other alienating behavior. Fourth,
attributing such a motive to the subject does not address the question of how
some of these children obtained correct information about someone unknown
to other members of their families.
If we decide that we cannot account for all the facts of demotion cases
as due to wish-fulfilling fantasies, we are free to consider other possibilities.
I suggest that dim, slightly emerging memories of a previous life under b:t~er material conditions may act as a shock that brings additional memones
mto the child's consciousness.
If a mild shock can stimulate memories, perhaps a greater one c_an
m h.b.
h

k may occur when a child

I It t e1r emergence. Such a suppressing shoe
with a Burmese body begins to think that he had been a Japanese, ~urop~an,

.
.
l
h . Indian .child thmks
0 r A mencan ma prev10us life. It may a so occur w en an
that he previously lived in England or when a Turkish one thmks. that ~e
~ived in Lebanon or Libya. I have learned of no child reca.llin~ a prevlO~lS life
10 a country other than his own who has furnished sufficient mformanon to
permit verification of his statements. Such children seem to remember the
vague outlines of such a life and often the details of how it ended, but nothing more. The important issue here may be, not rhe crossing of i1~ternational
boun?aries as such, but changes in the circumstances ~fl.iving, ohen broadl_y
described as cul tu re. However, cultural differences w1th111 one pol meal untt
may sometimes be greater than those between neighboring areas of different
countries. For example, the Alevis {still mainly Arabic speakers) of Adana and
Hatay in Turkey have more in common with Alevis (and other Arabs) of Syria
than they have with Turks in Istanbul. It is not surprising- according to the
r

216

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

explanation that I am offering here - that among six cases of children from
south-central Turkey who have remembered previous lives in Istanbul, we
have verified only one, which Dr. Jurgen Keil solved.
Anthropologists have some familiarity with an experience called culture
shock, which refers to the stress often produced in a person who moves from
one country to another, where the customs are markedly different. If reincarnation occurs, some persons may undergo cul tu re shock because of a
change from a life in one country to a life in another.
The preceding review shows adequately, I think, that several, or perhaps many, factors enter into the development and expression in a child of
memories of a previous life. If there is, however, a typical formula for such
an occurrence, I would describe it as having the following features: The preceding life should be that of a man of middle-class status who lived in a country with a strong belief in reincarnation, and he should die violently or,
failing that, suddenly. The child having the memories of this life could be a
boy or a girl, but it should be born in the same country and culture as that
of the deceased man, and its parents should be poor, but nevertheless familiar enough with the belief in reincarnation of their country so that they can
listen to the child without rebuking it.

ls Reincarnation a Universal Experience?

I have already deprecated this question. I regard it as completely unanswerable now and in the foreseeable future. I am not going to attempt any
generalization about billions of human beings based on the data of 2,500
cases, ~ot all of which, we must remember, provide good evidence that reincarnation occurs. The most I will say on this point is that if reincarnation
does occur at all, it may well be something that everyone experiences; but
we cannot know this.
We can, however, prove false some generalizations that have been made
from the cases. I have heard it said, for example, that only persons who die
violently reincarnate and that other persons do not. This is wrong, because
some of the cases in which natural deaths occurred have evidence suggesting reincarnation that is just as strong as that in any case I have studied with
a violent death.

Is It a Help or a Hindrance to Remember a Previous Life?

Even to pose this question requires one to ask others: "Helpful or harmful to whom?" and "Helpful or harmful at what stage of life?"

JO. Some Further Questions and Topics ...

217

Many children subjects of these cases suffer miserably because they feel
separated from the families to which they think they really belong; they may
make wounding remarks that provoke reprisals and lead to their being isolated within their own families. Such children can then be truly alone: physically separated from the "real" (previous) family and socially separated from
their own (present) family. Their parents are in no better situation. A child
they wanted has turned against them and declared them not his real parents,
but unworthy substitutes. If we think only about the turmoil of conflicting
loyalties in which most of the subjects of these cases find themselves between
the ages of two and five, we cannot say that remembering a previous life is
beneficial to anyone concerned. Apart from this, the memories themselves
are more apt to be of unpleasant events than of enjoyable ones. Murders and
other crimes dominate the memories, not scenes of love and friendship,
although there may be some of these too.
In later life the advantages of remembering a previous life may outweigh
the disadvantages. Some of the subjects have used their memories as a means
for improving present conduct, rather as one may study the questions on an
examination one has failed in order to pass the next test. Moreover, those
who remember any previous life, whatever its content, may acquire from the
experience a sense of detachment from present troubles that only a longer
view of an individual's destiny can confer. 16 Some subjects of these cas:s
have had no fear of death and have offered reassurance about it to their
elders. For example, a recently bereaved visitor to the home of Marta Lorenz
sorrowfully remarked: "Oh, dear. The dead never return." To this Marta
replied: "Don't say that. I died also and look, I am living again." Another
subject, Ma Than Than Aye, said, as her father was dying: "It is a happy
release for him. There is no cause to be sorrowful. Death is not strange at
all. We all must die too." She did not weep.

Why Do More Boys Than Girls Remember Previous Lives?

As I mentioned in chapter 7, boys appreciably outnumber girls (in a proportion of approximately three to two) among the subjects of the cases of
(nearly) all the cultures so far analyzed. I think there are several reasons for
this uneven ratio in the sexes of the subjects.
When we compared the cases with violent and with natural deaths in
the previous lives, we found the preponderance of boy subjects far greater in
the former group (where boys outnumber girls by more than two to one) than
in the latter one. This presumably derives from the greater tendency of men
than women to kill each other and to otherwise die violently. However, the

218

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

cases with natural death also show a marked preponderance of male subjects
in India, Turkey, and Alaska (among the Tlingit). We found almost equal
numbers of male and female subjects in the cases with natural death of Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Lebanon. Only in Burma did female subjects outnumber males among the cases with natural death.
Some of the preponderance of male subjects may result from parents
suppressing and concealing female subjects so that their cases are not proportionately represented in the sample we can study. In many countries of
Asia a girl is generally expected to remain inconspicuous, at least until her
marriage, and the publicity associated with being the subject of a case can
seem to damage her chances of being satisfactorily married. I have known of
one case suppressed for this reason, and I believe there have been others.
In fifty-seven cases among the Igbo of Nigeria, forty-four subjects (77
percent) were males and thirteen (23 percent) were females; this was an even
more lopsided ratio than we found in other cultures. It reflects, I think, the
dominance of males in Igbo society. The Igbo have much more interest in
studying who a male child might have been in a previous life than in learning about the previous life of a girl.
I mentioned earlier (in note 15 of chapter 8) the possibility that men's
lives have more memorable events than women's, and if this is so, it may contribute to the preponderance of male subjects.
I do not think the foregoing explanations - even taken together - adequately account for the greater number of male compared with female subjects, which remains one of the many features of these cases that require
further investigation.

Why Are Not More Lives Than One Remembered by Subjects?

In answer to this question, I should say first that a small number of subjects do claim to remember more than one previous life. However, the second life remembered is nearly always an intermediate life about which the
subject furnishes few details, so that it remains unverified. 17 (I mentioned four
of these in chapter 8.) I have so far found only one case (that of Pratomwan
Inrhanu) in which a subject remembered two previous lives with sufficient
detail so that they could both be independently verified. I think this is what
we should expect if the memories of previous lives, like other memories,
tend to fade with the passage of time . 18
Four cases in our collection suggest that such fading does occur from
one life to another. In these, the subject remembered the life of a person who
(according to informants of his family) had himself remembered a previous
life; but the subject had no recollection of the more anterior life. 19

JO. Some Further Questions and Topics ...

219

When memories become ordinarily inaccessible, they are not necessarily obliterated. Under unusual circumstances they may again come into consciousness; a case in India that Dr. Satwant Pasricha and I studied suggests
this. I referred in chapter 8 (note 9) to the subject of this case, Ram Prakash,
in discussing the fixed interval between death and birth that is part of the
Jain teaching about reincarnation. Ram Prakash recalled verified details about
the life of a man, Shev Behari Jain, who had died not long before Ram
Prakash's birth. However, unlike most of our subjects, Ram Prakash also
claimed to recall two more previous lives that he said he had lived before the
one as Shev Behari Jain. (Ram Prakash did not give enough details about
either of these other two lives to permit our finding persons corresponding
to his statements about them. In addition, the life farthest back would presumably have occurred about a century ago and would be exceedingly difficult
to verify.) Of interest in the present context is that our informants among
the surviving members of Shev Behari Jain's family had never heard him
mention either of the two lives that Ram Prakash said he had lived before he
had been born as Shev Behari Jain. Unfortunately, I have no other case like
this one that could help us with its interpretation. One possible explanation
is that Ram Prakash added two fantasied previous lives as embellishments to
the verified one that he really did remember, but there seems no obvious
motive for him to have done this. On the contrary, he might have diminished his overall credibility with his family and with that of Shev Behari Jain
by claiming to remember additional previous lives that were (proba~ly)
unverifiable. Perhaps Shev Behari Jain remembered these other two prevwus
lives when he was a young child, bur, like other subjects, forgot them when
he became older. This would account for his widow and children not having heard of them. Finally, perhaps special conditions existed in Ram
Prakash's family that facilitated his recalling three previous lives, even though
Shev Behari Jain had not recalled any.

Children Who Remember Lives That Ended in Suicide

Twenty-nine of the approximately 2,500 subjects remembered the lives
of persons who had killed themselves. Four of these deceased persons had
accidentally shot themselves (two when they grasped a loaded gun by the barrel and it discharged, and two while cleaning a loaded gun). Two others had
killed themselves rather than be killed by police or soldiers who were about
to capture them. The remaining twenty-three persons rook their own lives
when a social situation, such as a bankruptcy or a thwarted love affair, seemed
to them worse than death. 20

220

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

If we regard reincarnation as the best interpretation for these cases, they

disprove the belief expounded in some religions that persons who commit
suicide live in Hell for centuries or even for eternity. They also offer for a
person considering suicide the thought that it would not end his troubles but
only change the location of their occurrence.
Several of the subjects of this group of cases had phobias of the instrument of the suicide, such as guns or poison. The memory of the suicide did
not necessarily extinguish the inclination to suicide. For example, three of
the subjects, when frustrated as children, made threats of committing suicide to their parents; a fourth actually killed himself in middle life; and a
fifth told me that he would probably commit suicide if he found himself in
a situation he judged intolerable. On the other hand, another subject (of an
unverified case) told me that the memories of a suicide in a previous life had
deterred her from killing herself.

Obstacles to Believing in the Possibility of Reincarnation

I devoted chapter 2 to the belief in reincarnation. I do not propose to
write another full chapter about disbelief in it, but the topic deserves at least
a section of a chapter. I disclaim any aim in what follows at converting readers to a belief in reincarnation. I wish only to draw attention to a group of
obstacles that seem to me often to hinder the open-minded appraisal of the
cases of children who remember previous lives. The hindrances that I propose to discuss are: the unfamiliarity in the West with the idea of reincarnation; the assumption that our minds (and memories) are in our brains and
cannot possibly also exist elsewhere; the belief that we cannot conceive what
life after death would be like; and the preference many persons seem to have
for not wishing to accept the personal responsibility for their destinies that
reincarnation suggests they may have.

LACK OF FAMILIARITY WITH THE IDEA OF REINCARNATION

Neoideophobia (a word of my coinage meaning "fear of new ideas")

afflicts humans worldwide. "One of the greatest pains to human nature is
the pain of a new idea. " 21 We tend to shun the unfamiliar and to prejudge
it unfavorably before we examine evidence bearing on it. "To believe fully
in some phenomenon one has to be accustomed to ir." 22
Here I should mention that the idea of any survival of human personality after death is unfamiliar (if expressed in concrete terms) to most educated persons of the West. (In chapter I I mentioned that reincarnation is

JO. Some Further Questions and Topics ...

221

only one form that survival after death might take.) Whereas five centuries
ago disbelief in survival after death was almost nonexistent in Europe (and
might even be punished with death), today belief in survival is the eccentric
view. The belief in life after death has been steadily eroded by the successes
of science concentrated on the relatively easily manageable problems of the
physical world. Statements scientists make about those problems carry weight
to persons who cannot have experienced the events described, whereas statements made by scientists well informed about the phenomena we now call
paranormal do not. Few persons have personally experienced an earthquake
and yet few doubt that earthquakes occur; in contrast, most educated persons doubt the "reality" of apparitions, even though it is possible that more
persons have seen apparitions than have been in earthquakes. The collective
judgment of scientists has authenticated earthquakes, but not yet accorded
the same status to apparitions. Thus, further acceptance of the idea of life
after death awaits the accomplishment of more research that may bring
stronger evidence and eventually win a majority vote among scientists - the
only test of truth reached by the route of the scientific method.
Among the different types of evidence bearing on the question of life
after death, that suggesting reincarnation has two additional handicaps. The
first is the remoteness, in geographical terms, of most of the evidence from
the Western persons who read about it. Interested colleagues have repeatedly told me that a case in Virginia, Yorkshire, or the suburbs of Paris would
be vastly more credible than one in Sri Lanka, Burma, or Lebanon. There
are three points to be made in connection with this objection. First, I have
studied cases in Virginia Yorkshire and the suburbs of Paris, and I believe
that we could investigat~ others in, these places as well as elsewhere in the
West, if only we knew how to identify them and to persuade the persons concerned to share their information with us. Second, Western skepticism about
the authenticity of a case in a "developing" country shows an arrogance that

f rom t h e 'v'
' 1ew
c

l asc endancy in the world.

d enves
wests
centuries
o f po l'mca
No one has shown that we should believe a witness in South Asia less than
one in Europe or North America. Third, there are probably important factors in the beliefs and circumstances of the countries where the cases occur
abundantly that facilitate their development_ apart from the belief in reincarnation. In chapter 8 I sketched my own ideas about these factors and suggested that the economic development of the West had wrought p.rofound
changes in mental processes and attitudes that are not well recognized and
not all gains.
A second handicap for acceptance of the idea of reincarnation among
Western persons lies in the ways in which most Western persons have become
familiar with it. Westerners who either adopt the idea of reincarnation or at

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

least consider it worth serious study have nearly all learned about it - directly
or indirectly- through popular writings on Hinduism and Buddhism,
including variants of the teachings of theosophy. I have tried in chapter 2
(and also in chapter 8) to separate the primary belief in reincarnation from
the encrusting secondary beliefs that have been deposited on it in different
cultures.
Yet undoubtedly the greatest obstacle to acceptance of reincarnation
among educated Westerners lies in the firm belief most of them have that
persons are nothing but their physical bodies. Disbelief in one thing may
derive from hardened belief in another, and a strong conviction can even neutralize perceptions and other kinds of evidence. A story is told of an uneducated American farmer who, at rhe insistence of some friends, once visited
a zoo and came to an enclosure in which a camel lived. After staring at the
camel for a long rime, he turned and walked away murmuring to himself:
"There ain't no such animal." Thus can beliefs triumph over experiences.
I observed a more immediately relevant example of this during a meeting with a full-blooded Tlingit who had a prominent birthmark on his neck
just beneath his jaw. He told me that this birthmark, and other evidence,
had convinced his mother that he was her uncle reborn; the uncle had died
when he had been shot in the neck at rhe site of my informant's birthmark.
In addition, my informant had two grandchildren who claimed to remember previous lives with not contemptible evidence. However, he had been
trained and ordained as a Presbyterian minister, his educators had taught him
what to believe, and he told me, with an attitude of inerrancy, that he did
not accept the idea of reincarnation. The Gospel did not teach it and that
settled the matter for him.
Probably many aspects of reincarnation seem unfamiliar and hence
improbable to Westerners, but rhe difficulty of imagining oneself getting
younger may exceed in importance most other facets of the concept. It is not
easy to picture ourselves getting older, although most of us can do this with
some effort, because we observe the process of aging in our parents before
we see it in ourselves 23 ; however, "younging," which is what we would do if
we reincarnate, seems particularly strange. 2'1
The difficulty most persons have in thinking of themselves becoming
younger may derive partly from misconceptions about the importance of
physical size. Although we know that an acorn can give rise to an oak tree,
we may not readily understand that the qualities of a large tree can be compressed into something the size of an acorn. This difficulty may come from
thinking that only a large organism can accommodate all the information of
many kinds that a human personality has when he dies. How can all that
information, we wonder, be packed into the body of a tiny infant, or - more

JO. Some Further Questions and Topics ...

223

marvelous still - into that of an embryo? Such reasoning shows a blunted

imagination. In the first place, there are no grounds for thinking that, if reincarnation occurs, a person carries all his knowledge over from one life to
another, and in the next chapter I shall express doubts about this. Even more
important, however, is the unlikelihood that minds - although they have
spatial properties - are restricted to the size (and capacities to store information) of brains.
The young subjects of the cases I have studied often do not have the
difficulties in conceiving the changes in age and size that most adults have.
Some of them when young have remembered what it felt like to be old, feeble, and ill. Disna Samarasinghe recalled being toothless in old age and having to use a stick for walking. Pratima Saxena remembered a terminal illness
(of pulmonary tuberculosis) with cough, fever, and fecal incontinence. Some
of the children have commented on the change in their bodily size (since
death in the previous life), and although most have done so uncomplainingly,
others have shown impatience to be big once again. 25
I mentioned earlier the importance of familiarity with a phenomenon
for believing in it. Simple acquaintance with the idea of reincarnation, however, does not suffice for the fair appraisal of evidence for it. I can emphasize this best by mentioning the opinions about this research that some
academic colleagues in the West and some in Asia and Africa express when
they first learn of it. They tell me - if not explicitly, by hints and si:niles that I am wasting money. The two groups, however, give oppo.site re~c
d gment: Those in the West thm
k remcarnanon

is impossit h.is Ju
. 26
sons 10r
ble; those in Asia and Africa think it a fact beyond need of demonsrranon.
None of the persons making these summary judgments had any k~owled~e
.
. h h
h h ve modified their
o f concrete cases f rom the evidence of wh1c t ey mig t a

If t h"is b ook has any central purpose, it
is
rh at of urging readers
opm1ons.

d
h

l"
f

car nation only after

.
to JU ge t e men ts of a belief or a d1sbe 1e 111 rem

h
I

t
0 remember previous
stu d ymg t e evidence offered by children w o c aim
lives.
BRAIN AND MIND

Most scientists today, and certainly nearly all neuroscientists.' _belie~e that
our minds (and hence also our memories) are nothing but ma111festauons of
the working of our brains. This assumption seems to receive much support
from the effects on our mental processes produced by injuries t~ the brai.n
or milder interferences with its functioning. I do not need to cne the evidence for this from neuropathology and from surgical operations. on the
brain, such as those that damage the temporal lobes, although that is often

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

impressive; a high fever or one or two drinks of whisky will suffice to convince a doubter. Humble neuroscientists acknowledge that they have only
begun to show in detail that brain processes can fully account for mental ones;
but they optimistically believe that they or their successors will work out all
the details to their own and everyone else's satisfaction. They assume, in an
act of faith, that no other solution to the relationship between brain and mind
will be found; hence, none other is worth considering.
However, we are not all pledged to the received opinion of most neuroscientists on this matter. Hippocrates said that "To consciousness the brain
is the messenger." 27 In modern times Bergson was perhaps the first philosopher to express the same idea. 28 Within the last two decades a small number of psychologists and philosophers, and even a few neuroscientists, have
begun to question whether we can fully explain the mind (and memory) in
terms ofbrain functioning. 29 Some scientists are now beginning to regard the
brain as an instrument of the mind just as the piano is an instrument for a
pianist's expression of music. 30
I cannot review the unmanageably extensive literature on this subject.
To simplify the few remarks I shall make about it, I will reduce the possibilities I consider to two. The first is that what we call minds (or mental functions), including all our subjective experiences, are nothing more than an
~speer of the activity of our brains. This view, which has various subtypes,
is monism. (Some persons prefer to call this concept physical monism or
physicalism in order to distinguish it clearly from the opposite concept - the
~onism of idealists, such as the Vedanta philosophers of India.) To monism
is opposed the view that minds and brains interact during life, but are fundamentally different; this is dualism. I make no issue of our needing brains
for the effective expression of our minds (in most circumstances) during our
present life. I want instead to consider whether a living brain is essential to
the existence of a mind. Arguments and evidence indicating the insufficiency
of brains to explain all mental phenomena will tend to support dualism, and
so will evidence of the survival of someone's mind after the death of his
physical body. This book is mainly about the second type of evidence. Here
I shall briefly discuss what I regard as five difficulties to an acceptance of
monism (or physicalism), apart from evidence of the survival of minds after
death.
First, what we know of brains cannot explain consciousness. The scientists and philosophers who call themselves monists tell us that consciousness is only an epiphenomenon of the working of the brains. This assertion
remains to be validated. It would be more fitting to acknowledge the primacy of consciousness itself. We all experience it, and all our knowledge
occurs in it. "Mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience; all

10. Some Further Questions and Topics ...

225

else is remote inference." 31 Without consciousness we could not observe

brains or imagine anything about them, including the probably false idea that
their workings and nothing else produce consciousness. The study of our
brains may clarify why when light waves of a particular length reach our eyes
we have the sensation of blueness, but blueness remains an irreducible experience of consciousness. An understanding of consciousness may ultimately
explain brains, but brains will never explain consciousness. I do not think
anything else ever will.3 2
In the foregoing I do not intend to deny what I have already statedthat what we experience in consciousness varies with the state of our brain.
Nor am I asserting that all our mental activity is conscious. Far from it; I
believe the simile of an iceberg for the conscious and unconscious parts of
the mind not merely trite but absurd. Instead of the iceberg's one-ninth, I
should think less than one-thousandth of a person's mind is normally accessible to his consciousness.
Second, our present knowledge of brains cannot explain the features of
our mental images. No arrangement of neurons in the brain is circular like
our experience of seeing a circle. The experience of seeing a circle, or a
square, or almost any other shape, does not correspond to the spatial arrangement of neurons. In technical terms, the data of our perceptions and the
arrangements of neurons in the brain are not isomorphic. (I am not sayin~,
however, that brains play no part in our recognition of shapes during ordinary consciousness. 3.1)
Third, our present knowledge of brains provides no satisfactory account
of memory. (I am speaking here only of memory for events in one life, not about
that for those in a previous life.) Neurophysiologists have suggested th~t expeh

h 1
ay snmulate
.
nences
mo d.f
1 y t e brain and leave traces m it t at ater events m
in a way that leads to recall of the original event in the experience that we call
memory. This sounds plausible in the abstract, but its weakne.sses ~econ:e
apparent when we ask how the traces are activated in the almost mfintte van34
ety of circumstances for which they, or some of them, are available.
Fourth, mental events occur in a space that is different from the space
familiar to us in our everyday lives as well as from the physical sp~ce th~t
physicists describe. The image of a bear that we may hold in our n11nds (m
the absence of a live bear) has spatial dimensions, and we can locate th~ bear
in our minds at a distance from an also imagined river and a salmon m the
river at which the bear may seem to lunge. We cannot, however'. sp~ak i~tel
ligibly about the distance between such an imagined bear and its 1magmed
surroundings, on the one hand, and, on the other, any object that we locate
perceptually in physical space.35 A person's physical body is in physical space,
his mind is in his mental space.

226

CHILDREN WHO RElv1EMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

It is not obviously true that the minds of two different persons exist in
the same mental space just as their bodies exist (at different locations) in the
same physical space. If it is true, as I believe it to be, we are not ordinarily
aware of the fact; our minds are usually protected from the intrusion of other
persons' thoughts in our part of mental space. However, on rare occasions
the barriers weaken, and we experience telepathy or some other kind of paranormal communication. That the mental spaces of the persons participating
in telepathy are somehow linked does not necessarily mean that they are in
the same mental space, but I am inclined to think that they are.
Fifth, our understanding of brains does not explain telepathy and other
paranormal phenomena. It is conceivable that a still undiscovered feature of
the brain will some day be shown to facilitate telepathic communication, but
this alone would not rake us far. We should still have to explain the close
correspondence between images in the minds of two persons who experience
a telepathic communication. Ir may be said in objection to this point that
we cannot explain telepathy without brains either. I agree with that, but how
does the absence of an explanation in terms of other phenomena justify
ignoring the evidence of telepathy?
I think those persons are mistaken who believe - or, if they do not
believe, pretend - that telepathy and kindred phenomena are not subversive
of the opinions most scientists today have about the nature of human personality. If materialism - I am speaking of the philosophical kind, not the
economic one -were true, telepathy should not occur; but it does occur, and
so materialism must be false. 36
The acceptance of this conclusion should not await the development of
a theory that will accommodate the facts of telepathy to the rest of scientific
theory; instead, the assumptions of material ism should be abandoned to
accommodate the facts of telepathy. I believe that after the next scientific revolution, dualism will regain the dominant position it held for centuries in
the West and still holds in most of the rest of the world. I also agree with a
statement that a prescient psychologist made many years ago: "The phenomena of telepathy are ... not an alternative to survival after death, bur a
virtual guarantee of it. "3 7
The data from observations of paranormal phenomena - going, I need
hardly say, far beyond the small amount presented in this book - require a
radical revision in present concepts of the relation between mind and body.
Many other scientists are aware of this prospect, and the knowledge has
caused some of them to challenge the credibility of testimony concerning
paranormal phenomena. Scientists who choose this defense seem to occupy
the high ground, because attempts to observe the phenomena under controlled conditions have so far produced (for the most pan) only marginal

10. Some Further Questions and Topics ...

227

effects that require statistics for their demonstration; and experimental results
are exasperatingly unrepeatable at will. 38 Furthermore, scientists like myself
who point to the seeming abundance of paranormal cognition in spontaneous
cases must also ask their readers and listeners to share their confidence in
human testimony about past events. Still, we cherish our assumptions also,
and most of us remain confident that we shall ultimately obtain stronger evidence that will lead other scientists to change their minds. There is also the
possibility- more to be hoped for than expected- that enough scientists will
first change their minds and begin to consider more favorably the abundant
evidence of paranormal phenomena that is already available.
I am aware that, having said that minds are not brains but users of
brains, I have not said of what minds consist; nor can I say. I can, however,
conjecture that they consist of some nonphysical substance. Let us call this
substance "mind-stuff" until we know more about it. It is, in Schrodinger's
happy metaphor, "just a little bit more than a collection of single data (expe39
.
nences
an d memories), namely the canvas upon which they are co 11 ected "
CAN WE CONCEIVE A LIFE AFTER DEATH?

Under this heading I should first remind you that nearly all rhe .world:s
great religions - and many not so great ones also - have included m their
teachings or their associated mythology some idea of a life after death. To
the average educated Western person these ideas often have little appeal.
They are either vague, such as the concept of "eternal bliss," or rh:y seem co
express nothing but a wish for the best of the present life to connnue, perhaps improved and amplified the Tlingit is apt to picture an orgy of salmon
h
'
f h' kind offeastm t e next world, just as the Viking thought o enJoying is
ing in Valhalla.
1fi fter death seems
Wh en an e d ucated Western person says t l1at a 1 e a
.
mconce1va
bl e to him, he is usually expressmg
h'IS d'isappoI nrment
wtth the
.
k'm d s o f concepts I have JUSt
.
.
d an d a1so h'IS convicnon that there
ment10ne
could be no life without our familiar physical bodies. However,. several Western philosophers and psychologists have suggested some parncular features
that a postmortem life without our physical bodies might have.40 These proposals are extrapolations of established knowledge, bur they are not works
of science fiction. We have some information on which we can ground conjectures. In the first place, a few subjects who have remembered previou~ liv~s
with verified details have also said that they remembered events occurnng 111
41
a realm of discarnate beings, of which they, at that time, were one. (~ have
already referred to these and cited some examples in chapter 5.) To the information they have furnished, we may add that from some persons who have

228

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

lucid dreams 42 and some persons who have approached death and then recovered or escaped. 43 I think we may also use in our conjectures the (admittedly
small) knowledge we now have about circumstances and processes of telepathy.44 Here then are some ideas about what life after death may be like.
Without the sensory organs of a physical body, perceptions after death
would certainly differ from what we are accustomed to while alive, but they
would not necessarily cease. Persons who nearly die and then recover report
having had perceptions - some of them not greatly different from their ordinary ones - even though their physical bodies were ostensibly unconscious
and sometimes thought to be actually dead, although they were not. Their
sensory experiences, which seem to be had from a position in space different
from that of their physical bodies, are not mediated by normal processes of
the sensory organs.
Thoughts after death might consist of images much more than do those
of our familiar waking world, since they might be less enriched (and also less
encumbered) by words. In this feature, thinking after death might resemble
that of young children and that of dreamers. The world of the after-death
state would be an "imagy" one - to use Price's word - but it would not be
an imaginary one or any less real than is a dream world to a dreamer. 45
In the postmortem world, as in dreams, memories of some past events
might be more accessible than they are in our ordinary condition. The memories that might come into consciousness after death would not necessarily
be only those on which one would like to dwell. A review of one's life and
one's conduct in it may occur, and I earlier mentioned (in note 22 of chapter 2) Patanjali's teaching that a subconscious dread of this review may
account for the almost universal fear of death. Plato's Socrates was also thinking of judgments and destinies in a life after death when he said that a good
man need not fear death. 46 At present, however, we have almost no evidence
from the children who remember previous lives for the occurrence of such a
life review; only a few of the subjects have referred to anything of this sort. 47
Such a review, frequently called "panoramic memory,'' does sometimes occur
in (Western) persons who approach death and recover from an illness or
escape from a danger that seemed life-threatening. In a series of 417 such cases
that a colleague and I studied, fifty-four (13 percent) of the persons had
experienced such a review of past events. 48 Since some of these persons
(although by no means all) were considered dead or almost dead before they
recovered, we may conjecture - but certainly cannot assert - that persons
who actually die also scan the events of the life just ended. If so, they may
afterward forget the details of the review, as Patanjali suggested.
The postmortem world that I envisage would, therefore, derive much
of its content from the premortem thoughts of a person inhabiting it. It

10. Some Further Questions and Topics ...

229

would reflect both the culture in which he had lived and the personal experiences and attitudes that he had had. It would be pleasant or painful according to the kind of life that the inhabitant had lived before dying.
We do not need to think of discarnate personalities as being completely
isolated in this postmortem world. They might meet other discarnate personalities. They might communicate with each other through processes similar to those of telepathy between living persons. The biologist and
philosopher Hans Driesch, whose works I mentioned earlier, put this succinctly: "The means of communication that are normal for a dead person are
'paranormal' for a living one." 49 If this is so, the communications and associations would take place mainly between persons who had a close (emotional) relationship with each other before death. It follows, I think, that after
death we could not get in touch with anyone who happened to interest us
just by willing this. It is more likely that, according to our attachments and
conduct during life, we would associate after death with persons of attainments similar to our own. If we have been loving, we might find ourselves
among loving persons, particularly those we have especially loved ourselves;
if we have been odious, we might find ourselves among other hateful persons.
Discarnate personalities inhabiting the realm that I am imagining may
have some possibilities for monitoring events in our familiar terrestrial world
and, much more rarely, for communicating with living people. In chapter 5
I gave some examples of subjects who made correct statements about events
in the previous family that occurred after the previous personality's death and
of which the subject could not have learned normally, so far as I could tell.
Other subjects have remembered that while they were in a discarnate state
they were able to appear visibly to living family members and friends of the
previous personality they remembered having been, and other persons have
sometimes confirmed these manifestations. For example, Maung Yin Maung
and Ven. Chaokhun Rajsuthajarn remembered being seen as apparitions after
death in the previous life, and Ven. Sayadaw U Sobhana remembered experiences as a discarnate personality that corresponded to those in the dreams
of two living persons; the living persons who were the percipients in these
apparent interactions between the two realms confirmed the subjects'
accounts. The cases I have studied include many other instances of discarnate personalities being seen in what I call announcing dreams; but only
rarely does a subject like Ven. Sayadaw U Sobhana remember that, as a discarnate personality, he manifested in the dream of a living person.
Certain other cases of apparitions provide additional examples of the
occasional communication of a discarnate person to family and friends who
are still living. I am thinking of apparitions occurring months or sometimes

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

many years after the deceased person's death. An apparition of this type is
likely to be seen during a period of distress or crisis for the percipient, and
this temporal coincidence suggests that the discarnate person has somehow
kept in touch with the affairs of still living members of his family. These postmortem apparitions occur much less often than the death-coinciding ones
of which I gave examples in chapter 1, but enough authentic cases have been
reported so that they should be regarded as a class of apparition deserving
much further study. 5o
Dying persons sometimes have visions of deceased persons who seem
to have come to help the dying person through the transition of death. 51 It
is possible to explain some of these death-bed visions as deriving from the
wish of the dying person to be reunited with loved persons who died earlier;
yet in a number of well-documented instances the dying percipient had not
known that the person figuring in the apparition had died, and neither had
the persons around him.
The discarnate world may be a lawful one, but its laws may differ from
those with which we are familiar in our present lives. Time may pass
differently and physical space be superseded. The thought of someone may
lead to being with that person instantly, so that "now" would equal "here." 52
If anyone asks where this discarnate realm is located, I reply that it
exists in the mental space that our minds occupy now, while we are associated with our physical bodies.
To sum up, I am suggesting (while far from pretending co be the first
person to do so) chat the universe has at least two realms: a physical one and
a mental (or psychical) one. These interact. During our familiar lives, association wich our physical bodies restricts the actions of our minds, although
perhaps also enabling us to have experiences chat we cannot have without
physical bodies. After death, unencumbered by our physical bodies, we would
at first exist exclusively in the mental realm. Later, some persons or perhaps
everyone in that realm may become associated with new physical bodies, and
we would say chat those who did chis had reincarnated.
I conclude my comments on chis topic by emphasizing the speculative
nature of what I have adumbrated. I want only to show chat a life after death
is conceivable, not to insist on the derails of the one I have tried co describe.
These conjectures, however, have one priceless advantage over the "one
world" hypothesis about the universe to which materialists adhere: They do
not require us to ignore the evidence for telepathy and for the survival of
human personality after death.

JO. Some Further Questions and Topics ...

231

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY VERSUS CHANCE IN PERSONAL DESTINY

I approach the topic of this section with some fear that I shall be
guilty- or thought to be guilty- of moralizing or even being preachy. I
should like to avoid these faults. However, reflection on the many arguments
in favor of reincarnation and on the evidence for it, imperfect as it is, has
made me ask whether there may exist irrational - as well as rational - impediments to believing in it. If so, one irrational objection against it may be the
burden of responsibility for one's individual destiny that reincarnation
imposes. Reincarnation is a doctrine of hope, to be sure; it suggests that a
person can profit in a future life from the efforts he makes in this one. The
hope becomes fulfilled, however, only through personal effort, and this may
be more than most persons can accept. Passivity lies deep within humans as
we now are. We can observe this easily without referring to the possibility
of reincarnation. Many sick persons let themselves be cured to death with
prescription drugs rather than modify the way they live- by earing and
drinking alcohol less and smoking tobacco not at all. In the social sphere a
thousand will vote for legislation to correct the fault of his neighbor for
every ten who will say, as I believe Beethoven did: "Lord, cease not to labor
at my improvement," and for every one who, with Beethoven, will a~t~a.lly
labor himself at self-improvement. If a person cannot accept respons1bi1 1r.y
for the outcome of one life, he will not welcome being asked to assume It
for two or more lives. Nevertheless, it remains true that, as Baudelaire wrote:
"There can be no progress - real moral progress, I mean - except within an
individual person and by the individual himself." 53

The average Westerner seeks to avoid personal responsibility for his

condition and conduct in a variety of ways. Christianity has offered a selection of escapes ranging from the idea of predestination to that of atonement
for all our sins by Jesus' death on a cross. Modern science offers th~ con~ept
of chance, but that idea began with gamblers and insurers, nor with scientists. Already in the eighteenth century Gibbon could write (with some co~11 placency, it seems to me): "When I contemplate the common lot of mor~ahty,
I must acknowledge that I have drawn a high prize in the lottery of life ....
the double fortune of my birth in a free and enlightened country, in an hon4
ourable and wealthy family, is the lucky chance of an unit against millions. "'>
The metaphors used to express rhe concept of chance vary from time to time.
I mentioned in chapter 9 that in its modern guise, the uniqueness of an individual person is said to derive, for the most part, from the random sorting
of chromosomes into the germ cells of the persons's parents. We use and have
used many other names for the same concept: accident, luck, fate. Whatever the label, the idea serves to spare the person using it from even a share

232

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

of responsibility in what happens to him. I believe that most Westerners find

the idea of chance somewhat appealing, and to the extent that they do so,
they may think that of reincarnation uncongenial. 55
Some persons find unattractive the thought that chance is the governing force in their life, and yet they may still wish to avoid personal responsibility for it. For two generations now, Western psychiatry and psychology
have soothed this group with assurances that all their troubles come from the
defects of their parents or from the aggregate of everyone else - what we call
society. Blaming parents for their deficiencies - whether genetic or behavioral - is regressive, because surely the parents could attribute their deficiencies to their parents, and so on back to the hominids or further.
You may say that reincarnation cannot be repugnant to everyone,
because millions of persons in South Asia and elsewhere believe in it. To this
I reply that most South Asians believe in reincarnation with out realizingnot to say practicing- its full implications. Indeed, they may apply the doctrine of karma as a means of evading responsibility instead of accepting it;
by attributing a current misfortune to misconduct on the part of a remote
predecessor personality, one can avoid a need for reform of one's present
behavior. Moreover, few Hindus and Buddhists have confidence that the
virtuous conduct their religions enjoin will suffice by itself to bring them what
they want in life. Hindus appeal to a pantheon of intervening gods; many
Buddhists of Sri Lanka swarm to the god Kataragama and bribe him to save
them from an impending calamity; those of Burma frequently invoke help
from the spirits they call nats; and those of Thailand install a miniature
house for guardian spirits near their own house.
A monk of the Ramakrishna order, Swami Muklyananda, once remarked
to me: "We in India know that reincarnation occurs, but it makes no
difference. Here in India we have just as many rogues and villains as you have
in the West." Speaking of the masses he was probably right, but I think he
was wrong if he meant that the belief in reincarnation makes no difference
for an individual person who accepts all that it entails. c;c, However, it may be
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

CHAPTER 11

Speculations About

Processes Possibly Related

to Reincarnation
If reincarnation is a universal phenomenon, as in the last chapter I sugge.sted - but did not assert - that it may be, we look at it through a frosted
window when we try to understand it by means of presently available cases.
I hope that I have sufficiently emphasized in previous chapters how much
the sam pie of cases we have studied must deviate from the lives of general
populations. If reincarnation occurs, therefore, we can expect to learn from
these cases only a little about factors involved in it and that little only for
cer~ain u~usual groups of people; we can say almost nothing about reincarnation as lt may affect most persons. However, believing that a crude sk~tch
has more value than a blank page, I shall offer the following speculauons
about possible processes unapologetically.
.
I shall consider the following topics: If reincarnation occurs, what reincarnates? Why is a person born in one family instead of in some other one?
How can a discarnate personality who is about to reincarna~e i.nfluence the
physical body of the next incarnation? Does conduct in one life mfluence the
circumstances of another one?

What Is It That May Reincarnate?

Even if we knew what constitutes a whole personality in a living person we could not say from the evidence of any case that a whole personality
had reincarnated. We can only point to certain aspects of the subject's
233

234

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

personality that may derive from a previous life. To do this we should first
try to explain along normal lines (by which I mean present knowledge of
genetics and environmental influences) as much as we can of what the child
says and does. Any residue of behavior not thus explained may derive from
a previous life or previous lives. This line of inquiry should indicate what
aspects of personality may reincarnate. We have seen that in a fully developed case the subject has the following elements: imaged memories of events
in a previous life; behavioral memories corresponding to habits, attitudes,
and other residues of experiences in that life; and, in some instances, birthmarks and other abnormalities on his physical body that correspond with
wounds or other features of the previous personality's physical body.
These diverse elements are not, however, unconnected like pieces of washed
clothing and linen hung on a line to dry. They belong to a unified being just
as do the individual organs of our physical bodies. (There may be a confederacy within the unity- just as individual organs compose a body- but there is
unity nonetheless.) We can easily see the connections between the several elements in actual cases. For example, a boy who claims he has a wife and children in another village wants to go and see chem; another boy who remembers
the life of a doctor likes to play at being a doctor; and a third who describes
being shot to death points co a birthmark chat he says derives from the shooting and expresses an intention of caking revenge on the murderer. In short, we
see not a group of isolated memories like a cabinet of tape recordings, but evidence of purpose. I mentioned earlier (in chapter 1) that to believe someone had
survived death we require evidence not only of memories of that person but of
a continuation of his purposes. This we can find abundantly in the cases.
In the presumably reincarnated person the three elements I have mentioned - imaged memories, behavioral memories, and physical traces - associate inextricably, and I cannot imagine their not also being together during
the period between terrestrial lives. This suggests chat they exist (or a representation of them exists) on an intermediate vehicle of some kind, perhaps
with other elements of which we still know nothing.
I propose to call rhe vehicle char carries a person's mental elements
between incarnations a psychophore. 1 I know nothing about how rhe constituents of the psychophore are arranged, but I presume char ir changes if a
discarnate personality has experiences and does nor remain idle. Presumably
also the process of reincarnation modifies the psychophore. The wizened
body of an old man differs greatly from rhe fresh but tiny one of a baby who,
when he can speak, will remember the old man's life. The old man had many
imaged memories; the baby may have these too, but if he has, they have usually dwindled to a small residue by rhe time he learns to speak and begins to
talk about thern. 2

11. Speculations About Processes Possibly Related to Reincarnation

235

The behavioral memories have also shrunk, and what were skills in one
life may become (with rare exceptions) mere aptitudes in another. As for the
wounds of our old man - supposing, for example, that he was hacked to
death with a sword - they too have healed. The marks on the body in which
he reincarnates do not (usually) bleed, bur the baby may have a hand missing where one of the old man's hands was struck off before he was knocked
unconscious and died. The wounds on the old man therefore do not persist
unchanged; instead, they act like a template, and, as part of the psychophore,
they subsequently influence the form of the new physical body with which
the psychophore becomes associated in its next incarnation.
Although I have adopted the phrase "previous personality" for a person
whose life the subject of a case remembers, I have avoided saying that a personality can reincarnate in its entirety, because no evidence suggests that it
can. Instead, what may reincarnate is an individuality that derives from the
immediately previous personality and also from personalities previous to
that one. 3 The personality comprises all the outwardly observable psychological attributes a person has at any one time; the individuality, on the other
hand, comprises these together with residues from earlier experiences of the
present life and from other incarnations of the same series. Our individual~ties thus contain much that our personalities never reveal and much also t~at
. unusua l Clf is .maccess1"bl e to the conscious parts of our minds except m
cumstances.
The history of the foreign languages that I have learned illustrates the distinction between personality and individuality. At one time I could s~eak
Spanish well enough to conduct interviews in it during a visit to Arge~tm.a,
where I studied some cases in 1962. I have not since endeavored to mamt~m
my ability to speak Spanish, although I can still read (with help from a dictionary) the occasional letters I receive from Spanish-speaking correspondent~,

5
h For all pracn.
an d I can just manage an elementary reply wntten m pams
.
b
l c om my personality,
ca1purposes, h owever, my Spamsh has gone - ut on Y rr
. . .
.
kS
h ain I would learn
not f rom my 10d1v1duality. Were I to try to spea pams ag '

1 l

d I
st to my neglected
1t more easi y t 1an I did when I first learne it. n contra
Spanish, I have maintained a fair competence in both French and German.
They are still part of my personality- my working self, so to speak. ~t my
death, however, I expect that my ability to speak these languages will also
become part of my individuality; if I reincarnate, the result of my efforts .at
learning foreign languages will be, not the ability to speak them, but a faCility for learning the ones I have studied and spoken in this life - or, it may be,
in earlier lives. So may it also be, I believe, with any other skills that I may
have, whether intellectual, muscular, or moral. And this thought will encour4
age me to learn something new- to play the clarinet perhaps- in old age.

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

I mentioned in chapter 9 that we have almost no evidence to warrant

our thinking of reincarnation as an explanation of child prodigies and that
no Western child prodigy has ever claimed to remember a previous life.
However, I also mentioned (in chapter 5) that behavioral memories apparently derived from a previous life sometimes persist in a subject long after
he has lost the imaged memories about the circumstances (in the previous
life) in which the behavior was learned. Something similar may occur in
persons who never have or had any imaged memories of a previous life. If a
person has acquired skill in music, mathematics, or some other activity in
one life, he may show evidence of it in another, despite having no memory
of how he acquired the skill.

Why Is a Person Born in a Particular Family?

In the cases of several peoples - the Burmans, the Igbo, and the tribes
of northwestern North America, for example - the two personalities concerned in a case are almost always members of the same immediate or
extended family. One can conjecture that if reincarnation occurs in the same
family (or between two acquainted families), some psychic force has brought
this about by attracting the discarnate personality to the family of its next
incarnation.
How does this occur? It happens, I think, because all shared experiences
leave mental traces within us and produce psychic connections between the
persons concerned. I suppose further that the longer an association between
two persons lasts, and the greater its intensity, the stronger the connections
between them become. 5 When a need arises - as in a life-threatening situation - and when the psychic connections are strong enough, a telepathic
communication may occur between persons who are geographically far
removed from each other. Often the communication results in only an
impression or intuition that something untoward has happened to the other
person, but sometimes the communication generates a perception so vivid
and detailed that the percipient experiences what we call an apparition of the
distant person, and I gave examples of this in chapter 1. The two persons
involved in an experience of this type are, we can say, attuned to each other,
but their connection exceeds in complexity the resonance of two instrumental strings tuned so that when one is plucked the other also vibrates. Telepathic impressions and apparitional experiences include a capacity for proper
localization. Somehow the dead or dying person finds the other person with
whom he has a psychic connection. That person and no one else receives
the communication (except in the rarer cases of collective and bystander

11. Speculations About Processes Possibly Related to Reincarnation

237

apparitions). 6 With some similar directional capacity, I suggest, a discarnate

personality finds its way to the parents of the next incarnation.
In chapter 1 I mentioned that case studies of telepathic impressions and
apparitions have shown that these experiences occur between husbands and
wives as much as between parents and children. Likewise, in the same-family cases of the reincarnation type, the two persons concerned may be related
through marriage as well as by blood. 7 Familial relationships, however, have
in them nothing intrinsically binding. If we usually have more and stronger
psychic links with members of our family than with other persons, this is
because we spend more time with them, especially the times of strong emotions that, in my view, have more adhesive power than weak emotions. Some
persons have stronger ties with friends than with members of their families.
Accordingly, we find a number of telepathic and apparitional experiences in
which the persons concerned were close friends, although they were not
related. They rarely occur between strangers. 8 Similarly, we have reincarnation-type cases in which the previous personality had a special fondness for
the subject's parents, although he was not related to them. 9
In some cases a person has chosen parents for his next incarnation before
he dies. (The Tlingit and the Haida are particularly inclined to do this.)
Probably openly stating such a wish intensifies the affection it expresses; b~t
the affection must have existed earlier in order for the person to express it,
and surely many tacit attachments have as great a strength as those spoken
about aloud.
Animosities also seem to bind. I have already mentioned some cases in
which a subject remembered the previous life of a person who had quarreled
with, or had even been injured or killed by, one of the subject's parents.
chapter 9 I summarized the case of Zouheir Chaar, who remembered che life
of a man who had quarreled seriously with Zouheir's mother.)IO
It appears that guilt or a sense of indebtedness may also ace as an attractive force in these cases. In a small number of them - all Burmese- the sub.
b
h
l'c h ecalled owed
to a
.
Ject remem ered a debt that the person w ose ue e r .
member of the subject's family. In these few cases the debt 10 question ~su
ally seemed small to me, even trivial, but a devout Buddhist who believes
that he must pay for everything- now or lacer- could die with a ~urd~n
on his conscience that might bind him to the creditor and lead to rebmh m
the creditor's family. 11

In some cases one cannot distinguish the role of fnendsh1p from the
other motives for a discarnate person's apparent attraction t~ a pa~ticular family. The mother of Maung Myint Tin, whose case I menuoned 111 chapter 9
when describing pregnancy cravings, was the appreciated purveyor of country-style liquor to the man whose life Maung Myint Tin remembered. Maung

<!n

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

Myint Tin showed, even before he could speak, rhe previous personality's
fondness for alcohol; the convenience to him of his mother's abundant supply of alcohol seemed to observers a sufficient explanation for the previous
personality's apparent rebirth as her son.
If to all rhe same-family cases we now add all the others rhar show some
kind of emotional bond between the previous personality and the subject's
family it becomes difficult ro believe, with Gibbon, that only randomness
governs a person's birth in his family, instead of in another one.
So far in this discussion I have been considering rhe factors that may
enter into reincarnation in a particular family when rhe previous personality and the subject's family are related, friendly, or in some way acquainted.
In considering other cases I have less ro say about why a child was born in
one family rather than in another. Indeed, I should acknowledge immediately that for the majority of long-distance cases I have no clues whatever as
to why the subject was born in his family. Nor have the informants for the
cases; when I ask them for their rhoughrs about rhe matter, they usually
attribute the child's birth in their family to karma (if they are Hindus or Buddhists) or to God (if they are Christians or Moslems). A child (the subject)
was born among them, and they do not bother themselves much about why.
Despite my informants' inability to say anything specific on this question, I
think I can discern three factors that seem relevant to such cases.
First, in a few instances in which the families denied any acquaintance
before the case developed, I nevertheless learned char there had been some
relationship between chem. This was sometimes of a commercial kind, but
with harmonious tones. In one case of chis type in India, Ram Tirach, the
subject, recalled the life of a man who had grown vegetables, which he had
hawked in the region where the subject's family lived. He remembered selling vegetables (in the previous life) co his mother, and he further claimed
that the man whose life he remembered had, shortly before his death, inadvertently left a pannier of vegetables at rhe home of his (the subject's) mother,
where he had been selling vegetables.
Another Indian child, Juggi Lal Agarwal, said char in the previous life
he remembered he had been a farmer who had sold grain to the subject's
father. The latter was a wholesaler of grain in a large town, Sirsaganj, which
was located seventy kilometers from where the farmer lived. Juggi Lal further claimed to remember that his father had always created the farmer fairly.
(Farmers in India expect sharp practices on the part of dealers to whom they
sell their grain.) He further recalled thinking to himself that, when he died,
he would like to be reborn in the family of the grain dealer. I verified the
most important particulars that Juggi Lal had stated concerning the farmer's
life, but not those about the previous personality's relationship with the

11. Speculations About Processes Possibly Related to Reincarnation

239

subject's father. The latter candidly admitted that he could not recall- from
among many customers - the farmer his son claimed to have been in the previous life. The farmer's family, although they knew that he had taken his produce to sell in Sirsaganj, could not say co which dealer he had sold it there.
Despite these deficiencies, and because I verified the subject's main statements
about the previous life, I credit as plausible the subject's explanation for this
birth in his family instead of in another one.
A second type of explanation emerging in a few long-distance cases is
a claim by the subject of some connection with his family in still another previous life, one more remote than that of his principal memories. For example, Swarnlata Mishra, who remembered two previous lives - one verified and
one not - said that in yet another life she had been with one of her sisters.
Sukla Gupta also said that in a life anterior to the one about which she had
most memories she had been with members of her (present) family. Manju
Bhargava said that she had been born in her family because her older sister
Uma was already there; Manju said they had been together in a previous life.
In these cases the members of the subject's family have only rarely reported
12
to me any confirmatory memories of such shared prior lives.
I have designated by the word "geographic" a third factor that sometimes seems to govern the selection of a particular family for the birth of a
subject. The evidence for it occurs in two groups of cases.
In the first of these groups the subject is born far from where rhe ~re
vious personality of the case lived, but at or near rhe place where he died.
The Burmese children who have claimed to remember previous lives as Japanese soldiers killed in Burma during World War II belong to this grou?. ~wo
of these subjects, Ma Khin San Tin and Ma Khin San Yin, were rwrn girls
who remembered having been brothers (not twins) in the same (Japanese)
army unit, and they said that after their deaths (during the Britis~ Army's
advance near Pyawbwe, in April 1945) they had cried to be reborn Ill Japan,
but had failed, and so had returned to the sire of their deaths in Burma; they
were born in a village near Pyawbwe, less than 100 meters from where they
said they had been killed. (There had been a Japanese army entrenchment
at that sire.) This case remains unsolved, as do those of the other Burmese
children claiming to have been Japanese soldiers killed in Burma.
.
Informants have, however, reported the same kind of sequence m
verified cases. In one of chem a woman who lived in Tarkon (Upper Burma)
was traveling by train from Tatkon to Mandalay when she suddenly had
what appears to have been a heart arrack. She was taken off the train for medical care near a town called Thalun and died rhere soon afterward. The subject who remembered her life and death, a boy called Maung Win Aye, was
born in Thalun. The subject's mother had gone - along with ocher curious

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

persons - to see the laid-out body of the stranger who had died so unexpectedly in Thalun, and she had even helped to prepare the woman's body
for the funeral. She became pregnant with the subject soon afterward. We
may interpret this case as resulting from the normal communication of information between Maung Win Aye and his mother. We may also say that a
telepathic communication occurred between them, either when Maung Win
Aye was a fetus or after his birth. Nevertheless, a third possibility remains,
which is that the discarnate personality of the woman who had died had
stayed near her physical body and became attracted to the subject's mother
when she went to the railway station to see the body; she then reincarnated
as Maung Win Aye. 13
In several cases the subject was born at a place to which the previous
personality's body had been carried after his death. A subject in Burma,
Maung Aye Kyaw, remembered that he had been shot in the previous life and
his body had been thrown into a small river. Maung Aye Kyaw recalled that
in his discarnate state he had followed the body as it drifted downstream.
Some miles below the place of the murder, the floating cadaver became stuck
against the pilings of a small dock near a house on the bank of the river. A
woman of the house noticed the body in the water and called some men, who
pushed it back into the stream, causing it to be carried farther down the
streams to the Irrawaddy River; soon afterward the woman became pregnant
with Maung Aye Kyaw, who, when he could speak, narrated these details.
The case of Sundar Lal resembled that of Maung Aye Kyaw in the
apparent circumstances of the subject's conception. Sundar Lal's family lived
at a place called Kamalpur, which is in the Sitapur District of Uttar Pradesh,
India. When Sundar Lal began to talk (at the age of two and a half years)
about a previous life, he said that he had been called Hanne Lal and that after
his death his body had been thrown into a river. He (as a presumably discarnate personality) had then seen his mother bathing in the river and
attached himself to her. Sundar Lal said that he was from Faizabad, which is
about 140 kilometers from Kamalpur. However, his mother had gone bathing
in a river at a place called Ayodhya, which almost adjoins Faizabad, and
Sundar Lal was born just nine months after she had been to Ayodhya. Sundar Lal's father did not go to Ayodhya, which suggests that the discarnate
Hanne Lal followed Sundar Lal's mother-to-be back to Kamalpur and took
advantage of her next sexual relationship with Sundar Lal's father. When Sundar Lal's statements were verified, it was found that a man named Hanne Lal
had lived at Faizabad, where he had died of plague. His family having
deserted him - presumably from terror of infection - other persons had
thrown his body into a nearby river.
In a similar case in Turkey, the subject, Yusuf Kose, was born in

11. Speculations About Processes Possibly Related to Reincarnation

241

Odabat,. a village that is north of Antakya (in the province of Hatay) and
between Iskenderun and Antakya. Yusuf said that in his previous life he had
lived in a village twenty kilometers south of Antakya. He also recalled that
the person whose life he remembered had been returning from iskenderun
to his village whc:.n he had been murdered at another village some ten kilometers north of Odabat (in the direction of iskenderun).
The question arose of why Yusuf was born in Odabal rather than in
the village of the previous personality, in the village where the murder had
occurred, or, for that matter, in any other village of the world. The most
likely answer to this question came out when I learned the history of the murdered man's corpse. The murderer had cut off the victim's head, and although
this had happened during a particularly lawless time in Turkey, the villagers
where the murder occurred found the severed head and body an encumbrance
and a possible source of embarrassing inquiries by the police. They therefore quietly carried the body and head to the next village in a southerly direction and left them there. The residents of that village did not want the body
and head either, so they moved them along to the next village farther south.
In this way, the head and body eventually arrived at OdabaI. There a man
saw it, and, deploring the selfish negligence shown in the other villages, he
arranged for the body to be buried. Head and body were assembled and
decently interred. Soon afterward the wife of this pious man gave birth to
Yusuf.
In another case illustrating the geographic factor, the subject, Lalitha
Abeyawardena, was born in a small town about twenty kilometers southeast
of Colombo, Sri Lanka. When she began to talk of a previous life, she claimed
to have lived at a place some fifty kilometers away, to the north of.Colomb~.
Her family had no connections with that region. The investigatwn of th~s
case showed that the person whose life Lalitha recalled had ~ied in a hospital in Colombo and her body had been buried at the village north of
Colombo where she lived. I learned, however, that two of the deceased
woman's brothers lived in the small town where Lalitha had been born; one
of these was her favorite brother and he lived on the same road as the subject's family, just about 200 mete,rs from them. I also learned that at the time
the deceased woman had died, and for some years afterward, there were no
women of childbearing age in either of her two brothers' families. If we favor
reincarnation as the best interpretation of the case, it appears that the woman
whose life Lalitha remembered may, after her death, have wanted to be near
her brothers, perhaps with a view to being reborn among them, but had
instead got herself reborn in a neighboring family.
I mentioned earlier that most cases among the lgbo of Nigeria are
of the same-family type, but the lgbo recognize a type of case that they

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CHILDREN WHO REMElv1BER PREVIOUS LIVES

characterize as "enemy" cases. The subject of such a case remembers the previous life of a member of another group that came to the subject's village in
a raid and was killed there. Through bungling- as it would seem to the
Igbo - he got himself reborn in the raided village instead of back home
among his own people.
A geographic factor also seems identifiable in another group of cases.
In these, the subject's future mother or father had gone to the place where
the previous personality of the case had died. The case of Bongkuch Promsin illustrates this occurrence. In chapter 4 I mentioned that Bongkuch's
father had been to the area of the previous personality's murder not long
before Bongkuch's mother became pregnant with him. Bongkuch said that
he (in the discarnate state) accompanied his father back to his village in a
bus. 14
If we extend the physical distance we consider, we can plausibly identify a geographical factor in many other cases. The majority of the subjects
of cases in which the two families are not related or acquainted speak of a
life that was lived within a radius of twenty-five kilometers from the subject's home. To be sure, in a few cases much longer distances separate the
two families: it was 500 kilometers in Jagdish Chandra's case and 175 kilometers in lndika Guneratne's. These cases are exceptional. Most subjects,
even of long-distance cases, are born much closer to the community where
the previous personality lived. The two families can therefore be said to
belong to the same geographical area so defined.
In sum, nearly all the cases I have investigated show one or another of
the following circumstances: the previous personality was a member of the
subject's family, or the two families were acquainted and often good friends;
the previous personality died near where the subject was born, or members
of the previous personality's family had some connection with the subject's
community; the subject's father or mother visited the previous personality's
community or place of his death shortly before (or perhaps soon after) the
subject was conceived; or the subject and previous personality lived within
twenty-five kilometers of each other.
The cases suggest that if- for whatever reason - a discarnate personality is to be reborn as the child of particular parents, physical distance is no
impediment. For example, Ma Win Myint, the subject of a case in Burma
(where she was born), was identified as the reincarnation of an Englishman
who had lived in Burma but died in London, England. In the Turkish case
of Adnan Kelle<;i, the previous personality was a member of the Turkish
army's contingent fighting in Korea (during the Korean War) when he was
killed, but the subject was born in Adana, Turkey. The subject of an Indian
case, Vinita Jha, who was born in Delhi, remembered rhe previous life of a

Jl. Speculations About Processes Possibly Related to Reincarnation

243

girl who was strangled in London. Her case is unsolved, bur Vinita {as a
young child) made correct statements about London and showed marked
"English" behavior. Suzanne Ghanem was born in Choueifate, Lebanon, and
remembered the life of a woman, Saada, who had gone to Richmond, Virginia, for cardiac surgery and had died there.
Much of what I have said so far about the factors governing a person's
birth in one family instead of in another may lead to rhe impression that the
persons concerned participate in the process passively. No doubt this is true
in most cases. So far as we can tell, the attraction of the discarnare personality to a particular family seems almost automatic, as if involuntarily activated by the ties of love (and occasionally of hate) that I have mentioned.
However, volition appears to enter into some cases. We would have to
reckon with it as a possible factor in those cases in which a person had
selected before his death the family for the next incarnation and in which a
child later furnished evidence of having memories of that person's life.
The announcing dreams, especially the peritionary ones, also suggest
that a discarnate personality has chosen the family for his next incarnation.
In a few announcing dreams one senses even a determination on the part of
the discarnare personality for rebirth in a particular family. In one Haida case
a deceased person appeared in the dream of a potential mother and grumbled to her about being kept waiting to reincarnate. In chapter 4 I describe~
how Samuel Helander's mother had a dream in which her brother Perm
(whose life Samuel later remembered) urged her not to have an abortion. A
parallel case, that of Rajani Sukla, occurred in a family of India. A daugl~
ter of the family was killed in an accident. Later, her mother had a drea.m ~~
which the daughter seemed to announce her wish to be reborn ro her. RaJal11 s
mother' however, did not wish to have another child and induced an abortion. The deceased child appeared again in a dream and rebuked the mother
for nor letting her reincarnate. Eventually, the mother consented and gave
birth to Rajani, who later remembered the life of her older sister.
.
In another case, that of Maung Thein Hroon Oo in Burma (scudied by
U Win Maung), the subject's mother had two announcing dreams. In the
first of these a deceased member of the family (a woman) placed a bag of
money under the mother's pillow. In the second dream the same won~an
appeared to be astride a horse on which the subject's parents were also nding. The dreamer interpreted her dreams as indicating the deceased woman's
intention to be reborn as her baby. At about rhe same time, a cousin of the
deceased woman also dreamed that rhe same woman appeared to him. In his
dream, the woman explained that she could not live with his family because
they were too noisy.
One can explain the dreams I have just described as derived from the

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

wishes and beliefs of the dreamers. I think, however, that they hint at an initiative on the part of at least some discarnate personalities in the selection of
a family for another incarnation. Some of the dreams show also a desire for
rebirth, and even a zest and craving for it.

Wttys in Which a Discarnate Personality Might Influence the

Physical Body of the Next Incarnation
The philosopher McTaggart, who eloquently endorsed the idea of reincarnation, considered the relationship that a soul might have with the physical body in which it reincarnated. He suggested an analogy between hats
and their wearers, and if the reader finds this dated because hats are now out
of fashion, he can adapt the analogy to clothes in general. Mc Taggart wrote:
In walking through the streets of London, it is extremely rare to meet a man
whose hat shows no sort of adaptation to his head. Hats in general fit their wearers with far greater accuracy than they would if each man's hat were assigned
to him by lot. And yet there is very seldom any causal connection between the
shape of the head and the shape of the hat. A man's head is never made to fir
his hat, and, in the majority of cases, his hat is not made to fit his head. The
adaptation comes about by each man selecting, from hats made without any
special reference to his particular head, the hat which will suit his particular
head best. 15

If we now consider embryos, we should first note that they are made
abundantly, and the question arises of whether a discarnate personality can
select (or even produce) the embryo that fits him the best and avoid becoming attached to all the rest. A further question is whether a discarnate personality can also modify the embryo selected, just as a wearer may make some
adjustments, by padding or stretching, to a hat that he has purchased.

THE POSSIBILITY OF SELECTING ONE EMBRYO

FROM AMONG THOSE AVAILABLE

What I have said so far about the tendency for the two families concerned in a case to have either personal or geographic connections suggests
that a discarnate personality moving toward reincarnation becomes
attracted - perhaps impelled - toward a particular family, either because of
previous ties of affection and friendship with that family or because of the
geographical factors I have mentioned. Given an attraction between a discarnate personality and potential parents, the reincarnating personality

11. Speculations About Processes Possibly Related to Reincarnation

245

appears obliged, in most cases, to take whatever body the parents can provide. In this respect, McTaggart's analogy with hats and their wearers proves
unhelpful, because any pair of parents has a small range of bodies available
for reincarnating persons. Most parents cannot offer as wide a selection of
bodies for their children as hatters can of hats for their customers. If a discarnate person is, let us say, strongly attracted to a family with Huntington's
chorea, sickle-cell anemia, hemophilia, or some other disease that in medical terms is prominently or entirely due to a disease-producing gene, he may
have to take his chances on acquiring a body in that family. If, for example,
the person is to become, on reincarnating, the son of a woman who is a carrier for hemophilia, the chances are one in two that the baby boy will have
hemophilia. (Such a mother could bear unaffected girls, although half of
them would be carriers of the gene that causes hemophilia.)
Notwithstanding my conviction about the helplessness of the average
incarnating person concerning the selection of his body (once his parents have
been selected), occasional cases do suggest that some selection process may
occur. We find such evidence among the cases of the sex-change type and of
twins.
Cases of the sex-change type afford the best data for conjectures on this
subject. Suppose that a person, before he died, had expressed a wish to cha~ge
sex in his next incarnation.16 The sex of an embryo and of the body into which
it will develop is determined by the type of sperm from the father that fertilizes the mother's ovum. When the fertilizing sperm carries a Y chromosome, it will become a male; when it carries an X chromosome, the embryo
will become a female. Since half the father's sperms contain a Y chromosome
and half an X chromosome the chances should be equal that any embryo
will be male or female. In :he situation we are considering, the discarnate
personality might become associated with an embryo of the right sex by
m fl uencmg

the right
one o f two events. It cou Id try to gm'd e a sperm with
.
chromosome toward a ripe ovum, and perhaps prevent sperms with the ':r.ong
.

ld
t eliminate fernlized
c h romosome firom reachmg an ovum; or It cou try 0
.
ova (and early embryos) of the wrong sex while waiting for one of the nght
sex to be conceived.
A male is more likely to be conceived if coitus occurs one or sever~l days
before ovulation than if it occurs at ovulation. 17 (However, the reverse is true
in the practice of artificial insemination. IS) Y chromosome-carrying sperms
19
are more motile than X chromosome-carrying ones, but the viscosity and
other qualities of the fluids in which the sperms are swimming may reduce
or cancel this advantage. Physiological changes in the woman being inseminated can apparently affect the penetration of the two types of sperms
differently. I suggest that a discarnate personality might influence a potential

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CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

mother telepathically and cause psychosomatic changes in her that would

increase or decrease the chances of a male conceprus. However, this seems
ro be an undependable means of assuring the sex of one's next body.
Coming to the second possible intervention, we need to note that many
fertilized ova are carried away in the next menstruation or, slightly later, in
a miscarriage. The potential mother may remain unaware that she has had a
miscarriage and perhaps think she only had a menstrual flow that was later
and heavier than usual. 20 A discarnate personality might induce such early
expulsions until an embryo of the desired sex for the next incarnation had
been fertilized. Ir would then allow that one to continue developing.
Since on average half the conceptuses would be male and half female
(or nearly so), the discarnate personality would need to monitor them when
sex change was to occur and also when it was nor. This last point is important, because sex-change cases are unusual, even in countries where their incidence is relatively high (for example, 26 percent in Burma), and in some
cultures, such as among the Druses of Lebanon and the Tlingit of Alaska, it
does not occur at all, so far as we can judge from the cases available for study.
Thus, it would require more vigilance to avoid sex change than to have it
happen.

If a discarnate personality cannot influence the fertilization of an ovum

by the kind of sperm required to produce a conceptus of a particular sex and
also cannot bring about abortions of concepruses undesirable from its point
of view, it may still have a say in the sex of its next body by a third method:
that of waiting until a conceptus of the correct sex develops in the mother's
uterus and becoming associated with it. A few cases suggest that this may
occur. I refer to those in which the parents of a child who had died expect
and Want it to return to them. If such a child has distinctive marks, or if its
parents mark or mutilate its body (as some parents in Africa and Asia do),
the parents will look for corresponding birthmarks or birth defects on a
later-born child. They will think that a child who has such identifiers is their
deceased child reborn. 21 In some such families other children may be born
between the death of the marked child and the birth of the one who is
identified as the deceased (and marked) child reborn. Sometimes (bur not
always) these "intermediate" siblings are of the opposite sex to that of both
the deceased child and the one thought to be its reincarnation. This suggests
that the reincarnating personality held tenaciously to its sex and waited until
a body of the same sex became available. However, other children of this
group - apparently more flexible in matters of sex - have seemed to reincarnate in bodies of the opposite sex.
Some of the cases of twins contribute to the plausibility of these conjectures. I mentioned earlier that in most of the twin cases I have studied,

11. Speculations About Processes Possibly Related to Reincarnation

247

one or both of the twins remembered a previous life in which the two previous personalities had had some close association with each other. They had
usually been members of the same family, good friends, or closely associated
in some other way. This observation suggests that in these cases two discarnate personalities had impulses to reincarnate at the same time or were otherwise attracted to do so. It seems that the mentioned previous association
had something to do with the birth of twins instead of two births of singletons.
We have no case in which two persons, before dying, said that they
would be reborn as twins and afterward seemed to provide evidence that they
had done so. However, we do have one case in which we have some evidence
of a plan conceived by a discarnate personality to be reborn as a twin with
a village friend. The principal subject of this Burmese case (studied by Daw
Hnin Aye) is Maung Kyaw Myint Naing. His mother, during her pregnancy
with him and his twin brother, dreamed that a deceased relative called Maung
Than Aung said that he wished to be reborn as her son and was bringing a
companion (unnamed in the dream) with him. Not long after this dream she
became pregnant and later gave birth to the twins. When Maung Kyaw
Myint Naing, as a young child, spoke about a previous life, he recalled that
during his stay in the realm of discarnate personalities he had invited one U
Saing to come along with him and be reborn at the same time. (U Saing had
been an inhabitant of the same village.) He said U Saing was then stayi~g as
a discarnate personality near the house in the village where he had l~ved.
Maung Kyaw Myint Naing's twin had no memories of the lif~ of~ Sam~.
Discarnate personalities who wish for the close compamonship of life
as twins may simply wait until twin embryos become available to them: It
Is a lso poss1"bl e, h owever, that the d1scarnate

themselves bnng
persona l.mes
.
about the development of twin bodies in the same pregnancy. If t~ey dot.his,

th ey may e1 t h er separate a fernlized

ovum (zygote ) mto two genencally
.
.s1m.
11 ar, b ut m d ependent parts (one-egg rwms
) or b ring
tw 0 ova mto pos1t1on
for almost simultaneous fertilization by two different sperms (two-egg
twins). 22
I shall next consider cases in which an incarnating personality may have
had some influence on whether his body does or does not have a particu~ar
disease or infirmity. I shall consider this possibility with the ex:1mple of a dis.ease that is clearly transmitted genetically: sickle-cell anemia .. I choo.se lt
also because many West African people consider it to be associated wnh a
particular type of reincarnation.
The genetics of sickle-cell anemia are well understood. When a man and
his wife are each carriers (heterozygotes) of the S gene responsible for the
abnormal hemoglobin in this disease, we can predict that. on the average,

248

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

one-quarter of their children will be homozygotes and suffer from sickle-cell

anemia. This is a serious condition, and many children die from it in infancy.
The large families in West Africa have a high infant mortality to which other
diseases contribute as much as does sickle-cell anemia. The lgbo and many
other West African tribes believe that repeated deaths of infants in the same
family are not the deaths of different personalities; instead, they are said to
result from successive brief incarnations of the same personality, who is born,
stays for a few months or years, dies, is reborn, dies once more, and is again
reborn. (Several such cycles may occur in one family.) Although the African
languages have special names for these children (it is ogbanje in Igbo), the
concept is best described in English by the term "repeater children." 23
West African parents suffer distress from the frequent deaths of infants
and children in their families, and their grief has mixed with it elements of
anger over the early loss of economically important children. Not surprisingly, therefore, they have evolved a belief according to which repeater children belong to a league of discarnate conspiring spirits who have pledged
themselves to reincarnate and die prematurely just to harass their parents.
Parents may suspect a child who is physically ill, or even one who is frail, of
being a repeater child. They may take measures to separate the child from
the band of (discarnate) child spirits who are trying to entice it to die and
join them. They may call in an ogbanje doctor, and he may cut the child's
palm or perform other rituals to prevent the child from dying. If such a child
nevertheless dies, the parents may mutilate its corpse. For example, a group
of Igbo living in Awgu (in lgboland, Nigeria) often amputate the end of the
deceased child's left little finger. As they (or a native doctor) do this, the parents may exhort the soul of the deceased child not to return to them unless
he intends to remain and grow up to be a useful member of the family. After
this, the parents await the birth of the next child, and they will be pleased if
they find at its birth that the tip of its little finger is missing. They then recognize the child as the reincarnation of the dead child whose body they mutilated. They welcome him back, and, believing that he has resigned or been
ejected from the league of repeater children, they expect him to be healthy
and to survive into adulthood.24
The foregoing is less digressive than it may have appeared to be. Let us
now consider the hypothetical case of an Igbo personality who is destined,
for whatever reason, first to have an incarnation as a person with sickle-cell
anemia and then, after dying in that incarnation, to be reborn into the same
family, but without sickle-cell anemia. What are the options of this discarnate personality? The sickle-cell gene is not located on the X and Y chromosomes, so the previous personality does not seem to have available the
possibility of blocking fertilization by an S gene-carrying sperm. This may

249

11. Speculations About Processes Possibly Related to Reincarnation

be possible, but we do not know of any physical mechanism for it. It would
seem that if a discarnate personality trying to reincarnate is to become associated with a physical body having sickle-cell anemia, it must somehow identify a homozygotic embryo, which would occur on average in one out of every
four fertilizations of an ovum in the intended mother. For the later incarnation, when he is not to have sickle-cell anemia, he would associate himself with either of two other types of embryos - those that would be carriers
only and those that would have normal genes for the hemoglobin affected in
sickle-cell anemia. The latter would be the easier of the two tasks, since, again
on average, three out of four embryos would be healthy with regard to sicklecell anemia.
In order to influence the selection of an embryo, the discarnate personality would need somehow to learn what sort of embryo was being conceived (or had been conceived already)- that is, one with or without the S
gene for sickle-cell anemia. I speculated above, when discussing twins, that
two discarnate personalities may manipulate two ova of one woman so that
both are fertilized by sperms almost simultaneously or, alternatively, that
they may divide a zygote (fertilized ovum) into two equal halves at a critical stage of its development.
If we can legitimately conjecture feats of this order, we should be able
to imagine a discarnate personality capable of selecting or avoiding an embryo
that will develop into a physical body having sickle-cell anemia. The paranormal knowledge required is not greater than that shown by a few extraordinary living persons. 25 However, I am not saying that a discarnate
personality moving, for example, toward an incarnation with sex change and
without sickle-cell anemia consciously processes information about an
embryo and makes a rational decision thereby. I am only trying to state the
problem confronting him, not presuming to know how it is solved. suppose that few persons (if any), suddenly dying away from home, thmk ~o
" M os t appant h emse 1ves: " I must appear to my wife and tell her I am d ymg.
26
tions happen automatically, so far as we can tell. In the same way, I am suggesting, a discarnate personality becomes pulled toward the parents of the
next life and then pulled toward a particular conceptus or embryo they .provide. Levels of mental activity far deeper than those that regulate the d1g.estion of our supper in our stomach, our ordinary breathing, and the healmg
without scars of all our superficial wounds must govern these processes.
For the question of whether a discarnate personality could influence a
woman potentially a mother, we can begin by drawing on some substantial
knowledge. At least we know that mental events can profoundly affect the
physiology of a woman's reproductive tract. Has there ever lived a woman who,
during her lifetime, never experienced some alteration of her menstruation

250

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

stimulated by stress? This is doubtful. Moreover, psychological experiences

can produce much more extensive changes in a woman's reproductive organs
than a mere delayed or skipped menstruation. An extreme manifestation of
such influence occurs in che condition of pseudocyesis, or false pregnancy.
A woman afflicted with this disorder, who believes she is pregnant when she
is not, may stop menstruating for a lengthy period of imagined gestation.
Further, she may show enlargement of her abdomen and breasts and even
changes in the hormones concerned with reproduction.27 All these physical
changes melt away when the woman is finally made co realize - often after
many months - chat she is not pregnant.
We also have some evidence indicating the blocking of pregnancy by
psychological factors within a fertile woman. The wife of an apparently infertile couple sometimes becomes pregnant soon after she and her husband have
adopted a child; this suggests chat she (and her husband) overcame some inhibition against having children that had physical effects on her (or perhaps
their) fertility. The Trobrianders engage freely in premarital sexual intercourse, bur they strongly disapprove of a pregnancy occurring before marriage. They use no physical measures of birth control, and abortion among
them is rare or absent. Yet the Trobrianders have an extremely low incidence
of premarital pregnancy. These facts suggest a psychophysical inhibition of
pregnancy among their unmarried girls. 28
Another line of evidence for the influence of psychological factors on
reproduction comes from studies of "overripeness" of the ovum before it is
fertilized. This may be a factor in some birth defects, and emotional stress
seems to be one of its causes.29

W~ need also to consider whether we have any grounds for believing

that a d1scarnate personality could influence either a mother-co-be or sperm
and :ygotes directly, to the extent required for the changes that I have
~escnbed: The evidence from pregnancy cravings and aversions that I earlier described - although certainly not strong evidence - suggests that discarnate personalities may influence the physical condition of a mother. The
records of psychical research also provide a few examples of mediums who
have manifested the physical symptoms that discarnate persons had experienced when they were dying.j 0 If a discarnate personality can influence a
woman to the extent that these instances suggest, it is only a short step co
imagining that one could affect the retention or rejection of a zygote or
embryo in her reproductive tract.

11. Speculations About Processes Possibly Related to Reincarnation

251

How A DISCARNATE PERSONALITY MIGHT INFLUENCE

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN EMBRYO

The cases whose subjects bear birthmarks and birch defects corresponding to wounds or other marks on the previous personality suggest that
a discarnate personality may do more than select an embryo with which it
will be associated in a new incarnation; it may also modify the development
of that embryo during its gestational period.
In my monograph on the cases with relevant birthmarks and birth
defects, I suggested chat the psychophore acts as a template for the generation of birthmarks and birth defects that correspond co wounds or ocher
marks on the previous personality. The wounds are not, however, fully reproduced. Although a few of the birthmarks and birth defects ooze or bleed
when the baby is born, most of chem do not. The fingers or other malformed
part is defective, but healed over. Some of the extremities affected have constriction rings that show an interference with embryonic development at
such places. Some other evidence from actual cases suggests chat the psychophore has what I would call mental or psychic fields, and these act on the
rnorphogenetic fields of the embryo or fetus. 31 Such fields, I conjecture, affect
the epigenetic processes of the developing fetus or embryo.

The Influence of Conduct in One Life

on the Circumstances ofAnother Incarnation
I have already emphasized chat many peoples of the world who bel~eve
in reincarnation do so without linking it to their moral values. One nught
almost say that the idea of such links is a peculiarity of Hinduism and Bu~
dhism. Nevertheless, because most Westerners know Hindu and Buddh~st
concepts much better than chose of such groups as the Druses, ch~ Alevis,
the Tlingit, and the Igbo, most of chem who believe in reincarnanoi~ have
unthinkingly adopted the Hindu-Buddhist concept of karma. Accordm? to
it, our conduce in one life determines che circumstances we shall find 111 a
later incarnation, although not necessarily the one immediately following a
particular deed or misdeed.
In the cases that I have investigated, I have found almost no evidence
of the effects of moral conduct in one life on che external circumstances of
another. When I examine the cases that include the feature of a marked
difference in socioeconomic status between the families concerned, I can discern no pattern indicating that the vicious have been demoted and the virtuous promoted.
Nevertheless a few subjects born in materially poor circumstances who

252

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

have remembered previous lives in prosperous ones have brooded over the
difference and concluded that they had earned demotion by the sins or crimes
of the previous life they remembered. Rani Saxena, whose case I summarized
briefly in chapter 9, belonged to this group, and so did Bishen Chand
Kapoor, another Indian subject. I have already alluded to some aspects of
this case, but I have not yet described its most distinctive feature.
Bishen Chand was born to poor parents and remembered the life of a
rich young man. This young man, Laxmi Narain, had shot and killed another
man whom he saw coming out of his (Laxmi Narain's) mistress's apartment.
Afterward, Laxmi Narain hid for a time and arranged for the bribing oflegal
officers and the hushing up of the case against him. He died a natural death
a few years later. When Bishen Chand was a child, he used to boast of this
murder and of how he (as Lax mi Narain) had escaped punishment for it. His
childhood behavior was that of the spoiled rich young man that Laxmi Narain
had been. He rebuked his parents for their poverty and demanded better food
and clothes than they could afford. Later, his attitude changed. It gradually
occurred to him that he might have been born the child of poor parents
because of the murder Laxmi Narain had committed. (The memory of this
murder persisted long after Bishen Chand's other imaged memories of the
previous life had faded.) Bishen Chand became a reformed person, and his
later life - when I knew him - showed no trace of the violent behavior that
Laxmi Narain had manifested when he murdered a man.
A few other cases have similarly stimulated observers to consider whether
conduct in one life may influence circumstances in another. The case of
Zouheir Chaar of Lebanon provides another example. In chapter 9 I
described how the man (Jamil Adnan Zahr) whose life he remembered had
quarreled with his (Zouheir's) mother over the sharing of irrigation water.
Zouheir was a Druse, and I have already explained that the Druses do not
believe that conduct in one life affects the circumstances of another. Nevertheless, observers of Zouheir's case saw irony and a warning in his birth as
his mother's son. In considering his case, the Druses would not say that he
had been born as the child of his mother because of any misdeed on the part
of either of them; but Zouheir's father told me that he thought the animosity between chem had somehow acted as a factor bringing them together again
when Jamil Adnan Zahr reincarnated as Zouheir Chaar.
The foregoing cases and a few others offer the only hints I have found
for the working of a process such as retributive karma. Even these cases,
however, provide no substantial evidence for such a process. The explanations offered by the subjects (and other persons) for the different circumstances of two apparently linked lives may amount to nothing more than a
rationalization of the differences. Nevertheless, persons committed to the

11. Speculations About Processes Possibly Related to Reincarnation

253

idea of retributive karma may try to save it, despite the lack of supporting
evidence, in one of two ways. They may say that a publicly visible criminal
had some outweighing private virtue, such as selfless affection given to his
family, and that this earned him an advance to a higher material position.
Similarly, a person who outwardly acted like a saint may have practiced secret
vices that brought about demotion in his next incarnation. If these explanations seem insufficient to cover all cases, proponents of retributive karma
may suggest that the effects of misconduct need not occur until many lifetimes after the life in which a person showed it. These are irrefutable explanations but also unsupportable ones. I cannot see any way in which to study
them empirically.
Although the cases provide no support for belief in a process like retributive karma, this does not mean that conduct in one life cannot have
effects in another. Such effects, however, would not occur externally in the
material conditions of successive lives, but internally in the joys and sorrows
experienced. In this respect - and in it alone, I think- the cases provide
hope for improvement in ourselves from one life to another. The subjects
frequently demonstrate interests, aptitudes, and attitudes corresponding to
those of the persons whose lives they remember. These similarities occur not
only in matters of vocation but also in behavior toward other persons, that
is, in the sphere of moral conduct. One child counts every rupee he can
grasp, like the acquisitive businessman whose life he remembers, but another
gives generously to beggars, just as the pious woman whose life she remembers did. One young boy aims a stick at passing policemen, as if to shoot
them as did the bandit whose life he remembers, but another solicitously
offers medical help to his playmates in the manner of the doctor whose life
he remembers.
The children just mentioned, however, did not all remain set in the attitudes of the previous lives, and I have had the pleasure of hearing about, and
occasionally observing, the development of different habits in some of th~m.
In these evolutions we see the effect of new environments perhaps; but I thmk
we also see the inner growth of personalities, accomplished on.ly by. the self
working on itself. There is a deep truth in a remark made by Fnar Giles, one
of St. Francis of Assisi's close companions: "Everything that a man doeth,
good or evil, he doeth it to himself."32 There is then - if we judge by the
evidence of the cases_ no external judge of our conduct and no being who
shifts us from life to life according to our deserts. If this world is (in Keats's
phrase) "a vale of soul-making,"33 we are the makers of our own souls.
Saints, who are the geniuses of morality, tell us and show us that serenity
accompanies selfless conduct toward others, by which I mean conduct without expectation of any gain for oneself except that of serenity. A statement

254

CHILDREN WHO REMEMBER PREVIOUS LIVES

(possibly apocryphal) attributed to Pythagoras embodies this wisdom. He is

said to have written to a friend: "You complain of being treated unjustly.
Console yourself. Real unhappiness lies in acting unj usrly."
If anyone seeks to improve himself, he may feel a need for better models than the persons around him provide. He may wish for the advantage of
being born as the child of saints instead of criminals or the morally mediocre.
This would be the best of promotions in circumstances from one life to
another. Is there any evidence that it can happen? I should say very little.
However, the bonds of families and comm uni ties, which link so many of the
persons concerned in these cases, are not ineluctable. Although the majority of the cases show connections of family, community, or region between
the child subject and the person whose life he remembers, some cases show
a tie of friendship. These suggest that we can sever old familial relationships
and make new ones in the next life, as we can in this one.
That is all I can say about evidence we have of the effects in one life
from causes in a previous one, and I may have said too much. I think it
appropriate to end this book with an acknowledgment of our ignorance,
even with an emphasis on it. Although the study of the children who claim
to remember previous lives has convinced me that some of them may indeed
have reincarnated, it has also made me certain that we know almost nothing
about reincarnation.
Is this still true, thirteen years after the first edition of this book? I think
it is. We have certainly made substantial progress in finding cases with
stronger evidence of a paranormal process. I myself am more convinced than
I was that mind and body are separate entities, joined during life but not
afterward. I am more persuaded than I was that reincarnation is the best e~en though not the only- explanation for the stronger cases we have invesngare~. P~ocesses, however, remain a mystery. Yer their study need nor daunc
the sc1enr1sts of the next generation.

Appendix: Citations to
Detailed Reports of
Cited Cases
In the following list the cases are cited according ro the alphabetical
order of the subjects' first or given names. Honorifics (such as Maung, U, Ma,
and. Daw) that have sometimes been used in the text (especially for Burmese
subjects and for monks in Thailand) are not used in this list.
The following abbreviations are used for frequently cited sources.
Twenty cases

Twenty Cases Suggestive ofReincarnation;

see Stevenson, 1974a/1966

CORT 1, 2, 3, 4

Cases ofthe Reincarnation Tjpe, voJs. l- 4 ;

see Stevenson, 1975a, 1977a, 1980, 1983 a

Rand B

Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution

to the Etiology of Birthmarks m~d Birth
Defects, vols. 1-2; and Where Remcamation tmd Biology Intersect; see Stevenson,
1997a, 1997b

Derailed case reports are planned for some of rhe cases annotated as "Unpublished."

255

256

APPENDIX: DETAILED REPORTS OF CITED CASES

Subject's
Name
Adnan Kellec;:i (Turkey)
Alessandrina Samona (Italy)
Alice Robertson (U.S.A.)
Arnpan Petcherat (Thailand)
Anusha Senewardena (Sri Lanka)
Arif Hamed (Lebanon)
Asha Rani (India)
Aung Ko Thein and Aung Cho Thein
(Burma)
Aung Myint (Burma)
Aung Than (Burma)
Aye Kyaw (Burma)

Reference to
Detailed Case Report
Unpublished
Delanne (1924); Stevenson (1960);
RandB
Unpublished
CORT4
Cook, Pasricha, Samararacne,
Maung, and Stevenson (1983a)
Unpublished
Unpublished

RandB
RandB
RandB
RandB

Bajrang B. Saxena (India)

Bir Sahai (India)
Bishen Chand Kapoor (India)
Bongkuch Promsin (Thailand)

Rand B
Rand B
CORTI
CORT4

Celal Kap an (Turkey)

Cerni} Fahrici (Turkey)
Cevriye Bayn (Turkey)
Chanai Choomalaiwong (Thailand)
Chaokhun Rajsuthajarn, see Rajsuthajarn
(the Venerable Chaokhun)
Charles Porter (U.S.A.; Tlingit)
Choe Hnin Heer (Burma)
Corliss Chorkin, Jr. (U.S.A.; Tlingit)

Rand B
Rand B
CORT 3
Rand B

Daniel Jirdi (Lebanon)

Della! Beyaz (Turkey)
Derek Picnov (U.S.A.; Tlingit)
Disna Samarasinghe (Sri Lanka)
Dolon Champa Miera (India)
Dulcina Karasek (Brazil)
Duran incirgoz (Turkey)

Unpublished
Rand B
Twenty cases; Rand B
CORT2
CORT 1
Rand B
Rand B

Edward Ryal! (England)

Erin Jackson (U.S.A.)
Erkan Kd1c; (Turkey)

Ryal! (1974)
Unpublished
CORT 3

Twenty cases; Rand B

RandB
Twenty cases; R and B

Appendix: Detailed Reports of Cited Cases

Faruq Faris Andary (Lebanon)

CORT3

Gamini Jayasena (Sri Lanka)

Georg Neidharr (Germany)
Gillian and Jennifer Pollock (England)
Gnanatilleka Baddewithana (Sri Lanka)
Gopal Gupta (India)

CORT2
Neidharr (1956)

Hair Kam Kanya (Thailand)

Hanumant Saxena (India)
Hmwe Lone (Burma)
Htay Win (Burma)
Htoo (Burma)
Husam Halibi (Lebanon)

257

Rand B
Twenty cases
CORTI

CORT4

Rand B
Rand B
Rand B
RandB
Cook, Pasricha, Samararacne,
Maung, and Stevenson (1983a)

Imad Elawar (Lebanon)

Indika Guneratne (Sri Lanka)
Indika and Kakshappa Ishwara (Sri Lanka)
Ishwar Godbole (India)
ismail Alt1nkd1c:;: (Turkey)

Twenty cases
CORT2

Jagdish Chandra (India)

Jasbir Singh (India)
Judith Krishna (India)
Juggi Lal Agarwal (India)

CORTI
Twenty cases
Unpublished

Rand B
Unpublished
CORT3

Rand B

Kenedi Alkan (Turkey)

Scevenson, Pasricha, and

Samararacne (1988)

Khin Ma Gyi and Khin Ma Nge (Thailand)

Khin San Tin and Khin San Yin (Thailand)
Khin Sandi (Burma)
Kumkum Verma (India)
Kyaw Myint Naing (Burma)

Rand B
RandB
Rand B
CORTI
Unpublished

Lal Jayasooria (Sri Lanka)

Lalitha Abeyawardena (Sri Lanka)
Laure Reynaud (France)

Unpublished
CORT2
Delanne (1924); Scevenson (1960)

Mahes de Silva (Sri Lanka)

Mallika Aroumougam (India)
Manju Bhargava (India)
Manju Tripatti (India)
Marta Lorenz (Brazil)
Mary Magruder (U.S.A.)

CORT2
Twenty cases
Unpublished
Unpublished
Twenty cases
Unpublished

258

APPENDIX: DETAILED REPORTS

OF

CITED CASES

Michael Wright (U.S.A.)

Mounzer Ha"idar (Lebanon)
Mu Mu (Burma)
Myint Soe (Burma)
Myint Thein (Burma)
Myint Tin (Burma)

Unpublished
CORT 3
Rand B
RandB
Rand B
Unpublished

Nasir Toksoz (Turkey)

Navalkishore Yadav (India)
Nawal Daw (Lebanon)
Necati <";aylak (Turkey)
Necip Onllitakiran (Turkey)
Nirankar Bhatnagar (India)

CORT 3
Rand B
Stevenson (1974c)
CORT 3
RandB
Rand B

Om Prakash Mathur (India)

Ornuma Sua Ying Yong (Thailand)

Unpublished
CORT4

Parmod Sharma (India)

Paulo Lorenz (Brazil)
Prabhu (India)
Prakash Varshnay (India)
Pratima Saxena (India)
Pratomwan lnchanu (Thailand)
Pushpa (India)
Puri Parra (India)
Pythagoras (Greece)

Twenty cases
Twenty cases
Sunderlal (1924); Stevenson (1960)
Twenty cases
RandB
CORT4
Pasricha and Stevenson (1977)
CORT I
lamblichus (1965)

Rabih Elawar (Lebanon)

Rajani Sukla (India)
Rajsuchajarn (the Venerable Chaokhun)
(Thailand)
Raju! Shah (India)
Rakesh Gaur (India)
Ram Prakash (India)
Ram Tirath Sharma (India)
Ramesh Sukla (India)
Ramez Shams (Lebanon)
Ramoo and Rajoo Sharma (India)
Rani Saxena (India)
Ranjich Makalanda (Sri Lanka)
Ratana Wongsombac (Thailand)
Ravi Shankar Gupta (India)
Robena Morgan (U.S.A.)
Ronald Maparunage (Sri Lanka)
Ruby Kusuma Silva (Sri Lanka)

CORT 3

Rand B
CORT4
CORT 1
Pasricha and Barker (1981)
Pasricha and Stevenson (1977)

Rand B
Unpublished
Unpublished
CORT l; R tind B
Unpublished
Tzventy cmes
CORT4
Tzuenty crises; Rand B
Unpublished
Unpublished
CORT 2

Appendix: Detailed Reports of Cited Cases

Said Zahr (Lebanon)
Salem Andary (Lebanon)
Sampath Priyasanrha (Sri Lanka)
Samuel Helander (Finland)
Sanjeev Sharma (India)
Sayadaw U Sobhana, see Sobhana
(the Venerable Sayadaw U)
Sein Win (Burma)
Semih TutumU (Turkey)
Shamlinie Prema (Sri Lanka)
Shami Devi (India)
Sidarh Wijerame (Sri Lanka)
Sivanrhie and Sheromie Hettiararchi
(Sri Lanka)
Sleimann Bouhamzy (Syria)
Sobhana (the Venerable Sayadaw U) (Burma)
Soe Ya (Burma)
Som Pit (the Venerable) (Thailand)
Sujirh Lakmal Jayararne (Sri Lanka)
Sukla Gupta (India)
Suleyman Andary (Lebanon)
Suleyman Zeytun (Turkey)
Sumitra Singh (India)
Sundar Lal (India)
Sunil Dutt Saxena (India)
Sunita Khandelwal (India)
Susan Eastland (U.S.A.)
Suzanne Ghanem (Lebanon)
Swaran Lara (India)
Swarnlara Mishra (India)
Taru Jarvi (Finland)
Than Than Aye (Burma)
Thein Hroon Oo (Burma)
Thiang San Kia (Thailand)
Thusari Wijayasinghe (Sri Lanka)
Tin Aung Myo (Burma)
Tin Hla (Burma)
Tin Tin Myint (Burma)
Tinn Sein (Burma)

Unpublished
CORT3

Rand B
Unpublished

RandB

Rand B
RandB
CORT2
Gupta, Sharma, and Mathur
(1936); Stevenson (1960)
Unpublished

Rand B
Twenty cases
CORT4
Cook, Pasricha, Samararame,
Maung, and Stevenson (1983a)

Rand B
CORT2

Twenty cases
CORT3
CORT3
Stevenson. Pasricha, and
McLean-Rice (1989)
Sahay (c. 1927)
CORTI

Rand B
Unpublished
Unpublished
Pasricha and Stevenson (1977)

Twenty cases
Unpublished
Unpublished
Unpublished

R mid B
Cook, Pasricha, Samararatne,
Maung. and Stevenson (1983a)
CORT 4: Stevenson (1977d)

Rand B
CORT4
Rand B

259

260

APPENDIX: DETAILED REPORTS OF CITED CASES

Udho Ram (India)

Ucrara Huddar (India)

Unpublished
Stevenson (1984)

Veer Singh (India)

Vias Rajpal (India)
Vinita Jha (India)

CORT 1

Warnasiri Adikari (Sri Lanka)

Wijanama Kirhsiri (Sri Lanka)
Wijerame (Sri Lanka)
William George, Jr. (U.S.A.; Tlingiti)
Wimalawarhie Samarasekera (Sri Lanka)
Win Aung (Burma)
Win Aye (Burma)
Win Myint (Burma)
Win Shwe (Burma)

CORT 2
CORT 2

Unpublished
Unpublished

Twenty cases; Rand B

Twenty cases; Rand B
Unpublished
Rand B
Unpublished
Rand B
Unpublished

Yin Maung (Burma)

Yusuf Kase (Turkey)

CORT4

Zouheir Chaar (Lebanon)

CORT3

Rand B

Chapter Notes
Preface to the First Edition
1: Th.e Meaning of Karma The Sanskrit word "karma" means "action." By
extension, it has come to mean also the effects of an action and, more particularly,
the effect.s of moral conduct, especially an effect that occurs in a life after one in which
~he associated cause has occurred. The doctrine of karma in Hinduism and Buddhism
includes

.
. many k"m d s o f causes and effects, but popular usage focuses on appropnate
retnbution for the causative behavior. For example, a man born blind may be supposed to have gouged out the eyes of someone else in a previous life.
. " ,,
2 Pronouns Indicating Gender I have retained the use of the genenc he,
beca~se I ~nd the obsessive use of sexually neutral language hobbling to readers w~ile
contnbutmg little to overcome unfairness toward women. Also, in connection with
~he cases, I have usually used masculine pronouns because it happens that the majo:i ty of the children who claim to remember previous lives are males. I discuss possible reasons for this lopsidedness in chapter 10.

Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study ofReincarnation

1. Verified Statements by Subjects In addition to making verified statements,
the children sometimes make incorrect ones, and some children of the same general
g.roup make nothing bur unverified statements or no statements at all. I shall be considenng these variations in the cases later.
.
2. Total Number of Cases Investigated The University of Virginia's collection of investigated cases suggestive of reincarnation now inc.ludes s~ightly more th~n
2,500 cases. The number of cases in the collection is slowly mcreasmg as my associates and I continue our investigations. At rhe same rime, cases already in rhe collection
are sometimes dropped from it if, upon reexamining their data, we develop doubts
about their authenticity.
3. Possible Modes of Survival After Death Ducasse (1951) and Thouless
0979) have described some of the different ways in which a human personality might
261

262

NOTES - CHAPTER l

conceivably survive physical death. Polkinghorne (1994) has cogently argued for the
coherence of the Christian doctrine of resurrection, bur he did not envisage, let
alone describe, any state of consciousness between death and resurrection.
4. Scientists' Disbelief in Life After Death A survey showed that whereas 67
percent of the general public believe in a life after death, only 16 percent of scientists do (Gallup, with Proctor, 1982).
5. Different Types of Evidence for Survival After Death Ocher evidence
bearing on the question of life after death comes from investigations of apparitions,
deathbed visions, near-death experiences, out-of-the-body experiences, and some
mediumistic communications. I published a short review of this evidence (Stevenson, 1977c). Almeder (1992), Gauld (1982), Griffin (1997), Paterson (1995), and
Thouless (1984) have written much more comprehensive reviews.
6. Criteria of Personal Identity Philosophers at least from rhe rime of John
Locke (1947/1690) have discussed the criteria of personal identity. During the past
three decades books and chapters of books devoted to it have proliferated. An incomplete list of these would include Ayer (1963), H. 0. Lewis (1973, 1978), Madell
(1981), Penelhum (1970), Perry (1975), Rorty (1976), Shoemaker and Swinburne
(1984), and Vesey (1974). le says something about the isolation of the kind of studies that I am describing in this book - or perhaps the isolation of modern philosophers - that I have read through fifteen inches of books by modern philosophers on
personal identity (those just cited and others) without coming across more than
three references co rhe data of paranormal phenomena. (I define this last phrase later
in this chapter.) Parfir (1987) and Ayer (1990) admitted rhe plausibility of the idea
of reincarnation, and they amused themselves and their readers with imagined examples of memories of a previous life, bur they did nor examine available evidence for
such memories.
However, several modern philosophers have considered the definition of personal identity in relation to the data from investigations. Ducasse (1951, 1961) wrote
cogently on the subject, and so did Broad (1958, 1962). They both considered the
topic with regard co the possibility of reincarnation.
Also pertinent are two articles by Martin (1992) and Wheatley (1965) and several articles included in two anthologies concerned with che relationship between philosophy and paranormal phenomena (Thakur, 1976; Wheatley and Edge, 1976).
(These anthologies also include chapters not directly concerned with the questions
of personal identity and survival.)
Murphy (1945), in one of his papers on the evidence of survival of human personality after death, insisted that evidence of persisting memories would not, by
itself, satisfy his criteria for believing that a personality had survived death. He
required, in addition, evidence of some intelligent purpose.
7. Lack of Change in Personality Soon After Death This phrase may seem
to go around the question of whether we do survive bodily death. Some of the evidence suggesting that we do derives from apparitions and mediumistic communications (ro which I shall refer later in this chapter), and these manifestations often
include indications that, although the condition and circumstances of a person
change greacly immediately afcer death, the person's character (or personality) does
nor.
8. Apparitions and Their Interpretation Readers wishing to study accounts
of apparitions may find rhem in Gurney, Myers, and Podmore (1886), MacKenzie

Notes- Chapter I

263

(1971), Scevenson (1995), and Tyrrell (1953). Gauld (1982) and MacKenzie (1982) have
reviewed che differenc incerprecacions of apparicions, and so have I {Scevenson, 1982).
9. Vitalism The concept of vitalism is parcicularly associaced (in modern
rimes) wich che ideas and wricings of Hans Driesch (1908, 1914). Driesch began his
professional life as an embryologist and ended ic as a philosopher. His experimencs
in embryology convinced him chat the developmenc of an organism from a ferrilized
ovum could not be adequately explained by currenc or fucure knowledge of chemiscry and physics. He opposed a mechanistic explanation of the problems of morphology and said char they required for cheir solution che inclusion in all living organisms
of so~e unifying and direccing elem.enc, for which he adopred Aristode's word "encelechy.
Driesch became keenly inceresced in psychical research and was elecred pr~si
denc of rhe Society for Psychical Research in 1926-27. His small book Psychical
Research (Driesch, 1932/1933) still rewards scudy. Gruber (1978) published a symparhetic review of Driesch's ideas concerning biology and psychical research.
Ocher scientists besides Driesch have advanced ideas similar co his, nor necessarily calling chem vitalism (Hardy, 1965, 1966).
10. Conjoined Twins Going Through a Door Jackson (1966) made chis
remark.
1 1 Descartes and Bacon on Psychical Research Descarres published his
comment on what we now call celepachy in Les principes de la philosophie_ (Descartes,
1973/1644, p. 501). Bacon's suggescions for experiments can be found 10 Sylva Sylvarum (Bacon, 1639, p. 210), published afcer his dearh.
.
12. Terms Used in Considering Paranormal Phenomena Glossanes of rerms
used in psychical research can be found in Graccan-Guinness (1982), Thalbourne
0982), Whice and Dale (1973), and Wolman (1977).
13 . f e Iepathy and Clairvoyance In che remainder o f. rh'is b00 k I shall
. nor Iusu1e
invesngacors
iave
.
.
.
b
h
d
I
.
S
all Y ma k e a d 1srmcc1on ecween celepac y an c a1rvoyance. on
,
emphasized rhe difficulcy of showing char celepachy could occur, because a perhsonhs
, choug h rs m1g
h t h appen solely rhroug r e
paranorma l awareness of another persons
' l
d
, b processes However,
fi rst persons
c a1rvoyam knowledge of the secon persons ram
'. d
h
d

co remm us t at
I
cons1 er the term "telepathy" imporranr, if only because tr serves
.
.
the person about whom information is obtained paranormally may play JUSt ~s tmdpor, .
.
. .
b
the 111 formanon oes.
6lb)
d
tanc a p.ut m the communication 1s the person o rammg
19
Ample evidence of this deriv~s fro:U experiments (Schmeidler, l9 6 la,
an
spontaneous experiences (Stevenson, 1970a).
d
a I can recommen sev14 . I ntro(I uctory Books on ParanormaI Ph enomen.

I ff (l 9 93)
0
era! fairly short hut comprehensive inrroduccions to rhe field: those by Be
.
Broughton (1991), Grattan-Guinness (1982), Heywood (1974/197l), Mu.rp~y, \~It
Dale (1961), and Stokes (1997). I also recommend Wolman (19~7). Despite its mle,
\vr I
' "h an db oo k"
d 111 tie
J hand Ir 1s much longer rhan
wo mans
cannot be east.1y carne

.
the books just mentioned and written for technically more advanced readers, yet tt
is packed with reliable information.
.
1 5. Four Autobiographical Accounts of Tel~pathi~ Expenence~ The percipients in these four cases have described their expenences Ill the books listed under
their names in rhe References.
16. Trustworthy Witnesses of Paranormal Cognitions Many oth~r equally
trustworthy persons have recorded experiences similar to those I have cned. One

264

NOTES-CHAPTER 1

encounters accounts of their experiences not infrequenrly in biographies and autobiographies, such as Stanley's and Brougham's. Prince (1928) collected many reports
of similar experiences in a valuable anthology.
The large number of eminent persons competent in other fields of human
endeavor who have testified co personal experiences of paranormal phenomena raises
one of two important questions, depending on how we interpret their claims. On the
one hand, if they are (correcrly) judged co have been outstandingly competent in their
chosen professions and yet mistaken in their reports of their apparencly paranormal
experiences, we should cry co understand why on these occasions they fell so far below
che standards they otherwise reached; on che ocher hand, if they were as competent
in reporting these experiences as they are judged co have been in their main professional endeavors, we have to understand why ocher scientists have segregated their
opinions on paranormal experiences as being valueless while continuing to respect their
views on matters concerned with their fields of acknowledged expertise.
Furthermore, for scientists who believe in paranormal cognition, personal experience appears co be the predominant means of reaching such belief. A survey by
McClenon (1982) of scientists' belief in extrasensory perception showed that few
who believed chat ic can occur did so as a result of studying che books and journals
of parapsychology; far more reached their belief because of having themselves had
personal, convincing experiences.
17. Chance and Death-Coinciding Apparitions Details of this analysis may
be found in H. Sidgwick and Committee (1894) and also in Broad (1962).
18. Agnes Paquet's Case The full report is in E. M. Sidgwick (1891-92).
19. Correspondence of Details Between Vision and Distant Event Bergson
(1913) made precisely the same point in his presidential address to che Society for Psychical Research. He cited rhe case of a woman who, at the moment of her husband's
death, saw him killed in batrle with many of the particular details of the event.
With characteristic common sense, Dr. Johnson also made the same point a century and a half earlier when, talking with Boswell about ghosts, he said:
Sir, I make a distinction between what a man may experience by the mere
strength of his imagination, and what imagination cannot possibly produce. Thus,
suppose I should chink that I saw a form, and heard a voice cry, "Johnson, you are
a very wicked fellow, and unless you repent you will certainly be punished;" my own
unworthiness is so deeply impressed upon my mind, that I might imagine I thus
saw and heard and therefore I should not believe that an external communication
had been made to me. But if a form should appear, and a voice should cell me char
a particular man had died at a particular place and a particular hour, a face which
I had no apprehension of, nor any means of knowing, and chis fact, with all its circumstances should afterwards be unquestionably proved, I should, in char case be
persuaded that I had supernatural intelligence imparted to me [Boswell, 193111791,
p. 246].
20. Rarities and Reports That Seem Incredible The quotation is from
Bacon's The Advancement of Learning (1915/1605, p. 29).
21. The Case of the Blue Orchid of Table Mountain I have published derails
of this case (Stevenson, 1964). MacKenzie (1966) probed ir further and published a
report of it with some additional information. (The blue flower in question was nor
in fact an orchid, but at the time I published my report of the case I thought it was.)

Notes- Chapter 1

265

22. Surveys of Psychical Experiences Details of such surveys can be found

in the reports of Greeley (1975), Palmer (1979), H. Sidgwick and Commiccee (1894),
and West (1948). Haraldsson (1985) published a succinct survey of such surveys. He
wisely pointed out chat surveys cell us about che prevalence of claims of psychical
experiences, but provide little information about the evidence of paranormal processes in the reports of che experiences.
23. Flaws in the Testimony of Spontaneous Cases Two types of reports of
spontaneous cases have been published: chose of investigated cases and chose of unin:estigaced ones. The investigation of a case involves (minimally) quesrioning the
mformants through correspondence or (preferably) personal interviews about details
of the experience and the related events. The laccer should then be verified by the
investigator from some independent source, not accepted on the unsupported statement of the percipient. Uninvestigated cases chat find their way co publication ~ave
usually been accepted at face value from a letter submicced co a research center without further inquiry.
. Investigated cases offer two advantages over uninvestigated ones. First, the inter:1e"':s (or, failing that, repeated exchanges of leccers) permit the detection and
mat1on of cases that are inauthentic or that have an obvious normal explanation.
Uninvestigated cases, accepted into a series that includes investigated ones, may contaminate the series to a degree that one cannot assess, and thereby damage the value
of conclusions drawn from the series. Second, uninvestigaced cases can rarely provide a complete picture of a case. The informant is usually the percipient, and he
(or she) may ignore or minimize the experience of the agent. This imbala~ce can lead
to faulty conclusions, such as Rhine's (1981) that agents are unimportant m extrasensory perceptions.
I should add, on the positive side of uninvestigated cases, that some serie.s of ch.em
show features that we find in investigated cases, and chis cells us that the 111 clust0n
of some inauthentic cases and biases from failure to study all aspects of a case may
not always vitiate a series.

To study reports of investigated cases, a reader must usually go to rhe ~pecialclyl

1
h d d. d lly or 111 sma
JOUrna s of psychical research where they are publis e 111 ivt ua
.
. d
.
.
.
d
h
been published 111 egroups. H owever, several collections of mvesngace cases ave
b
bl"
Th se include volumes Y
.
.
pen d enc ly or separately from official society pu 1car10ns.
e
. l
Gauld and Cornell (1979; poltergeists); Gurney, Myers, and Podmore (1886; mam ~
apparitions); MacKenzie (1971, 1982; apparitions and ghosts); Stevenson (1970a,
telepathic impressions); and Tyrrell (1953; apparitions).
.

d cases t h e following deserve actennon: C.

A mong co II ecttons
o f unmvesngate
Green (1960, 1968b); Prasad and Stevenson (1968); Rhine (1961, 1981); and Sannwald
(1959a, 195%).
24. Hallucinations of Widowhood Rees (1971) published a survey of such
experiences.
25 Normal Explanations for Apparent Psychical ~xpcriences I have discussed this subject, and given relevant references about 1t, elsewhere (Stevenson,
1983c).
26. Kant on "Ghost Stories" The cited passage occurs on p. 52 of Kant (1976/
1766). I have translated it.
27. The Themes of Love and Death in Psychical Experiences Gurney, Myers,
and Podmore (1886) noted these features in their book on (mainly) apparitional

el!m-

266

NOTES-CHAPTERS 1, 2

experiences. Later series of cases have confirmed the high frequency of a loving relationship between percipient and agent and of death (or a serious illness or accident)
as the theme of paranormal communications (C. Green, 1960; Prasad and Stevenson, 1968; Salrmarsh, 1934; and Stevenson, 1970a).
28. Posthypnotic Suggestions In the latter pare of the nineteenth century,
Bernheim (194711889) published excellent examples of posthypnotic suggestions,
and his work still merits study. Bernheim found that when he pressed and, so to
speak, bullied the subjects of posthypnotic suggestions, some of them could remember chat their bizarre posthypnotic behavior derived from Bernheim's instructions to
chem while they were hypnotized.
29. The Concept of Behavioral Memories Bergson (1959/1896) and
Burler (1961/1877) showed the importance of behavioral memories. Penfield (1975)
suggested that the main function of a brain is to learn sequences of automatic behavior, which the mind, using the brain as an instrument, initiates when it wills to do
so.

Chapter 2: The Belief in Reincarnation

1. Voltaire The sentence cited occurs in Voltaire (1960, p. 366).
2. The Geographical Distribution of the Belief in Reincarnation Information about some of the different beliefs in reincarnation may be found in the following sources:

Islamic seers of western Asia: Makarem (1974) and Stevenson (1974b/1966

and 1980)
African tribes, particularly of West Africa: Besterman (1968), Deschamps
0970), Noon (1942), Parrinder (1956, 1970), Stevenson (1985),
L-V. Thomas (1968), Uchendu (1965), Zahan (1965)
Brazil: Stevenson (1974b/1966)
Trobriand Islanders: Malinowski (1916)
Central Australia: Spencer and Gillen (1968/1899)
Ainu: Munro (1963)
Northwestern North America: De Laguna (1972), Mills and Slobodin
0994), Slobodin (1970), and Stevenson (1%6, 1974b/1966, and
1975b).
From somewhat fragmentary evidence, it seems likely that other American Indians besides those of northwestern North America also at one ti me believed in reincarnation and that some of them still do. ffor example, RaJin (1926] published a
statement by a Winnebago Indian who claimed to remember two previous lives.)
However, these groups certainly did nor preserve the belief so long or so vigorously
as have the tribes of the northwestern region of the conrinenr. Missionaries of Christianity have nor had contact wirh the latter groups for as long as they have with natives
farther east and south.
Bergrunder 0994) provided a scholarly and apparently exhaustive list of rhe
many cultures having a belief in reincarnation.
3. Schopenhauer I have taken rhis quotation, which I have rranslared, from
p. 395 of Schopenhauer's P11rerg11 unc/ Pamlipm>mltl (18lJI).

Notes- Chapter 2

267

4. Surveys of the Belief in Reincarnation in Europe and North America

Details of surveys about the belief in reincarnation in Europe were published in
Gallup Opinion Index (1969), Haraldsson (1985), Harding, Phillips, and Fogarty
(1986), and Ingleharr, Basafiez and Moreno (1998).
Details of surveys in the United States may be found in Gallup Opinion Index
(1969), Gallup, with Proctor (1982), and Inglehart, Basafiez and Moreno (1998).
5. The Belief in Reincarnation in the Ancient Scriptures oflndia Further
information will be found in R. E. Hume (1931), Radhakrishnan (1923), Smart
(1964), and Zaehner (1962).
O'Flaherry (1981) stated that although the idea of reincarnation may be
prefigured in the Rig Veda, it is only expounded in the (lacer) Upanisads.
6. Apollonius's Meeting with larch us Philostrarus (1912) in his Life ofApollonius of Tyana gives an account of chis meeting.
7. Common Origin of the Belief in Reincarnation in Greece and India
Keith (1925) marshaled arguments showing the insubstamialicy of much alleged evidence used to support the belief that the ancient Greeks borrowed concepts from the
Indians and that the Indians borrowed some from the Greeks. Parallel concepts provide no evidence of borrowing or even of a common origin. Ir remains possible, however, char both the Greek and Indian concepts of reincarnation did derive from a
common origin. Ruben (1939) suggested chat chis source may have been an early form
of shamanism in central Asia.
8. Spread of Information Between Asians and North American Tribes I
have elsewhere reviewed the evidence, which is neither abundant nor strong, of contact between Asians and North American tribes in prorohisrorical rimes (Stevenson,
1974b/1966, pp. 217-19). Buddhist ideas may have reached the inhabiran~s of Alaska
before the coming of Europeans in the eighteenth century. Ir se:ms unlt~ely, ho;ever, that they had an important influence on the concept of remcarnauon amo g
the tribes of northwestern North America.
9. The Alevis of South-Central Turkey I have had to write "se:m to have
no scriptural authority" because I have not been able to learn of one. My mfo~manrs
in Turkey have sometimes shown a distressing mixture of ignorance and evasivene~s
when I have questioned them about the basis of their beliefs. Perhaps they thoug r
. fi del, unworthy of sharing a knowledge o f t h e1r
re r1gwus
b0 oks If. so ' they
me an m
concealed the texts, but not their belief. The Druses of Lebanon a~d Sy~ia _sho': a
somewhat similar attitude. Most of them talk uninhibitedly about their belief m reml
b utan outsider

t h elf
h o lY b 00 k s. Still ' I know that t 1e
carnation,
may not examine
Druses have such books I do not know that the Alevis do.
The Koran provide~ only feeble support for a belief in reincar.nation. Li~e the
Bible, it contains some ambiguous passages that lend then~selves to mterprecanon as
supporting the idea. I have elsewhere cited such verses m the Koran (Stevenson,
1974b/1966 and 1980). I have also described the belief in reincarnation among the
.
Alevis of south central Turkey (Stevenson, 1970b, 1980).
I 0. Belief in Reincarnation Among the Igbo I have descnbed elsewhere the
belief in reincarnation among the Igbo (Stevenson, 1985)..
,
I I. Schopenhauer's Conviction About Reincarnatt?n Schopenhauer 09?8)
may not have arrived at his conviction about reincarnation only through philosophical reasoning; he had, for his rime, an extensive knowledge of ~in~ui~m and
Buddhism, the scriptures of which were then being translated and studied m Europe.

268

NOTES-CHAPTER 2

12. Philosophers Who Have Endorsed the Idea of Reincarnation Anthologists of books on reincarnation frequenrly cite David Hume with the implication
char he also believed in reincarnation or at least thought rhar it made sense. The sentence usually ciced in this connection occurs in his essay "On rhe Immortality of the
Soul," where he wrote: "The Metempsychosis is therefore the only system of this kind
chat philosophy can hearken to" (Hume, 1854, p. 553). In rhe immediately preceding passages of rhe essay, Hume had pointed our rhar because (nonhuman) animals
resemble humans in many ways, we cannot say char humans have souls wichour
allowing char animals also have them. His statement about metempsychosis then follows. (He seems to have used the word "metempsychosis," as it properly should be
used today, to refer ro the rebirth after death of the soul of any animal, human or
ocherwise, in any other animal body.) Anyone who reads Hume's essay in its entirety,
however, will acknowledge rhar he did nor believe in rhe existence of a human (or
animal) soul, much less in its survival of bodily deach. As Boswell (1970) testified,
Hume died tranquilly confident of his own mortality.
13. Plato's References to Reincarnation In addition co the argument in the
Meno, Plato expounded the idea of reincarnation in other works, notably Phaedo,
Timaeus, Phaedrus, and The Republic.
The quotation from the Meno is from pages 90-91 of the edition cited in the
list of references (Plato, 1936).
14. McTaggart and Ducasse on Reincarnation Of all the modern philosophers who have given attention ro rhe idea of reincarnation, McTaggart (1906) and
Ducasse (1951, 1961) seem to me rhe most lucid and most persuasive. McTaggarc made
no reference to specific memories of previous lives, and he apparenrly believed that
we could have none. However, he chought chat a person could learn lessons from
one life char he could bring to rhe nexc one, even though he brought co ic no cognitive information - imaged memories, in my terminology - of the previous life.
Ducasse, a generation lacer, encouraged the investigation of cases and followed repom
of them with keen attention.

Among more recent philosophers who have taken the evidence for reincarnation seriously I commend Almeder (1992), Braude (1992), Lund (1985), and Paterson (1995). Edwards (1996) wrote a skeptical philosopher's criticism of the idea of
reincarnation, which he found incoherent. Unfortunately, he allowed himself co
deride the evidence wirhour examining it himself, as Almeder (1997) and Matlock
(1997) showed.
15. The Belief in Reincarnation Among the Inuit (Eskimo} References to
rhe belief in reincarnation among the Inuit may be found in Birker-Smirh (1959/
1936), Guemple (1988), Hughes (1962), and Swanton (1908).
A person able to speak the Inuit language of Greenland can understand the Inuit
language of Alaska without much difficulty. This suggests rhar rhe language changed
lirrle after the ancestors of the present-day Inuit spread across rhe northern tundra.
Perhaps the belief in reincarnation (found among the Inuit of Greenland and Alaska,
as well as chose in between) also descended from a single locus of belief. And, as I
mentioned earlier, the belief might have come from Asia with the ancestors of che
present Inuits.

I 6. Belief in Reincarnation Deriving from Claimed Memories of Previous

Lives Peris (1963), in an essay on Pythagoras, suggested rhar the belief in reincarnation and rhe claim char at lease some persons can remember previous lives may be

Notes- Chapter 2

269

of equal antiquity. Pythagoras provides an obvious example of this relationship,

~ecaus~ h: taught reincarnation and he also claimed to remember his own previous
lives. Similarly, the Bhagavad-Gita (of the Mahabharata), composed between 200
B.C. and A.O. 200, couples the belief in reincarnation with a claim to remember
previous lives (Prabhavananda and Isherwood, 1944). In it Krishna tells Arjuna:
You and I, Arjuna
Have lived many lives.
I remember them all:
You do not remember.
Still another example occurs in Buddhism: the Jataka tales purport to narrate the
Buddha's previous lives as remembered by him. As Peris (1963) pointed out, in all
these examples we are concerned with a claim to remember previous lives on the part
of a god or great sage; we seem a long way from the idea chat ordinary people might
rem~mber previous lives. Nevertheless, the examples mentioned contain the germ. of
the idea that memories of previous lives come with spiritual discipline and attainment.
. ~n inquirer may reasonably ask how memories of a previous life would be
assimilated by someone who had no prior concept of reincarnation. Indeed, in a lacer
chapter I shall argue that a person who has such memories may reject chem unless
he also carries over from a previous life a conceptual framework on which co attach
chem. Perhaps then the establishment of a belief in reincarnation requires two factors: imaged memories of a previous life by oneself or by someone in whom one has
confidence and a belief (or intuition) that reincarnation may occur .
. 17. Early Cases of the Reincarnation Type in India In the sixce~nch ~encurr;
Tulsi Das, t~e translator of the Ramayana, claimed to remember a p~evi~us life, bu
we have so little information about his assertion char I cannot descnbe It as a case.
!n the eighteenth century, the Mogul Emperor Aurangzeb, although he was _a :anatical Moslem who did not believe in reincarnation, showed char he was wtllmg .co
examine facts that conflicted with his beliefs. He called the witnesses of a case co him
and interrogated them in the manner of a modern investigator (Stevenson,
l974b/1966, PP 15-16). The next Indian case known co me occurred in the early years
of chis century. Sunderlal (1924) published a report of it and three ?ch~r ca.ses.
.
h
b c che belief m remcarna18 . Th e C at h ars Informat10n, such as we ave, a ou
.
d . (197 5)
tlon among the Cathars, can be found in the works by LeRoy La une .
'
Madaule (1961), Nelli (1972), Niel (1955), and Runciman (1947). LeRoy Ladune gave
.
b

life {or more accurately,

one account o f a c laim by a Cachar to remem er a previous
'
three lives, including two as nonhuman animals).
19. "Whoever believes that man's birth is his beginning . " Schopenhauer
(1908, 2:558).
20. Intimations of Reincarnation I have deliberately used the word "intimations" because I think Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations oflmmortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" illustrates what I am trying co describe.
21. Review of One's Life After Death Persons who approach death and
recover sometimes report seeing scenes of rheir life Aas~~ through their mind. Some
authors refer to this experience as "panoramic memory becaus~, for some persons,
the memories seem to be all laid out at the same rime. Informanon about the experience can be found in Greyson and Stevenson {1980), Heim (1972/1892), Noyes and
Klecti (1977), Stevenson and Cook (1995), and Stevenson and Greyson {1979).

270

NOTES-CHAPTER 2

Two further points require noting here. First, the modern reporters of panoramic
memories (during experiences near death) do not usually describe rhe review as
unpleasant. Second, few children who claim ro remember previous lives include
among rheir memories rhe experience of a review after dearh of rhe previous life they
claim co remember. The cases of Shanti Devi, Nasir Toksoz, and Ishwar Godbole
are exceptional; they said thac they had experienced a life review at the end of the
previous lives they remembered.
If reincarnation occurs, we may have many other subliminal memories of previous lives without having imaged memories that would explain chem. I have
described some of chese as behavioral memories, bur I mentioned earlier chat we may
also have subliminal cognitive memories derived from previous lives. Plato's Meno
(mentioned above) was an accempt co demonsrrare these. We could regard the boy
geometer of rhe Meno as rhe subject of a case who had no imaged memories hue had
subliminal cognitive ones that he could apply in working our a geometrical problem. This was obviously che way in which Plaro's Socrates regarded che boy.
22. Reasons for Fearing Death Persons who believe chat deach entails oblivion often fear deach and rry co avoid ic, even when their lives have become miserable through illness and, in rhe opinion of ocher persons, "nor worth living."
Patanjali's (1953) explanation of rhe fear of death may cover such cases, hue another
explanation may also apply. During our lives we become strongly attached co the
scream of consciousness rhar we think of as "I." Its cessation forever seems repugnant and something co be struggled against. A person who believes chat his "I" will
in some way conrinue after death can more readily abandon his physical body when
ic no longer serves him well.
Yee we must nor say char fear of death always betrays selfishness. The dying often
grieve for rheir survivors as much as che survivors do for the dying (Aldrich, 1963).
And the children who remember lives wich "unfinished business" (whose cases I shall
mention further in chapter 10) help us co understand that some persons wish to live
longer in order co continue helping ochers.
23. The Tibetan Pattern of Reincarnation Bell (1931) and Snellgrove and
Richardson (1968) described the development of rhe system of tulkw, who are said
ro be the successive incarnations of advanced lamas.
24. Conversion of Hindus to Islam in India Spear (1965) described the several motives influencing Hindus (and Buddhists) ro convert co Islam. Some were converted forcibly. Some sought political rewards under rhe Moguls. Many, exposed to
the preaching and example of the Sufis, concluded char Islam was a superior religion.
A large number oflow-casre and outcasre Hindus (and Bud<lhists) escaped into Islam
from the oppressions of Brahmins.
25. Loss of the Belief in Reincarnation Among the lsmailis I have given
sources for this statement elsewhere (Stevenson, 1980).
Shifts in the beliefs concerning reincarnation among the Ismailis deserve further study. I have been cold char although mosr Ismailis do not now believe in reincarnation, the modern Ismailis of East Africa do believe in ir. If this is correct, ic
suggests thar their forebears, who lived (for the most part) in western India, may have
come under the influence of Hinduism in Gujarat and other parts of western India.
26. Belief in Reincarnation Among the Celts Evans-Wentz (1911) found evidence of the persistence of the belief in reincarnation among rhe Celtic inhabiranrs
of Scocland, Wales, and Ireland in the early years of the twenrieth century.

Notes-Chapter 2

271

Julius Caesar remarked on the belief in reincarnation among che Gauls whom
he studied. About their priests, the Druids, he wrote: "The cardinal doctrine which
chey seek co teach is thac souls do not die, but after deach pass from one [body] to
another; and this belief, as rhe fear of deach is chereby cast aside, they hold co be che
greatest incentive co valor" (Caesar, 1917, p. 339).
27. Belief in Reincarnation Among the Vikings My sources for chis scatemenr are Davidson (1964) and Ker (1904).
28. The Council of Constantinople in A.O. 553 and the Disapproval of the
Teaching of Reincarnation Some details about che teachings of Origen concerning reincarnation (more precisely, preexistence) and cheir lacer condemnation may
be found in Danielou (1955), MacGregor (1978), and Prac (1907, 1911).
29. Decline in the Belief in Reincarnation Among the Inuit I published a
brief account of this survey in a short report on the belief and cases relaced co reincarnation among the Inuit (Stevenson, 1969).
30. "It was believed according to ancient lore .. " From Ellis (1943, P 139).
31. Variations in the Belief in Reincarnation In my volumes of case reports
(Stevenson, 1974b/1966, 1975a, 1977a, 1980, 1983a, 1997a), I have included chapters or ocher introduccory sections describing che variations among the beliefs about
reincarnation in the different countries where I have studied cases suggestive of reincarnation. Readers can find additional information on chis subject in Parrinder (1956),
Schmidr-Leukel (1996), and Stevenson (1966, 1975b, 1985).
32. Belief in Reincarnation Among the Shiite Moslems The Druses of
Lebanon and Syria and che Alevis of Turkey hold the beliefs described in this paragraph (Stevenson, 1980).
Obeyesekere (1968, 1980) distinguished "primitive" and "ethicized" types of
belief in reincarnation. According co him, persons who hold the primitive type of
belief do not link their moral values wich the process of reincarnation; chose ~ho
hold an ethicized belief in reincarnation do. Obeyesekere cited the Trobnand
Islanders and the Igbo as examples of peoples holding the primitive type of belief;

d rype. ObeyeH .m d u1sm

and Buddhism provide obvious examples o f t h e et l11c1ze
.

.
.
h
f
che
belief
11

se k ere was incorrect, however, in assernna0 chat t e outcome o er h"c"zing

m remcarnanon

like
che concept o fk arma d eve loped in Hmdu1sm
must b ea doccrme
and Buddhism. The Druses have coupled their moral values wirh their ideas abour
reincarnation without reaching any concept of chat kind.
.
.
33. Belief in Reincarnation Among the West Africans Furcher mformatw.n
will be found in Parrinder (1956), Stevenson (1985), and Uchendu .(1965). My arncle on the belief in reincarnation among the lgbo of Nigeria contams references co
earlier discussions of the same topic.
.
.
34. Belief in Reincarnation Among the Tlingit I have summarized rhe Tlmgit concepts of reincarnation elsewhere (Stevenson, 1966; 1974b/1966).
35. Choice for the Next Incarnation Cases among che Tlingit of apparent
success in premortem selection of the parents for the nexr incarnation include those
of Corliss Chotkin, Jr., and William George, Jr.
36. Concept of Reincarnation in Plato's The Republic The relevant pas:age
occurs in the account of the experience of Er in the tenth book (~l:Ho, 1935). Elsewhere, in che Phat'drus and the Timaeus, Plato gave a somewhat d1ffer:nr accoun~ of
the process of reincarnation and suggested that conduct in one lite could affecc
circumstances in anocher retriburively.

272

NOTES-CHAPTER

Chapter 3: Types ofEvidence for Reincarnation

1. "Past-Life Readings" Eight persons have independently read my own purported previous lives. Not a single one of these readings has agreed with any of the
others. Lest it be thought - fairly enough - chat they might have described different
but not incompatible lives, I will mention that several of che readings placed me in
different countries during the same periods of time. The persons who gave me these
readings had varied backgrounds and occupations. For example, one was an Indian
swami, another an American sensitive, and another an Austrian housewife. So far as
I could tell, they had nothing in common but honesty and an unshakable conviction in their own powers to do what they claimed to do.
A few seers may have had the ability to obtain information paranormally about
other persons' previous lives. In chapter 2 I mentioned larch us, who made statements
about a previous life of Apollonius of Tyana that accorded with Apollonius's own
apparent memories.
I do not reject as impossible the rare occurrence of persons who can authentically read other persons' previous lives. I do insist, however, that most persons who
have claimed to be able to do chis have not had such powers and have deceived
themselves as well as other persons.
2. Increased Accuracy of Memory During Hypnotic Age Regression True
(1949) demonstrated increased accuracy of recall during hypnosis of details of childhood compared with recall during a normal or "waking" state. Reiff and Scheerer
(1959) were not able to replicate True's results in full, but they did find improved
recall during hypnosis in response to different questions from the ones True had
asked. However, O'Connell, Shor, and Orne (1970) could not fully replicate Reiff
and Scheerer's results.
Barber (1961) wrote a useful summary and critique of experiments to rest
improved memory during hypnotic age regression.
3. Errors in Recall During Hypnosis Orne (1951) showed that ostensibly
age-regressed subjects often confabulated when they could not remember information about their childhoods chat they were asked to furnish. Accurate and inaccurate memories were mixed and presented without the subjects' being aware of the
mistakes they were making. The subjects sometimes "borrowed" memories of events
in later childhood (or even later in life) and incorrectly placed these in the period of
the ostensible age regression.
Putnam (1979) and lacer Zelig and Beidleman (1981) showed that when hypnotized (but not regressed) subjects were asked leading questions about an event
they had witnessed, they made more errors during hypnosis than in their normal waking state.
Many years ago Stalnaker and Riddle (1932) observed chat subjects could recall
more items during hypnosis than they could in their normal state, but when hypnotized they also included more inaccuracies among the items recalled. Dywan and
Bowers (1983) reported similar observations.
4. The Influence of Suggestions in Inducing Previous-Life Fantasies Baker
(1982) showed char the hypnotist's positive or negative suggestions could markedly
influence whether or not previous-life fantasies occurred.
Spanos, et al. (1991) repeated Baker's observations and in a further series of
experiments showed that subjects being hypnotically regressed to a "previous life"

Notes- Chapter 3

273

would present features of the evoked "previous personality" that conformed to suggestions given by the hypnotist to the subjects, such as that in a previous life they
could have been a member of the opposite sex or a different race, and might have
been sexually abused. In the expression of the suggested features during hypnosis,
the experimental group far exceeded a control group whose members did not receive
such suggestions. These valuable experiments are also reported in Spanos (1996).
5. Versailles During the Crusades Bloxham (1958) published this case of
hypnotic regression to a "previous life."
6. Factual Errors During Hypnotic Regression to "Previous Lives" I have
elsewhere given three other examples of egregious errors of history or geography in
published cases of hypnotic regression to "previous lives" {Stevenson, 1994).
7. Records of Births, Deaths, Marriages Church records of such events as
marriages and deaths and those of land tenure and for certain taxes have existed for
centuries in some European countries. But the recorders ofren lefr gaps. Fire, damp,
war, and negligence have led to the loss of many old parish records. Civil registration of births, deaths, and marriages did not begin in England and Wales until the
1830s, and in Germany until the 1870s. Reliable civil records in the United States
also date only from the mid-nineteenth century and, for some scares, later. I would
nor say that someone did not exist before 1850 because we could find no contemporary record of him; bur he could not be proved to exist without such a record.
8. Normal Sources of Information in Hypnotically Induced "Previous Personalities" Dickinson (1911) published one of the most thoroughly worked-out cases
showing the emergence into consciousness of information acquired normall~ ma~y
1
years earlier without the subject's consciously remembering chat she had obtamed .r.
Th.e.case, th~t ?f "Blanche Poynings," is one of communication th~ough aucomau~
w~mng, bur it illustrates well che remarkable ability of the subconscious lev~ls of th
mmd to organize normally acquired information into a coherent personality. The
w h'ic h oc curred
.
su b Jeer
o f t h"is case had almost certainly read in childhoo d a nave l m
.
,,
almost all of the many details incorporated in the constructed "Blanche Poynm~s.
In a session held after those at which "Blanche Poynings" had communica~ed, ?,ickinson asked the subject about sources of information for "Blanche Poynmgs. and
l novel Countess
.
d) h'
s h e t h en remembered havmg seen {and probably rea a 1sronca
'

M au d ' t h at mcluded all the correct details of the communicarwns from "Blanche
Poynings."
.
.
"
Several psychologists have traced the ingredients of hypnoncally mduced dp.re.
l'1ves" to mrormat1on
c
.
.
d norn1 ally' through rea mg
the subjects
ha d acquire
v1ous
(sometimes years earlier), without having consciously remember~d chat they had
obtained the information. Examples of such cases can be fou.nd 111 .rhe reports of
Bjorkhem (1961), Kampman (1973, 1976), Kampman and H1rvenop (1978), and
Zolik (1958, 1962).
Venn (1986) published an item by item summary of the de~ails of a "p.revious
life" that a hypnotized subject provided. He found chat the verifiable details were
common knowledge or readily available in accessible sources; the obscure or recondite items were false.
When a person learns some information, forgets chat he has done so, but later
shows knowledge of the information, he is said to show cryptomnesia or source amnesia (Stevenson, 1983b). I discuss chis furrher in chapter 7.
9. The Case of The Semch for Bridey Mm-phy "A lie will go round the world

274

NOTES-CHAPTER

while che cruch is pulling its boors on." For chis reason, many uninformed persons
miscakenly chink char cryptomnesia has been shown to be the correct explanation for
the case of "Bridey Murphy." This, however, is wrong. Some crirics alleged rhat the
subject of the case could have acquired all the correct information char she showed
abouc life in ninereench-century Ireland from an Irish neighbor whom she was alleged
to have known as a child. Ducasse (1960) carefully examined chis claim and the evidence char shows ic co be invalid. The subject remembered having been acquainted
wich che neighbor's children, bur could not recall char she had ever spoken with the
neighbor herself. The latter could not in any event have furnished the subject with
all the recondite details about Ireland in the early nineteenth century chat "Bridey Murphy" scared. Some critics of parapsychology, borrowing from each ocher without
returning to primary sources, have cited the alleged exposure of rhe case withour
showing any knowledge of rhe exposure of the exposure. They should srudy Ducasse
and also later editions of Bernstein's report of the case (Bernstein, 1965/1956).
Nevertheless, although the case of Bridey Murphy is not a proven instance of
crypcomnesia, it does not provide strong evidence for reincarnation, because no person corresponding co Bridey Murphy's statements has been traced. Also, the Bridey
Murphy personality got some derails about life in nineteenth-century Ireland wrong.
With my encouragement Tarazi (1990) published another case of hypnotic
regression the subject of which seated many extremely obscure derails about a life in
sixteenth-century Europe and America. Tarazi could learn of no way in which rhe
subject could have learned some of the verified derails, and she concluded chat the
case had "some unexplained contents."
10. Responsive Xenoglossy During Hypnosis I have published in articles
and books reports of the two cases of responsive xenoglossy during hypnosis chat seem
co me authentic (Stevenson, 1974c, 1976, and 1984).
11. Historical Novels Evoked During Hypnotic Regression In the same
way, I have conjectured that certain delusions of mentally ill persons could derive
from memories of previous lives dimly remembered. Could a woman who delusionally believes herself to be rhe Empress Josephine have had a previous life in
France during rhe hrsr decade of the nineteenth century when she might have admired
or strongly identified with the Empress Josephine? We once had a patient at the University of Virginia Hospital who thought she was Scarlett O'Hara, the heroine of
Gone with the Wind. Perhaps she had some subliminal memories of a life in the antebellum South. Another of our patients, who had hallucinations of religious content,
believed she was the reincarnation of Sr. Teresa of Avila; it is just possible that in her
psychotic process vague memories of a previous life as a nun became crystallized into
the delusion of having been Sr. Teresa.
12. Amnesia of Later Childhood The inability, except in rare cases, to tap
memories of previous lives during hypnosis probably has the same cause as the amnesia that occurs for spontaneous memories of previous lives in larer childhood. I discuss this important topic in chapter 5.
13. Incidence of the Experience of Deja Vu I derived the figure given here
(76 percent) by combining dara published by Palmer (1979) based on a survey of a
random sample of residenrs and students of a typical American city (Charlottesville,
Virginia). Other samples may show different incidences. Some of the differences
between surveys derive from the variety of ways rhe respondents have been asked
about the experiences and the several ways they may interprer the quesrion asked.

Notes- Chapter 3

275

Some psychologists and respondents include under deja vu the experience of believing rhar an event, such as a parcicular conversation, has been lived through before;
others resrricr the term to a sense of familiarity with a place nor visited before.
Palmer's questionnaire included both types of experience of deja vu: for places and
for events .
. The experience of deja vu should nor be regarded as a sign of mental abnormality. Many clear-headed persons have had che experience. These include, among
ochers, rhe novelise Charles Dickens (1877, p. 37) and the poet A. E. Housman
(Graves, 1979, p. 166).
Neppe (1983) published a comprehensive review of che deja vu experience.
14. Statements by Subjects About Changes in Buildings The cases of Parmod Sharma, Prakash Varshnay, Rabih Elawar, and Swarn la ca Mishra include such
statements by the subjects.
15. Deja Vu and Previous Life Memories If rhe experience of deja vu derived
?fren from memories of actual previous lives, I should expect that more persons having. the experience would, at the same time, have an uprush of imaged memories.
This happens sometimes to the children subjects of our verified cases. When they
reach r~e village or town where they say rhey have lived before, they may have new
memo.ncs, ones evidently stimulated by scenes rhat appear to be familiar to them.
Occasionally, adults who have had rhe experience of deja vu say char rhey also had
t?en, or moments later, some unexpected knowledge about the place where the exp~
nence occurred. They will know, for example, rhar around the next corner one. will
reach a blacksmith's shop that is, from where rhe subject stands, still our of sight.
And so it may turn our. Informants have reporred a few cases of this rype to me, bm
I h~ve nor so far obtained any corroboration from other witnesses as to whether rhe
subject mentioned the existence of the blacksmith's shop, for example, before rhe subject and his companions had come to it. No doubt in some instances diffidence has
kept the subject from speaking his thoughts; in others, witnesses have died or otherwise dispersed. Nevertheless, I think that I would have learned of corrobor_ared ~ases
of chis kind if the experience of deJa vu often derived from memories ot pr~v1ous
Ii ves. per h aps t h'is note will stimulate berrer record'mg o f sue h experiences m the
future.
.
f
,., ,,, E.
ce Efron (1963) pro16 . N eurological Explanation
o Dep vu xpenen
posed this explanation.
.
.
17 R
.
. M
5 me persons might inter. ecurrent Nightmares and Genetic emory 0
.
h
r s ilmosr certain r at some
.
b
Pre( t h is
case as an example of generic memory, ecause 1 1 '

of Mi 1Y M agru d er s ancestors were 111vo

.
lve d 111 an I n din
raid
resembling rhar of her
1
'

nightmare. I shall return co the subject of generic memory in chapter 7.

18. Subjects Having Both Waking Memories and .R.clated !lreams Prakash
Varshnay, Salem Andary, Sunira Khandelwal, Cemil Fahnc1, and Suleyman Ar~dary.
are among rhe subjects who had both waking memories and apparent memones ot
the previous life during dreams.
.
....
19. Vividness and Paranormal Components 111 Dreams A report of v1v1dness" occurred in fifty-six (45 percent) of 125 precogr~f t~v~ ?,reams rh:u I a1~alyzed
(Stevenson, 1970c). Prince (1921, 1922) analyzed 449 v1v1d dreams 111 w.h1ch the
dreamer had dreamed of another person about whom he was nor then :rn~1ous. 1:fe
found that in rhirry-five (nearly 8 percent) of these rhe dream had co.in.oded with
the death of the person dreamed abouc. Most dreamers say that v1v1d dreams,

276

NOTES-CHAPTERS

3, 4

compared with ones chat are not vivid, occur co chem rarely. le appears chat, although
che majority of vivid dreams convey no paranormally acquired information, a dream
chat is vivid is more likely co include such information than one chat is not.
I do not wish co exaggerate the possible importance of vividness in dreams as
an indicator of paranormal processes. A dreamer who remembers a particular dream
for some reason ocher than vividness, perhaps because ir had an apparent paranormal process, may lacer describe it as vivid. We should therefore consider three possibilities: vivid dreams may be more readily remembered, vivid dreams may be more
likely than ocher dreams co have a paranormally derived content, and dreams having such a content may be retrospectively characterized as vivid. The relationship
between the perceptual features of dreams and their contents requires further investigation.
20. Hallucinogenic Drugs and Previous-Life Memories Grof (1976) discussed the possibility char some persons might experience memories of previous lives
during intoxication wirh hallucinogenic drugs. Some of the experiences during intoxication with LSD chat Sandison, Spencer, and Whitelaw (1954) described seem to me
suggestive of memories of previous lives. They, however, preferred to interpret them
as evidence of the release by LSD of repressed memories; bur rhey did not address the
question of the origin of the specific details in the allegedly repressed memories.
21. Memories of Previous Lives Occurring First or More Abundantly During Illness Examples may be found in the cases of Ma Mu Mu and Vinita Jha.
22. Spontaneous "Flashes" of Possible Previous-Life Memories Lenz (1979)
published a collection of such experiences, but he accepted chem at face value and
made no attempt to relate them co ocher kinds of experiences, either psycho-pathological or paranormal.
Numerous historical novels have been published by authors who claim to have
based them on real memories of previous lives. We can acknowledge the good faith
of some of these writers (Grant, 1937; Hawkes, 1981) without necessarily caking their
books seriously as evidence for reincarnation.

Chapter 4: Fourteen Typical Cases of Children

Who Remember Previous Lives
1. Detailed Case Reports As I mentioned earlier, the Appendix gives information about the publications of these derailed reports. (The cases are listed in alphabetical order of the subjects' first names.) Readers should remember that most of the
reports included in chis book are drastically condensed versions of the more derailed
ones. In case reports, brevity and thoroughness are not usually compatible.
2. Announcing Dreams Related to Impending Births This is an example of
a type of dream that frequently occurs in cases of che reincarnation type. A deceased
person appears to a dreamer and expresses his wish or intention co be reborn in a
particular family. The dreamer is usually the woman who will become the mother
of the child who will remember the life of the deceased person appearing in the
dream. Sometimes a relative (as in Corliss's case) or a friend has rhe dream. I call
these "announcing dreams," and will say more about chem in later chapters. Six other
examples occur in the cases of this chapter.

Notes- Chapter 4

277

3. Honorifics in Burma Ma is an honorific given to young girls in Burma.

After they grow older and achieve adult status and a recognized position in the community (whether or not they marry), they are addressed by the honorific Daw. Sim~lar terms for young and older men are Maung and U. Honorifics are so important
m Burma that they have become an almost undecachable part of che given name;
accordingly, I shall use chem in referring co Burmese persons mentioned in this book.
4. Subjects' Desires to Return to the Previous Homes and Families So
many subjects of these cases exhibit a strong desire co return to the previous family
that one might regard this as a recurrent feature of che cases. Some subjects, however, do nor show chis behavior. In cases with verified derails I have found that the
child's desire or reluctance co meet che previous family usually accords with what we
can learn or infer abouc che concerned previous personality's relationship with its
m~mbers. The case of Suleyman Andary (in this chapter) provides an example _of a
child who did nor wish co go co che place where che previous personality had hved
and where he had been unhappy.
The child's relations wich his own family also affect chese acricudes. I have,
however, found instances in which a child has exhibited an intense longing co return
~o the previous family, even when, so far as I could judge, he seemed to be _receivmg ~ore affection in his (present) home than che related previous personality had
received in his. In these cases one or more of several other factors may influence the
child. First, he may long for che previous way of life more than for the mem?ers of
~he previous family; a mansion wich servants may seem desirable even though mhabned by an uncongenial wife. (The case oflndika Guneratne provides an example of
this type.) Second, the child may have a sense of what I call "unfinis.hed business";
examples of this would be infant children who still needed care at the t1me the related
previous personality died. (The cases of Sukla Gupta and Lalirha Abeyawardena
exemplify this group of cases.) Third, old habits carried over and the dis~omforrs of
adapting to new persons and styles of living may cause a sort of nostalgia for_ ~on.

d 1t10ns
t h at seem more familiar,
even when, to or h er o bservers, rhese condmons
.
appear to be inferior to those in which the subject is currencly living. The Spai~i.sh
"
. ,,
E 1 h
d h"s longing for a familiar
word querenc1a expresses better than any ng is wor t 1
h
.
h
d
h"
rive-and no or erp 1ace. (p ra k as l1 Varshnay was a subject who s owe t is ~o
for wishing to return to the previous family of his memones.)
.
l
.
.
d B h and Amencan Peop e
nus
f
d
5 . M a Tin Aung Myo's Antagomsm Towar
.
.
.
. he later phases o my scu y
I 1earne d o f t h 1s derail only through direct quesnonmg m c '
l d

d it spontaneous y ur.
.
d
o f ch is case. Ma Tm Aung Myo's mother ha not mennone .
ing my meetings with her. The derail is therefore not included m my longer reports
of this case.
6. Subjects' Comparisons of Their Mothers wi~h Their "~ther Moth~rs"
The children subjects of these cases often compare rhe1r parents with the previous
parents they claim to remember, not always to rhe credit of rhe ~orm~r. Other examples of this behavior occurred in the cases of Roberta Morgan (m th ts chapter), Veer
Singh, and Rabih Elawar.
.
.
7. The Druse Religion I have publish~d .else':here m.formatton about the
Druse religion, especially with regard co the belief m remcarnanon amon~ t.he Druses
(Stevenson, 1974b/1966, 1980). Further information about the Druse religion can be
found in Betts (1988), Makarem (1974), and Najjar (1973).
8. Subjects' Failures to Recognize Persons and Places That Have Changed

278

NOTES-CHAPTERS

4, 5

Twenty-five years had elapsed between the death of Abdallah Abu Hamdan and
Suleyman's visits to Gharife. The people and places he was expected to have recognized had changed considerably during these years. Recognitions, as I shall explain
later, provide the weakest kind of evidence in these cases; bur we should make some
allowances for the difficulties sometimes imposed on a subject who is asked co make
recognitions to support his claim to being reborn. (The problem of changing appearances, however, does not apply to photographs.)
9. "Intermediate" Lives in Druse Cases I have provided elsewhere reports
of some illustrative cases and a discussion of the evidence for "intermediate" lives
(Stevenson, 1980).
10. Geographical Factors Connecting the Previous Personality and the Subject's Family In some other cases in which the two families concerned had had no
prior acquaintance, a member of the subject's family has visited, not long before the
subject was conceived, the area where the previous personality had lived or died. In
other cases, a member of the previous personality's family had visited or moved into
the area of the subject's family shortly before the subject was conceived.
In a section of chapter 11 I discuss these geographical factors further and give
additional pertinent examples.
11. Desire to Return See note 4, this chapter.
12. Comparison of Mothers See note 6, this chapter.
13. Knowledge of Events Occurring After Death Michael's statement about
being carried over the bridge suggests that he had memories of events after Walter
Miller's death. Memories of this type are extremely rare in the cases of most cul cures
bur frequencly occur among the cases of Burma and Thailand - the case of Bongkuch
Promsin providing an example.
14. Cases with a Triangular Relationship Between Parents and the Subject
I have investigated two cases, those of Asha Rani in India and Ma Tin Tin Myint in
Burma, in which the subject said that in her previous life she had been her father's
first wife.
In the case of Taru Jarvi in Finland, Taru said that (in the previous life she
remembered) she had been her mother's first husband. (Hers was therefore also a case
of "sex change.")

Chapter 5: Characteristics of Typical Cases of

the Reincarnation Type
I. Definition of a Case Some readers may already have wished to know how
I define a "case," and I shall now say what I mean by this term. By a case of the reincarnation type I mean one in which a person (the subject of the case) is idenrified as
being a deceased person reincarnated.
In most of the cases, the subject himself makes the idenrificarion wirh the
deceased person by making statements that he regards as memories of rhe life of that
person. Such subjects usually also show other common features of rhe cases, which
chis chaprer will describe.
I have, however, accepted for investigation and inclusion in our collection of
cases a small number in which rhe subject made no sraremenrs indicative of his

Notes- Chapter 5

279

having imaged memories of a previous life. In these cases other persons nevertheless
identified the subject as the reincarnation of a specific deceased person on the basis
of: a prediction by the deceased person that he would be reborn; an announcing
dream (described further below); a birthmark or birth defect; some unusual behavior of the subject; or a combination of two or more of these features. If the subject
has made no statements, we require that the case have at lease two of these ocher features before we include it in our series. Such "silent cases" may amount co about 5
percent of the total. Dr. J i.irgen Keil has made a special study of such cases in Turkey
(Keil, 1996).
2. Measures Used in Suppressing Cases The parents of Asia resort co a variety of measures for suppressino- children's memories of previous lives. Turning the
~hild on a wheel until he beco~1es dizzy (which presumably confuses the child and
ts thought co drive the memories out of his mind) is used commonly. Ocher measures include washing out the subject's mouth with dirty water; putting partly chewed
food into the child's mouth; putting a broom on che top of the child's head twice a
week; slapping the child's head gently with the sole of a shoe; and applying amulets
to the child. Burmese parents have much confidence in making the child eat duck
~ggs. Physical beating is a last resort, but happens sometimes. Among Indian subjects known to me, Jasbir Singh, Prakash Varshnay, and Ravi Shankar Gupta were
beaten to suppress their talking about previous lives.
Western parents also sometimes mistreat such children, as happened in the case
of Roberta Morgan.
3. Incidence of Cases In my first book of case reports (Stevenson, 1974b
/1966), I gave some crude estimates about the incidence of cases in several areas
where I have found them abundantly.
.
.
4. Results of Searching for Cases Thailand and Burma are ne1ghbonng countries with many features in common. Nearly all the inhabitants of each are Theravadin Buddhists who believe in rebirth. We might expect, therefore, that the real
incidence of cases in the two countries would be similar; however, the numbers of
. a: great ly m
the two countnes.
I mvesngate

d cas es in Thailand
re pone d cases d irrer
. for
twenty years and during that period learned of only forty-five cases. In Burma~ invest'igace d cases f'or sixteen

years and learne d o f more t h an 500 ca ses there ' cen nmes as
many as in Thailand.
The differences in che incidence of reported cases in Thailand and Burma n~ay
be partly due to the different states of economic development of these .two counmes.
Thailand, al though still counted as an underdeveloped country, IS vastly more
advanced economically than Burma'. In chapter 8 I discuss the possibility that economic development has entailed significant changes in concepts about what Westerners call paranormal phenomena.
.
.
However, I attribute most of the difference between Thailand and Burma 111
the incidence of cases reported to me co the indefatigable acti':'ity of a single ~erson:
the late U Win Maung, my associate in Burma. He had the nme. and, more important, the tireless industry to inquire about the cases through massive correspondence
and numerous visits to Burmese villages. In Thailand severa~ ~ble a~d mterested
Thais have worked on the cases with me when I was able to v1s1t Thailand myself;
but none has had the time or enthusiasm to look for the cases persistently in the
style - perhaps inimitable - of U Win Maung.
. .
U Win Maung's accomplishment was unique in scope, but not 111 kmd. Other

280

NOTES- CHAPTER

associates and subagents also showed how readily cases can be found in Asia by those
who search for them. As another example I can mention the late Ram Singh. He was
a retired employee of the Maharajah of Jhalawar in Rajasthan, India, who became
interested in my research and searched for cases for me in the area where he lived.
From the late 1960s until his death in 1981, he identified many cases for me. He
learned about some of these by reading newspapers; for others he obtained information through his own local network of informants. His endeavors led to my learning about the same number of cases from the small region where he lived as from all
the other parts of Rajasthan combined. His "territory" comprised about one-twentieth of the area of Rajasthan; yet I first learned of seventeen cases from him and (up
to 1984) of only sixteen more from all other informants for cases in Rajasthan.
5. "Fully Developed" Is Not Perfect The features chat make a case "fully
developed" tell us nothing about its evidential value. A case rich in phenomena may
be poor in evidence. What constitutes good evidence I discuss in chapters 6 and 7.
6. Predictions of Reincarnation Among the Tlingit The case of Corliss
Chockin, Jr. (summarized in chapter 4), illustrates both the selection of parents for
the next incarnation and the prediction of birthmarks on the next body of the reincarnating person. The case of William George, Jr., provides another example of both
these features.
7. Predictions of Reincarnation Among the Tibetans Norbu and Turnbull
(1969) provide some information about predictions of rebirth by Tibetan lamas.
The Tibetan cases known to me nearly all have as their subjects lamas who, as
children, spoke about the previous lives of other lamas; I mentioned these subjects,
who are known as tulkus, in chapter 2. They represent a small group among all
Tibetans. They are said to be able, by virtue of their advanced spirituality, to control - at least to some extent - the place and circumstances of their reincarnation.
The predictions made by elderly lamas before they die express their confidence in
this ability. (Cases are said to occur among Tibetan laymen also, but I have learned
of only one such case.)
In my efforts to investigate cases among Tibetan refugees in India, I found the
dispersal of potential informants (some even having remained in Tibet) handicapping; consequently, the Tibetan cases I investigated provide weaker evidence than
those of countries where informants for a case are usually accessible in one or two
communities.
8. Announcing Dreams Reports of the following cases describe announcing
dreams: William George, Jr., ismail Alt1nktl1c;, Cevriye Bayn, Nasir Toksoz, Corliss
Chockin, Jr., Susan Eastland, Ma Tin Aung Myo, Ven. Sayadaw U Sobhana, Maung
Yin Maung, Erkan Kd1c;, Ma Tin Tin Myint, Michael Wright, Samuel Helander, and
Ornuma Sua Ying Yong.
I gave some further information about announcing dreams among the Tlingit
in my 1966 article on their cases.
9. Birthmarks and Birth Defects and Other Biological Features Five of the
cases I summarized in chapter 4 (Corliss Chotkin, Jr., Jennifer Pollock, Susan Eastland, Hanumant Saxena, and Semih TutUffiU) had birthmarks or a birth defect
related to the previous personality.
The summary of these biological features given here is extremely brief; but I
hope i r is sufficient to stimulate readers to consult my monograph on this subject
(Stevenson, 1997a), or at least the shorter Synopsis of the monograph (Stevenson,

Notes- Chapter 5

281

1997b). I do nor believe readers can appreciace che imporcance of chese feacures wichouc scudying che derailed descripcions and phocographs included in chese works.
10. Age of First Speaking About a Previous Life For 693 cases from six culcures che combined age of firsc speaking was chircy-seven months. Complece data
abouc che subjecc's age ac firsc speaking abouc che previous life can be found in Cook,
er al. (1983b) and Scevenson (1983d).
11. Subjects Commenting on Change of Body Size
.Among che children who have commenced on a change in body size or ocher
physical feacures compared wich chose of che previous life are: Marta Lorenz, Michael
Wr~ghc, Sukla Gupca, Parmod Sharma, Vias Rajpal, Ramoo and Rajoo Sharma,
~ah cha Abeyawardena, Ruby Kusuma Silva, Bongkuch Promsin, Rabih Elawar, Dulcma Karasek, and Ven. Chaokhun Rajsuchajarn.
12. Reducing Subjects to Tears by Teasing This minor cruelty was pracciced
on Sukla Gupca and Imad Elawar. Disna Samarasinghe could be made co cry, when
she was a young child, by being called "Babanona" in a ceasing manner. (Babanona
was rhe old lady whose life Disna remembered.) I wicnessed one of Disna's cearful
reaccions co such ceasing myself.
13. Memories of Previous Lives During Dreams and Nightmares Examples
may be found in che cases ofWijanama Kichsiri, Prakash Varshnay, Suleyman Andary,
Salem Andary, Bongkuch Promsin, Cemil Fahrici, and Semih TucumU. (This is an
incomplece lisc.)
14. Forgetting of the Memories I have discussed ac greacer lengch elsewhere the
faccors char seem co me relevanc for judging whether a child has forgotren or continues
to remember a previous life, whacever he may say abouc this himself (Scevenson,
1974b/1966). Girls seem particularly ape co conceal any residual memories they may
have in rheir reens; it is one thing for a three-year-old girl to talk about her husband
a.nd he~ wish to see him, quite another for a fifteen-year-old girl co do so. Sukla Gupta
(m India) was a girl who "went underground" when, after puberty, it embarrassed her
to talk about having a husband, something she had talked about freely wich an7o.ne '~ho
would listen when she had been a young child. Some subjects insightfully distinguish
b.etween their original memories, which they may have largely forgotten, and memones of what ochers have said they said abouc the previous life when they we.re young.
15. Reduction of Tension in the Subject After Meeting the Previous Family The almost sudden subsidence of tension in the child following the firsc meeting with the family of the previous life somewhat resembles the relief sometimes
experienced by a patient with a severe neurosis, such as a phobia, when he remembers the traumatic event char caused it. When the patient brings the forgotten event
into consciousness, he can associate ir with ocher, lacer experiences, which process
neutralizes ics noxious influence. Scrong emotion occurs during rhe b~eaking dow.n
of the dissociation (the isolation of different memories within the mind), but this
emotion is an accompaniment of che recovery of the forgotten memory, not itse.lf a
factor in the healing process (Davis, 1958; McDougall, 1926; Marks, 1978). Smith,
Hain, and Stevenson (1970) provide further references and a discussion of this important topic. The meeting of a child with the previous personality's family may contribute to the breaking down of dissociations and the integration of rhe me~orie~ of
the previous life with the remainder of the child's personality. If the meetmg stlmulates additional memories, as such meetings often do, chis may further accelerate
the process of integration.

282

NOTES-CHAPTER

16. Factors in the Amnesia of Childhood Memories Dara abour rhe different
ages of forgerring in solved and unsolved cases can be found in Cook et al. ~1983b).
Mere passage of time does not cause memories ro fade. They become inaccessible through rhe interfering effect of larer experiences. Readers interesred in learning more abour some facrors concerned in rhe fading of memories may find helpful
a discussion of rhis ropic and references ro relevant research rhar I published elsewhere (Stevenson, 1975a, pp. 25-29). Parkin (1987) and Baddeley (1998) provided
more recent reviews.
17. Fading of Imaged Memories and the Development of Language Earlier authors have described two rypes of cognirive memories. Koestler (1969) referred
ro "the 'vivid fragment' or 'picture-scrip' type of memory," which he distinguished
from rhe "abstracrive" rype. The larrer rype requires language. Tulving (1972) referred
ro these same types of memory as "episodic" and "semantic." (Bergson [1959/1896]
made the same disrincrion earlier.) I have subsumed both these types under what I
call "imaged memories," in order ro distinguish them from "behavioral memories,"
which I defined in chapter 1.
Richardson (1969) in his srudy of imagery wrote: "As we grow ro adulthood in
a modern industrialized society it is ro be expected that verbal modes of encoding
experience will take precedence over the imagery modes of early childhood" (p. 137).
The same process occurs in nonindustrial societies, alrhough perhaps more slowly.
18. Clustering of Memories Around Death and Events Preceding It An
occasional subject has a memory of an event chat happened many years before the
previous personality's death. Examination shows chat memories of this kind usually
derive from events that are associated with strong emotion, such as a wedding gift
or a physical injury. I have given examples in the reports of che cases of Kumkum
Verma and Lalirha Abeyawardena.
19. Proper Names in Sri Lanka I have discussed this ropic more fully in the
Introduction to my book on the cases in Sri Lanka (Stevenson, 1977a).
20. Experiences with Sages Between Death and Presumed Reincarnation
I have given further information abou the sages whom some subjects say they
encountered in the discarnate realm in my book reporting cases in Thailand and
Burma (Stevenson, 1983a).
21. Spontaneous Recognitions Ocher examples occurred in the cases of Ratana
Wongsombar, Cevriye Bayn, Nasir Toksoz, Jasbir Singh, Imad Elawar, MomlZer
Ha'idar, Rabih Elawar, Maung Aye Kyaw, and Nccip Onli.itaktran.
22. Different Responses of Subjects to Different Members of the Previous
Personality's Family Additional examples of how the subject adopts arrirudes
coward members of che previous family char correspond ro rhe attitudes the previous personality showed toward the same persons can be found in rhe cases of Lalirha
Abeyawardena, Disna Samarasinghe, Pushpa, and Gamini Jayasena.
23. Acceptance of Subjects by the families of the Previous Personalities
Examples of families of previous personalities showing complete acceptance and support for subjects may be found in the cases of Swam Iara Mishra, Rabih Elawar, Ram
Prakash, Chanai Choomalaiwong, and lndika Ishwara.
24. Rejection of the Subject by the Previous Personality's Family Examples may be found in the cases of Dolon Champa Mirra and Sunil Durr Saxena. In
both rhese cases the previous families were wealthy and probably feared chat the subject's family would expect, or even demand, subsidies on his behalf.

Notes- Chapter 5

283

25. Phobias Expressed Before the Development of Speech Another example occurred in the case of Sujith Lakmal Jayarame (Sri Lanka). He, too, showed a
phobia of the police and also one of trucks before he had begun to speak about rhe
previous life. The previous personality in his case had been an illegal distiller of alcoh?l who had had many unpleasant encounrers with the police; and he had been
killed by a speeding truck.
26. Cases with Marked Differences in the Socioeconomic Classes of the
~a~ilies Concerned I have described other subjects who remembered a previous
h~e In a family of higher socioeconomic class, and who showed corresponding snobbish behavior, in my reports of the cases of Jasbir Singh, Veer Singh, lndika Gunerame, and Jagdish Chandra .
.Di~na Samarasinghe is another example of a subject who remembered a previous life In a family of a lower socioeconomic class than that of her own.
27. Adult Attitude Suleyman Andary, Kumkum Verma, Hair Kam Kanya,
Bongkuch Promsin, Thiang San Kla, and Ven. Chaokhun Rajsurhajarn are among
the subjects who showed such adult arcirudes.
28. Cases of the Sex-Change Type Other examples of children who remember.previous lives as members of the opposite sex will be found in rhe cases of Gn~
natille~a Baddewithana, Paulo Lorenz, Ruby Kusuma Silva, Ampan Petcherat, ~m
Ma Gyi, Tin Hla, Sivanrhie and Sheromie Hettiaratchi, Dulcina Karasek, and Mymt
Myint Zaw. (The cases with this feature are too numerous to lisr fully; I consider
the mentioned ones representative.)
1
29. Interval Between Previous Personality's Death and Subject's Birth
have published some of these data elsewhere (Stevenson, 1986).
30. Measures Taken to Suppress Cases in India I have derived these figures
from the doctoral thesis of Dr. Sarwanr Pasricha (National lnstirute of Mental .Healt~
and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India, 1978). Dr. Pasricha published her data m 199
(Pasricha, 1990). She did nor state how many of the mothers and farhers were ~pouses
of a p arenr w l10 a lso f urnished

.
. a b out measures o fs Lippression. Ir 1s clear,
mformanon
however, char suppression of cases is widespread in norrhern India.
.
h"l
c
O
Sex Amencan c 1 .
.
3 1 P ers1stence of Behavior Appropriate 1or ppostte
b h
d
l d
h h
s gender e av10r m
ren w 10 o nor remember previous lives bur w o s ow cros G
h"ldh
d
l
h
b
ome
older R. reen
c 1 oo a so develop sexually in different ways as t ey ec

h
omo(1979) cro ll owed a group of chese children, an d h e f.oun d rha r some became
.
.
.
d l
d .1 heterosexual onenratton.
sexua 1 In yourh and adulthood whereas others eve ope '
.
h
d
I consider aur ennc an
32 X enoglossy The few cases of xenog lossy rh ar
G
h
imporranc arc those of Swarnlata Mishra, Jensen (Srevenson, 1974c), rerc en
(Stevenson, 1976, 1984), and Urtara Huddar.
Dr. Erlen<lur Haraldsson and Godwin Samarararne hav~ reporc~d the cases of
two young children in Sri Lanka who remembered che lives ot Buddh~st monks a1:d

ly recttec.
I stanzas 1n
p a i1, t h e la11gu1ge
of. the ancient Buddhist
Who spontaneous
'
.
scriptures, studied and known by monks. It seems mosr unlikely char the children
had learned these Pali stanzas normally (Haraldsson and Samarar:Hne. 1999~.
33. Inability to Remember Previous Mother Tongue At ~rst .blush. it seems
surprising that a child in India could remember char he was an Englishman. named
Arthur killed in World War I and not remember also how ro speak the English language. (This example is from rhe case ofBajrang B. Saxena [Stevenson 1997a. 1997b).)
The explanation may lie in the different images available for spoken words and for

284

NOTES-CHAPTERS

5, 6

events, such as being killed violently. If I have in my mind an image of a chair, I do

not necessarily at the time think the word "chair," much less speak it our. If I should
be reborn after my death and see a chair, it may seem familiar ro me and in thar sense
I would recognize ir, but this would not necessarily lead me to attach the word
"chair" to the chair rhat I see. If I am reborn in Germany and I seem ro recognize a
chair there, my German parents will probably tell me that the object of my actention is a Strehl, and this might tend to block any tendency that I might have retained
(from my present life) ro call it a chair.
However, nearly all the subjecrs of solved cases remember some words derived
from the previous life. In order for a case ro be solved, the subject must (nearly
always) have remembered specifying names of people and places. Some subjects
remember only a few names, others remember many.
34. Glossophobia In my book reporting cases in Burma and Thailand (Stevenson, 1983a) I discuss the resistance to learning Burmese shown by some Burmese children who remembered previous lives as Japanese soldiers killed in Burma during
World War II. Another example of glossophobia occurred in che case of Nawal Daw
in Lebanon.
35. Cases with Anomalous Dates I have published reports of three cases of
this type: those of Jasbir Singh, Ven. Chaokhun Rajsurhajarn, and (with colleagues)
Sumitra Singh. I plan to publish reports of three more cases of chis group in a future
volume.

Chapter 6: Methods of Research

1. Pythagoras My source is Iamblichus (1965).
2. Apollonius My source is Philostrarus (1912).
3. Case Investigated by Aurangzeb I have a photocopy of the Urdu text of a
report of this case (in an eighteenth-century book) and an English translation of the
passage; but I have not examined the full book from which this report was copied.
It is Khulasat-ut-Tawarikh and written by Munshi Subhan Rai.
4. The Case of Katsugoro Hearn (1897) published translations of the original Japanese documents in the case, which occurred in rhe 1820s. I published a short
summary of the case (Stevenson, 1960).
5. Burmese Cases of the Late Nineteenth Century These were published by
Fielding Hall (1898).
6. Published Reports of Cases Between 1900 and 1960 Of these the most
remarkable are those by Sunderlal (1924) and Sahay (c. 1927). They each published
groups of reports; Sunderlal reported four cases, and Sahay seven. Moreover, each
recognized the imporrance of careful recording of the testimony. Sunderlal reported
one case (char of Prabhu) and Sahay reported two cases (those of Jagdish Chandra
and Bishen Chand Kapoor) in which a written record of what the subject said about
the previous life was made before any attempt was made lo verify his statements.
Gupta, Sharma, and Mathur (1936) published a noteworthy report of the case
of Shanti Devi. They did not record Shanti Devi's statements about the previous life
she remembered before taking her to Mathura, rhe city of the previous life, bur they
constituted themselves a committee (independent of the families concerned) to

Notes- Chapter 6

285

investigate the case, and they published a rather detailed report of it soon after its
development.
In 1957 B. L. Atreya, a scholar of what was then Benares Hindu University, published a short book on parapsychology and included in it an account of the case of
Parmod Sharma. This was one of the first cases that I investigated in India (Stevenson, 1974b/1966).
No history of the early study of cases suggestive of reincarnation can omit mention of Delanne's (1924) remarkable compilation. He gave his book the modest tide
Documents pour servir a l'itude de la reincarnation. It consists largely of an anthology
of reports of cases that he gathered from diverse sources; the reports are therefore of
unequal value. Some snippets from magazines and newspapers are almost worthless,
but Delarme also included in his book longer detailed accounts of some cases, such
as those of Alessandrina Samona and Laure Raynaud. His work, moreover, is much
more than a scrapbook; it includes his own perceptive comments on the cases. It has
never been translated into English and has, so far as I know, influenced no Englishspeaking investigator other than myself; but I am much indebted to it.
7. Forty-four Cases Analyzed in 1960 I summarized and analyzed these cases
in Stevenson (1960).
8. Incidence of Cases in India The survey conducted by Barker and Pasricha
(1979) gave an indication of the prevalence of cases in one region of northern India.
They found a prevalence of two cases per thousand inhabitants.
9. Authenticity of Cases I remind readers of what I wrote in chapter 1 about
the important distinction between authenticity and paranormality. When we say
that a case is authentic, we mean that the accounts of informants, and ocher evidence
we obtain, have provided an adequately accurate description of eve~ts. Ho':"'e:er, a
case can be authentic and yet be lacking in evidence of paranormalicy. This is rhe
situation with many cases in which subject and previous personality belong to the
same family. The informants may be completely reliable persons, and the subject m~y
have made statements about details in che life of the previous personality that he.di~
not learn normally, but since the child was a member of the previous pers?nalicy s
family, he may have had opportunities to learn much about his deceased relauve from
other family members.
10. Methods of Research I published the most detailed account of my methods of investigation in Stevenson (1975a and 1997a).
.
11. Definition of a Firsthand Informant A firsthand informant ts one who
describes what he himself heard or saw directly: he is an eyewitness. If he narrates
only what someone else told him, he is a secondhand witness- in legal terms, a teller
of hearsay - and he is worse than char if he spins out accounts chat he never heard
from anyone.
12. Use of Interpreters Although I do not think chat interpreters significantly
distort the testimony in che cases, I do believe chat the need for one causes an important loss of information. Moreover, this loss is not only in terms of communicated
verbal information; ic occurs also in che inability of even the most experienced interviewer co understand fully a culture ocher than his own - even when he can speak
the language used in chat culture.
13. Belief in Reincarnation Questionnaire (BRQ) L.-V. Thomas (1968)
developed the prototype of this questionnaire and used it in Senegal. Following some
revisions and a trial use of the questionnaire in Turkey (by Reat Bayer and myself),

286

NOTES-CHAPTERS

6, 7

Dr. Sarwant Pasricha improved rhe questionnaire furrher and used ir in India. It has
also been used in Thailand.
14. The Extended Draw-a-Person Test I use rhc modificarion of rhis test
published by Whiraker (1961).
.
.
.
15. Criticisms of the Research Readers inreresred in a thorough d1scuss1on
of rhe criticisms of this research by a person well-informed about it should read
Madock (1990).
16. Quotation from Haraldsson The quorarion occurs in Haraldsson (1997,
p. 334).

Chapter 7: The Analysis and Interpretation of the Cases

1. Accuracy of Written Sources In chaprer 6 I gave some examples of rhe kind
of written sources char I like to locate and use. These documents rend to be more
accurate than oral testimony, because most written records are made and fixed (to
rhe exrenr rhat paper and ink endure) soon afrer the occurrence of the event rhey
record. A wrirren record, however, is no berrer rhan rhe accuracy of the person furnishing the information and chat of the person making the record. One should nor
be awestruck by written records, and rhey should be checked, at least sometimes,
against other evidence. I once found chat a gravesrone had cur into ir an incorrect
year for the death of a previous personality.
2. Direct Observations by Investigators The child sometimes speaks direcrly
to us about his memories. Occasionally also we can observe in the child some of rhe
unusual behavior his parents report. And, very rarely, we have witnessed adequately
conrrol.l~d recognitions by the child. (I described in chapter 5 my own witnessing of
recognmons char Gnanarilleka Baddewirhana and Ma Choe Hnin Hrer made; I also
observed Imad Elawar make several recognitions, alrhough rhe conditions for rhese
were less than perfect.)

3. Eyewitness Testimony The early psychical researchers of rhe lace nineteenth ~ent~ry became aware of rhe limitations of eyewitness testimony and began
to consider m weaknesses some years before psychologists and lawyers did.
. In the early 1970s I reviewed relevant experiments on memory, especially eyewitness memory (Srevenson, 1971, 1975a). Lofrus (1979) and Baddeley (1998) publishe.d more recenr reviews of rhis subject. Here I will mention several perrinenr
studies. t:iarshall, a lawyer, conducted careful experiments on eyewitness resrimony
and published a balanced appraisal of rhe results (Marshall, 1969). Rollo (1967) analyzed the relevance of wirnesses' mistakes about details ro judgments concerning
rheir reliabiliry in general.
The subjecrs of typical experiments in eyewitness testimony are students, and
in many of the experiments, such as chose in which they see the event ro be remembered on projected slides or moving picrures, they surely have little incentive ro
remember anything, let alone details. A report by Yuille and Cutshall (1986) of eyewimcss testimony by bystanders who observed a real evenr - a shoot-out berween a
thief and his victim on a street - showed that memories for such events can be highly
accurate, even over several months.
4. Unsolved Cases My associates and I have published summary reports of
seven unsolved cases, including accounts of our futile efforts in rhese cases ro find a

Notes- Chapter 7

287

deceased person corresponding to the subject's statements (Cook et al., 1983a, 1983b).
I have published derailed reports of other unsolved cases, including those of Ranjith
Makalanda (Sri Lanka), Wijanama Kithsiri (Sri Lanka), Ornuma Sua Ying Yong
(Thailand), Ma Tin Aung Myo (Burma), and Duran lncirgoz (Turkey). All the cases
of Burmese children who claim to have been Japanese soldiers or British (or American) airmen killed during World War II remain unsolved.
In a particularly baffling subgroup of unsolved cases the subject gives names
enough - often confidently- but still we can find no one corresponding to his statements. Husam Halibi and Maung Soe Ya were such subjects.
5. Paranormal Information in Unsolved Cases Sometimes subjects of an
unsolved case make statements about events or other details of a place (where they
say they lived) that we do not think they could have learned normally. An example
occurred in the case of Thusari Wijayasinghe (of Sri Lanka) who said that "a god
was burned" in Panadura, where she claimed to have lived. This statement apparently referred to the burning of a Hindu temple and its idol during a communal riot
in 1958. Thusari was not born until 1969, and she lived in Colombo, twenty-five kilometers north of Panadura. She began speaking about the previous life when she was
about two years old. It is most unlikely that she would have learned normally about
the burning down of the Hindu temple in Panadura.
6. Fraudulent Cases My associates and I have published reports of three fraudulent cases and four others in which we concluded that the parents and other adult
informants had damagingly deceived themselves (Stevenson, Pasricha, and Samararame, 1988).
Norbu and Turnbull (1969, pp. 235-36) described a fraudulent case in Tibet.
7. Cryptomnesia Critics of these cases and of other cases showing paranormal processes often claim dismissively that they must be instances of cryptomnesia.
Such critics, working from a base of incredulity and having heard a l~trle ab?ut cryptomnesia, apply it abstractly without demonstrating its occurrence m specific.cases.
Few well-investigated instances of cryptomnesia have been reported. My re~iew of
the subject refers to nearly all published instances (Stevenson, 1983b). ~dmmedly,
more cases may occur than are reported, but those who like the explananon of cryptomnesia have some obligation co report more instances of it. . .
I am completely confident that we can exclude cryptomnes1a. m one case: that
of Si.ileyman Zeytun. He was a congenital deaf-mute who, it was said, could not have
heard a cannon fired next to him. Can anyone seriously suggest that he somehow
learned normally about the man of whose life and death he showed knowledge as a
young child?
8. Private Family Affairs Known to Subjects Other examples of private matters known only to family members of which subjects showed knowledg~ occurred
in the cases of ismail Altmkdic;, Maung Yin Maung, Imad Elawar, Rab1h Elawar,
Ratana Wongsombat, and Brijendra Singh. (In citing these examples I have not
restricted myself to long-distance cases; several of the subjects mentioned lived in
the same communities as the previous personalities of their cases.)
9. Cases with Statements Recorded Before the Two Families Had Met In
1975 I published a list of the few (twelve) cases of this type (Stevenson, 1975a). The
list has grown slowly since chen. There were twenty cases on ic in 1987, when che
first edition of chis book was published. In 1999 there were thirty-three cases on the
list.

288

NOTES-CHAPTER

10. Interval Between Main Events of a Case and First Written Record of
It The phrase main events here refers to the period when the two families first met.
The first written record was usually made by my associates or myself, rarely by the
subject's parent or another person. I published a tabulation of this interval for fourteen cases oflndia and Sri Lanka (Stevenson, 1975a, p. 27). The median interval in
these cases was three and a half months. I believe that in later years we have shorcened the average interval further, at least for cases in India and Sri Lanka; but this
is only an impression, and I cannot support it with figures.
11. Negative Attitudes Shown by the Subject's Family Toward the Case
Examples occurred in the cases of Prakash Varshnay, Bajrang B. Saxena, Ravi Shankar
Gupta, Puri Parra, and Jasbir Singh.
Members of a subject's family may adopt different attitudes toward the subject's
statements and unusual behavior; one member may want the case given publicity,
while another wishes the child suppressed. For example, Gopal Gupta's father became
(ultimately) enthusiastic about Gopal's case, but his wife disapproved of the disruption it caused in the family life and in Gopal's schooling.
12. Negative Attitudes Shown by the Family of the Previous Personality
Toward the Case Examples occurred in the cases of Sunil Dutt Saxena, Rabih
Elawar, Dolon Champa Mitra, Puri Parra, Lalitha Abeyawardena, ismail Alnnkilu;,
Cevriye Bayn, Si.ileyman Zeyrun (in the beginning only), and Erkan Kdtc;.
13. Paramnesia Barker (Pasricha and Barker, 1981) interpreted the case ofRakesh
Gaur as an instance of paramnesia, but Pasricha did not agree with him, and it is not
a straightforward example of the process. For a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of paramnesia as an explanation for this case, readers should examine the report
by Pasricha and Barker and a further report about the case by Pasricha (1983).
The sociopsychological hypothesis supposes that we can explain the cases normally with a combination of cultural influences and faulty memories on the part of
the informants (Brody, 1979; Chari, 1962; Schouten and Stevenson, 1998).
14. Interval Between Previous Personality's Death and Subject's Birth I
have published elsewhere (Stevenson, 1986) the median interval between the death
of the concerned previous personality and the subject's birth for series of cases from
ten different cultures. This interval ranged from four to 141 months.
15. Genetic Memory of Another Person's Death One of my associates has
suggested that the children born before a parent's death would know the details of
that death and could, from that knowledge, transmit information about it genetically to their descendants. Because, for the purposes of this discussion, we are allowin? char ~n!. imaged memories might be transmitted generically, we cannot exclude
this poss1bil1ty. The suggestion does not, however, take adequate account of the
strong emotion that often accompanies the subject's narrations of the previous personality's death. I doubt whether we can ever experience another person's death as
we experience our own, and it is precisely the personal experience of dying oneself,
not someone else's dying, that the subject seems co be communicating.
16. Extrasensory Perception on the Part of Subjects Subjects who did
demonstrate some slight evidence of extrasensory perception include Gnanatilleka
Baddewithana, Shamlinie Prema, Ratana Wongsombac, Nirankar Bhatnagar, and
Oulcina Karasek.
Braude (1992) strongly favored extrasensory perception of an extraordinary kind
("super-psi") as the best explanation for the cases.

Notes-Chapter 7

289

17. The Syndrome of Behavioral Traits in a Subject I have here condensed

arguments that I developed at greater length elsewhere (Stevenson, 1980). Hodgson
{1897-98) used similar arguments in showing why he believed that the communicator G. P. through the medium Mrs. Leonora Piper could not have been built up
by telepathy between Mrs. Piper and her sitters.
18. Possession as an Interpretation for Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation
This interpretation for ostensible memories of a previous life dates at least from Swedenborg (1906/1758) and has had numerous advocates since.
19. The Flaw in Every Case Even a case that I considered one of the strongest
ever recorded has been assailed by an otherwise sympathetic critic (Nicol, 1976). I
refer to the case of Jagdish Chandra, whose father, K. K. N. Sahay {a lawyer), recorded
the main statements Jagdish Chandra made about the previous life he remembered
before he (K. K. N. Sahay) took steps to have these statements verified by ocher, independent persons. Jagdish Chandra's family lived in Bareilly, whereas the family of rhe
previous personality lived in Benares {now Varanasi), almost at the other end of rhe
same state. The distance between rhe two families concerned- about 500 kilometers - was far greater than that of most cases, and the families were additionally separated by differences of caste, an extremely important feature of Indian life during
the 1920s when this case developed.
Jagdish Chandra's father stated in his report of the case char he had "no friends
or relatives at Benares" (Sahay, c. 1927). Later in the same report, however, he mentioned that when he went to Benares co complete the verification of his son's statements, he stayed with a cousin. Nicol considered this discrepancy a lie, and he
thought that K. K. N. Sahay might have obtained information about a family in
Benares through the cousin and then coached Jagdish Chandra to make statements
about a previous life based on this information. I believe this appraisal is unjust. The
cousin in Benares had died by che rime K. K. N. Sahay :vent there ~w,ith Jagdish
Chandra) to verify his son's statements, and they stayed with the cousm s husband,
who was still living. K. K. N. Sahay might not have considered his cou~in's husban~
a "relative" or "friend." I regret char he did not furnish fuller inform~non ~bou.r his
connection in Benares through his cousin's family, bur I do not consider his failure
to do this a fatal flaw in the case. Knowing members of this family as well as I .have
(although I never met K. K. N. Sahay, who had died before I first .went to India), I
think it highly unlikely rhac he would have staged a hoax and then mcluded a report
of it along with six other cases that he claimed to have invesrigared. I am aware ~hat
personal impressions about the honesty and reliability of informants count for lmle
in the minds of some critics; but an informant's good reputation should have due
weight in appraising a case.
.
.
.
20. Finding More Cases with Written Records Before Verification Despite
the difficulty of reaching the cases before the two families ~oncerned have 1:1et, w_e
have had some success in recent years. My colleagues, associates, and I have mvesngated ten cases of this group since the publication of che first edition of this book;
seven of these were in Sri Lanka and chree in India. With Godwin Samararacne I
have published reports of three of chem (Stevenson and Samararacne, 1988a; Stevenson and Samararatne, 1988b). Dr. Erlendur Haraldsson has reported another three
cases of the group, all in Sri Lanka (Haraldsson, 1991; Mills, Haraldsson, and Keil,
1994). Two other cases, one in Turkey and one in Sri Lanka, are still under investigation.

290

NOTES-CHAPTER

With a larger team of investigators we could deploy more persons in the field
and would learn about more cases at early stages of their development and before the
two families had met. I know of several long-distance cases in Sri Lanka and India
in which journalists and local persons interested in the case arrived on the scene first
and, without stopping to make a written record of what the subject had been saying, rushed him to the other family. They thus obtained a good newspaper story bur
lost a case of great potential value for chis research.
We have made some effort in Sri Lanka co enlist the cooperation of journalists
in educating parents (as well as other journalists) about the value of the careful
recording of the details of the case. However, the parents of a subject have their own
priorities. I have already mentioned that, if they do not wish co suppress the case
outright, they usually yield co the demands of the child or co their own curiosity and
try to find a family corresponding to the child's statements. Once when I was in a
small town in India studying a case, I was just about ro leave the town (and had to
do so) when I learned of a case of rhis type (in which the two families had nor yer
met). I had rime only to make a few notes and pledge the child's father nor to cake
him ro the ocher town, where the child said he had lived before, until I could return.
The child's father agreed. Unfortunately, this family lived in a somewhat inaccessible pare of India, and it was two years before I could get back co this town. When I
finally did return, I learned chat the child's father had thought I was not coming back,
and he had taken the child co the other town, where they had met the previous family.
21. Cases for Which Reincarnation Seems the Best Interpretation I would
include in such a list all the cases with rhe rwo families previously unknown co each
other and for which a written record was made of the child's statements before they
were verified. I would include the two cases of (proven) monozygotic twins each of
whom had some memories of a previous life and showed corresponding unusual
behavior. I would also include all rhe cases, now fifty (including Dr. Satwant Pasricha's cases), in which a medical record showed a close correspondence between a
subject's birthmarks or birth defects and wounds on the concerned previous personality.

22. "More Details" The quotation is from Stendhal (1926, 4:169).

23. Concurrent Testimony of Different Witnesses The quotations from
Whately (1858) are from pages 88 and 96-97.
24. The Faggot Metaphor of the Strength of Numbers of Cases I claim no
originality for the application of Wharely's principle ro the study of large series of
investigated cases in psychical research. Gurney, Myers, and Podmore (1886) applied
it in the earliest period of scientific work in chis field. Harr er al. (1956) made a particularly valuable contribution co the methodology of studying large numbers of
cases - apparitions, in his work - for recurrent features.
25. The Concept of a Type Much progress in medicine has depended on the
identification of types or syndromes. These are groupings of diverse symptoms and
signs char occur together in a pacienr and have a common pathological cause (Hoehne,
1980).
26. Male-Female Ratio of Subjects and Previous Personalities The data for
all rhe subjects are from an unpublished analysis, although I have published figures
from smaller series. I published some data for the sex of previous personalities in
Stevenson (1980).

Notes-Chapter 7

291

The single excepcion mencioned occurred in che sexes of che subjeccs in Sri
Lanka, where rhe numbers of males and females were almosc equal.
27. Incidence of Violent Death in Cases These daca have been published in
Cook er al. (1983b) and also (for a slighcly smaller series) in Scevenson (1980).
28. Violent Death: Artifact of Reporting or Natural Phenomenon? Dara for
rhe larger series of Indian cases have been published in Cook et al. (1983b); chose
from the smaller (survey) series have been published in Barker and Pasricha (1979).
Dara for rhe incidence of violenc death in the general population oflndia derive
from only cwo scares of India: Maharashcra and Rajaschan (United Nations, 1971).
Ir is unlikely, however, char accurate figures for che entire country would deviace
markedly from the figure of approximacely 7 percent derived from these two states.
The survey informancs were asked co remember any case of which they had heard
ac any rime. They may have cended co remember cases with violent deaths more than
chose wich natural ones. This may have led co some bias in the reporting of these
cases also. Two faccors would have reduced such a bias. First, the informants were
asked co search cheir memories for any case chey could remember; such a "forced
remembering" should have been more comprehensive in its coverage than rhe casual
reporting of cases informancs happened co remember chat occurred in the larger
series. Second, che survey area was rescricced geographically, and the identified subject had co be living in one of the survey villages at the time his case was reported.
This excluded cases of which the news had traveled from faraway places because of
a sensational feature, such as a violent death of a prominent person.
My associates and I conducted an analysis of the reporting of apparicional cases
included in Phantasms of the Living (Gurney, Myers, and Podmore, 1886) char bears
on rhe poinc I am discussing here. We compared cases with and wichour violent death
of the appearing person with regard co rhe interval of rime between the occurrence
of the apparition and its lacer reporting. We found char for cases older than five years
before they were reported, those having violent death were reported more often than
chose wirh natural deach; but for cases reported within five years of their occurrence,
rhere was no difference between che groups. This result (nor previouslr published)
suggests char apparirional cases having sensational elements, such as a v10lent death,
rend co be fixed in memory (and passed along perhaps from one informant to another)
more than cases with nacural death. However, investigators learning about cases
within five years of their occurrence would not find this difference, nor does the
difference found among cases reported more than five years after their occurrence
accounc for all the high incidence of violent death among them.
.
.
I do not know co what extent we can extrapolate the just-mennoned analysis
of apparitional cases ro those of the reincarnation type. We must investigate further
the reasons why violent death figures so prominently in both t~p~s o~ cases. T~1e evidence I have adduced in chis note (and in the associated rext) 1s 111d1rect and mconclusive; iris, however, suggestive chat violent death is a genuine feature of many cases,
not a contamination from our present ways of learning about them. If so, this feature is important, and I feel justified in presenting the imperfect evidence we have
instead of waiting until we have better evidence.
29. Data from Unsolved Cases The data of chis section were published in
Cook er al. (1983a, 1983b).
30. Lack of a Model to Guide Informants About Features of a Standard
Case An exceprion ro this occurs in che widespread belief that violent death figures

292

NOTES-CHAPTERS 7, 8

prominently in che cases. Informants from many different cou_ncries hold chis ~elief,
hue I do nor understand how ic became so widely adopced. Smee, however, v10lenc
deach does occur in almosc two-chirds of all cases, a person given to making generalizations quickly mighc easily conclude, from hearing of only cwo or chree cases, that
violence played an important pare in many or all of them.
In a scudy of a small number of cases in norchern India, Dr. Pasricha learned
char information about a case, wich a few exceptions, traveled co outside informants
no farther than twenty-five kilometers from where the case had occurred (Pasricha,
1992).

Chapter 8: Variations in the Cases of Different Cultures

1. Outcome in Schizophrenia Better in Underdeveloped Countries Waxler
(1979) summarized pertinent data char supporc this sratemenc.
2. Causes of Illness Other Than Chance
Although I. M. Lewis's (1989) book on ecstatic religion is not primarily about
ideas concerning causes of illness, he discusses some of che personal causes I have mentioned.
3. Need for a Conceptual Frame to Explain Memories of a Previous Life
In chapter 2 I suggested char che belief in reincarnacion had probably arisen in
different places ac different rimes by someone's having imaged memories of another
life, which he interpreted wich the idea of reincarnacion. Here I am suggesting chat
one may sometimes need the idea of reincarnation before one can make sense of any
memories of a previous life char one happens to have. I do nor think these suggestions are incompacible. I think a belief in reincarnation, carried over as an intuition
from a previous life, would help to make more intelligible imaged memories chat were
also carried over. A person might, however, interpret che imaged memories as evidence of reincarnation without a prior belief in it. In a few (Western) cases the subject as a child had apparent imaged memories of a previous life chat at first he could
not understand. The beliefs of his family did nor provide the frame of reincarnation
to which the child might have attached his seeming memories. Nevertheless, and
before having read anything about reincarnation, the child had concluded that he
must have lived before. (The case of Alice Robertson, which I described in chapter 3, is an example of this development.) I am not saying chat these subjects were
necessarily right in the conclusion they reached, and I think some of them were
almost certainly wrong; I am only trying to describe how apparent memories of previous lives may react with a person's concepts about the world and his own nature.
4. Relationship on the Mother's Side in Same-Family Cases Among the
Tlingit I have given further information about this in my arcicle on the Tlingit
cases (Stevenson, 1966). The number ofTlingit cases investigated has increased considerably since the analysis included in chat article.
5. Relationship on the Father's Side in Same-Family Cases Among the Igbo
Furcher information will be found in Stevenson (1985, 1986).
6. Forgetting of Announcing Dreams in Sri Lanka Failure of the dreamer
to recognize the person appearing in the dream cannot be the complete explanation
for the rareness of announcing dreams in Sri Lanka. The announcing dreams of all
countries are usually described as vivid, and they seem ro be strongly memorable even

Notes-Chapter 8

293

when the deceased person in the dream is a stranger to the dreamer. I should expect,
therefore, char we would have more reports of announcing dreams from Sri Lanka,
~f more occurred there than I believe do, even though the deceased persons figuring
in chem were usually strangers co the dreamer.
7. Announcing Dreams Among the Druses I have described a few announcing dreams among the Druses (Stevenson, 1980). Two of these had a precognitive
aspect. In them, a man still living (and considered in good health) was seen by the
dreamer to be born as the son of a pregnant woman; the man then unexpectedly died,
just at the time the woman gave birth to her baby. The dreams thus accorded with
the Druse belief in instantaneous rebirth after death.
8. Interval Between Previous Personality's Death and Subject's Birth See
also chapter 7, note 14.
9. Jain Expectation of Nine-Month Interval Between Death and Birth A
case that does fit the Jains' expectations is that of Rajul Shah. Moreover, che previous personality of this case was traced because Rajul's family confidently applied the
Jain formula. Rajul stared che given name, Gica, of the previous life and the town,
Junagadh, where she said she had lived. Members of her family sent a representative
to Junagadh. He examined there the Municipal Registry of Deaths of the period nine
months prior co Rajul's birch. For the month in question the registry listed a Gita,
and from the other information available the family representative learned the name
of chis Gita's father and traced him. The family thus located then verified Rajul's other
statements about the previous life.
In the case of Ram Prakash the previous personality was a Jain, although Ram
Prakash was a Hindu of the Thakur caste. In this case also, che interval between death
and presumed rebirth was said to be exactly nine months, but I am not so confident
of the dace of Ram Prakash's birth as I am of Rajul's.
10. Memories of the Previous Personality's Funeral or Burial Examples
occurred in the cases of Disna Samarasinghe, Ven. Chaokhun Rajsuthajarn, Erkan
Ktl1<;, and Della! Beyaz.
.
11. Memories of Events Occurring Just Before the Subject's Conceptto~
Examples occurred in the cases of Bongkuch Promsin, Maung Aye Kyaw, and Pun
Parra.
12. Memories of a Discarnate Realm Examples occurred in the cases of Disna
Samarasinghe, Ven. Sayadaw U Sobhana, Ven. Chaokhun Rajsuchajarn, and Nam
Toksoz. Disna Samarasinghe provided an exception to the usual absence of such experiences among the cases of Sri Lanka.
13. Rebirth of Humans as Nonhuman Animals The Tlingit (and some other
peoples) believe that humans can sometimes be transformed into nonhuman animals,
and perhaps back again, as in the Western fairy-tale of the prin.ce ;'ho .was tur~ed
into a frog, but this belief should not be confused with the belief m reincarnation
as nonhuman animals.
The few cases known to me in which a subject has claimed to have had a previous life as a nonhuman animal have included (for obvious reasons) almost nothing that we can consider verifiable evidence of reincarnation. A girl of Burma, Ma
Than Than Aye, recalled in considerable detail the life of a Buddhist nun who had
died some years before the subject was born. Her memories of this life had verified
details, and che subject, as a child, showed a remarkably precocious piety chat
accorded with the life she remembered. She also said that between the nun's death

294

NOTES-CHAPTER

and her birch she had had an intermediate life as an ox, which had been killed by a
bomb during rhe Japanese occupation of Burma in World War II. The life as an ox
was completely unverifiable.
. .
14. Sex-Change Cases Among the Tlingit My comments abour rhe InJUncrion against sex change from one life ro another and rhe absence of sex-cha~ge. cases
apply ro the Tlingit of rhe sourheasrern (panhandle) part of Alaska. The Tlmgn farther north ac Yakucac believe rhar sex change is possible, and De Laguna (1972) mentioned cases of rhe sex-change type among chem. Ocher rribes still farther norch (for
example, the Athabaskan and che lnuir) believe in the possibili ry of sex change, and
rhey have cases of rhe sex-change type, bur none of rhe coastal tribes farcher sourh
(in northwestern Norch America) believe in the possibility of sex change or have cases
of the sex-change type. The line of demarcation runs at about 60 degrees north of
rhe equator. So far as I can cell, rhe demarcation - with regard ro the belief in the
possibility of sex change - is as crenchanrly separating as the line (Wallace's line)
between Bali and Lombok, which divides the fauna of Australasia from char of rhe
lands of Asia co the wesc of it.
De Laguna (1972) plausibly suggested chat the Yakurar Tlingir, who are a coastal
people, derived rheir belief in the possibility of sex change from the people of the
incerior, the Athabaskan. This would mean char che Athabaskan, who believe char
one can change sex from one life to another, had infected the Yakutat Tlingit with
chis idea; then after a rime claims of actual sex change would have appeared among
che persuaded Tlingit.
15. Lopsided Ratio of Male-to-Female Compared with Female-to-Male
C:ases of the Sex-Change Type The exceptional cul cure is char of rhe Igbo of Nigeria.

We have in Burma, bur not in any ocher country, a sufficient number of cases
of the sex-change type to permit at least initial probing for an explanation of chis
lopsided rario. I have published elsewhere figures and a discussion of the analysis of
sevenry-five cases of the sex-change type in Burma (Stevenson, 1983a).
Perhaps Burmese boys are more reluctanr to cell about a previous life as a woman
rhan girls are to describe a previous life as a man. This would make the uneven ratio
of the two types of cases at least in pan an artifact of our presenr methods of learning about cases. Bur ocher incerprerarions have merit also. In Burma, as in most cultures, it is thought better to be born a man than ro be born a woman; the Burmese
regard rebirth as a woman (after one has been a man in rhe previous life) as a serious demotion. If reincarnation occurs, a man who had died and reincarnated in a
girl's body might experience a shock on realizing char chis had happened. The shock
could srimulare additional memories of a previous life.
Ir is also possible that men's lives - through their greater variety and adventurousness of experiences - may be more memorable than women's lives. I rested chis conjecture on one of my female associares, and she rejected it summarily. She poinred our
char women have jusr as many memorable experiences as men and some char men cannot have, such as giving birch to a child. Ir remains true, however, char there are nearly
rwice as many males as females among rhe previous personalities of the cases, of both
rhe sex-change type and rhe same-sex rype. I shall discuss chis furrher in chapter 10.
16. Premortem Beliefs Become Postmortem Conditions This is nor an original idea with me. It is explicitly taught in rhe Tibetan Book ofthe Derzd (Evans-Wentz,
1969/1927).

Notes- Chapter 9

295

Chapter 9: The Explanatory Value of the Idea ofReincarnation

1. Phobias of Infancy and Early Childhood The following additional subjects had both verified memories and phobias in infancy and early childhood:
Sleimann Bouhamzy, lmad Elawar, Sujith Lakmal Jayaratne (motor vehicles); Shamlinie Prema, Ruby Kusuma Silva (water); Ven. Som Pit (bladed weapons); Erkan Kilter,
Maung Sein Win (airplanes); Parmod Sharma (curd or yogurt); and Maung Myint
Soe (water). In all these cases except that of lmad Elawar, the phobic object figured
prominently as the means in the death of the related previous personality.
2. The Case of Little Hans Wolpe and Rachman (1960) drew accention to Lierle Hans's traumatic experiences with horses, and they severely criticized Freud's
(1950/1909) otiose symbolic interpretation of che child's phobia.
The case of Little Hans has a straio-htforward explanation and nothing to do
with reincarnation. I mention it here, ho~vever, to illustrate how che search for symbolic meanings in phobias may distract attention from evidence of a directly responsible trauma, including, perhaps, one occurring in a previous life.
3. Childhood Phobia of Water in Australia The study was reported by Menzies and Clarke (1993).
4. Expressions of Adult Vocation Shown in Childhood Derails of rhe examples I have cited can be found in the following sources.
George Frideric Handel
Flower (1923)
Deutsch (1955)
G. K. Lewis (c. 1910)
Elizabeth Fry
Woodham-Smith (1950)
florence Nightingale
Schliemann (1881)
Heinrich Schliemann
Hartleben (1906)
Jean-Franc;ois Champollion
Chadwick (1967)
Michael Ventris
Raymond of Capua (1980)
Sr. Catherine of Siena
Gardner (1907)
Drane (1880)
b
5. Unusual Interests Expressed in Early Childhood Ocher exa.mples. of su .jeers who showed during early childhood interests char were unusual. m their ~ami
lies may be found in the cases of Gnanatilleka Baddewichana, Hair K~m Kanya
(incerest in religion); Daniel Jirdi, Ramesh Sukla (interest in moror vehicles): and
Kumkum Verma (interest in snakes).
.
.
d
6. Thieving Habits Examples occurred in the cases of Maung Tm Wm an
Maung Than Hcay.
.
7. Unusual Aptitudes and Untaught Skills Ocher subiecrs who s~?wed
unusual aptitudes or untaught skills early in child~o.od are: Paulo Lorenz (ability to
work a sewing machine); Bishen Chand Kapoor (abd1ty to play rablas, a type 0 ~ dru_m
used in India); Disna Samarasinghe (ability to cook rice and to weave rhacchrng for
roofs); and Swarnlata Mishra (ability to perform Bengali songs and dances).
8. Child Prodigies in India I have received reports of several musical prodigies in India, bur have never investigated the claims of any of them. None, so far as
I know, has claimed ro derive his musical skill from a remembered previous life.
9. Addictions Subjects who showed in childhood appetites for addicting drugs
and intoxicants included: Bishen Chand Kapoor, Maung Myint Tin, Ramesh Sukla,
Ronald Mapatunage, Sujith Lakmal Jayaratne (alcohol); Sanjeev Sharma, Sunil Dutt

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Saxena (tobacco); Jagdish Chandra, Om Prakash Mathur (derivatives of cannabis).

1O. Temperament Porter and Collins (1982) edited a review of research on this
subject. Ocher sources are Kagan (1994), Thomas and Chess (1977), and A. Thomas
(1981).
11. Precocious Sexuality Ocher examples of precocious sexuality occurred in
the cases of I mad Elawar and Necip Onllita~kiran. Another subject, Bishen Chanda
Kapoor, wished, in young adulthood, to resume the pleasure the previous personality of his case had had with his mistress, Padma.
The "latent period" of sexuality that Freud (1938) described coincides in the
age of its beginning that he claimed for it with the usual age of che forgetting of previous lives by rhe children I have studied. Perhaps in the concept of che "latent
period" Freud had a glimpse of some larger truth; a pare is often seen before the
whole.
12. Gender-Identity Confusion Examples of sex-change cases whose subjects
showed some degree of gender-identity confusion are those of Paulo Lorenz, Gnanacilleka Baddewithana, Ampan Percherat, Dolon Champa Mirra, Ruby Kusuma
Silva, Ma Tin Aung Myo, Erin Jackson, Rani Saxena, Ma Khin Ma Gyi, Tin Hla,
Dulcina Karasek, and Myint Myint Zaw.
13. Biological Explanations of Gender-Identity Dysphoria Baker and
Stoller (1968) showed rhac although a biological factor (such as Klinefelrer's syndrome) may occur in some cases, ir does nor occur in others.
14. Lack of Evidence of Parental Influence as a Cause of Gender-Identity
Dysphoria Zuger (1970) concluded char parental influence could not be adduced
in all cases.
15. Exoneration of Parents by Children with Gender Dysphoria Examples
may be found in the autobiographical accounts of transsexualism written by Martino (1977) and Morris (1974). The mother of such a child added her testimony in
a magazine article (Anonymous, 1973).
16. Identical or One-Egg (Monozygotic) Twins In judging whether rwins are
of the one-egg (identical) or two-egg (fraternal) types, I have usually had to rely on
their physical appearance, especially similarities of their facial features. Occasionally,
informants have known whether there was one placenta or two at delivery, but this
is nor necessarily discriminatory. Sometimes they have reported what a doctor said
about the type of twinship when the twins were born. For six pairs of twins I arranged
for determination of their status - as one-egg or two-egg twins - by examination of
rheir blood groups.
The expression "identical rwins," which is sometimes criticized on orher
grounds, seems particularly inappropriate in rhe present context. Ir almost seems to
imply that in one-egg twins we are concerned with only one person who happens to
have two bodies instead of the usual one body per person. The term thus rends to
encourage emphasis on the similarities between one-egg twins and neglect their
equally important differences.
Phillips (1993) wisely drew arcention to important differences that may occur
in rhe uterine environments of monozygotic (as well as dizygotic) twins.
17. One-Egg Twins Reared Apart A vast literature has developed about investigations of one-egg twins reared apart (compared with one-egg twins reared
rogether). Farber (1981) published a review of such studies. Reports from the studies

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297

of the Finnish twin cohort also deserve attention (Kaprio, 1994; Langinvainio, et al.
1984).
18. Criticisms of Studies of Twins for Genetic Factors in Schizophrenia
Rose, Kamin, and Lewontin (1984) and Cassou, Schiff, and Stewart (1980) have
severely criticized these studies.
In the final section of this chapter I discuss this topic more fully.
19. Discordance for Cleft Lip Between One-Egg and Two-Egg Twins Fraser
(1970) published an extensive review of research on this subject.
20. Discordant Behavior in One-Egg Twins R. Green (1974) reported the
case of (American) one-egg male twins who, at the age of eight, showed markedly
different sexual orientations. The elder twin had developed normally as a boy, but
the younger one showed obviously feminine behavior. This included a preference
for the company of girls rather than boys, dressing like a girl, playing with dolls, and
avoidance of boys' rough games. Because the twins were monozygotic, Green looked
for influences in the twins' environment that could explain their different sexual
behaviors, and he thought that he had found these. He learned that the masculine
twin had been named after their father; the twins' mother thought that perhaps both
twins believed this twin had received his father's name because he was his father's
favorite. On the other hand, the feminine twin developed at the age of three a serious illness (lasting two and a half years) that involved his being with his mother (on
visits to the hospital) while his brother was correspondingly more with their father.
Moreover, during her pregnancy with the twins, the mother had hoped to have a
girl.
The different kinds of associations of the two twins with their parents and the
accompanying attitudes of the parents may account for the twins' disparate sexual
behavior. However, Green's report indicates important differences between the twins
that were observed when they were still infants and before environmental influences
could have had much effect. For example, during infancy the twin who later showed
feminine behavior was easier to hold and cuddle than his brother, and he was often
thought, from his physical appearance, to be a girl. I also think it doubtful that the
close association of the feminine twin with his mother between the ages of three and
five and a half would suffice by itself to account for such marked elements of femi:ine behavior as playing with dolls and cross-dressing. Many boys who ar; raised by
smgle mothers do not show such feminine behavior. I regret that Greens case was
not investigated with consideration of reincarnation as a contributing factor. When
inquiries focus attention on two factors only- in this case genetics and posma.tal
environmental influences - evidence suggesting environmental factors may receive
more weight than it should. In the current Western system of psychiatry, ~bserve~s
of troubled children and their families may exaggerate the importance of slig?t evidence for parental influences because they do not think of any other explananon .. In
countries such as India and Burma observers would appraise the case of the twms
studied by Green differently, as the case of Ma Khin Ma Gyi and Ma Khin Ma Nge
shows. (Ma Khin Ma Gyi and her twin sister were dizygotic, however, and so their
different sexual behaviors require consideration of the genetic factor as well as of postnatal environmental influences and possible previous lives.)
21. Siamese (Conjoined) Twins Chang and Eng were not Siamese, although
they were "discovered" when they were living in Siam (now Thailand), nor were
they the first conjoined twins carefully examined. They are, however, still the most

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NOTES-CHAPTER 9

celebrated, and perhaps we know more about their personalities than about those of
any other conjoined twins. Daniels (1962), Luckhardt (1941), and Newman (1940)
described the differences in the personalities of Chang and Eng.
Smith (1988) described and discussed the marked differences in the personalities of one-egg twins.
22. Child-Parent Relationships Other examples of subjects who rejected their
parenrs and wished co find their "real parents" occurred in the cases of Prakash Varshnay, Ravi Shankar Gupta, Veer Singh, Gamini Jayasena, Warnasiri Adikari, Wijanama
Kithsiri, and Rabih Elawar.
23. Claim by Subject to a Rank Equal or Superior to That of Parents The
cases of Hair Kam Kanya, Ven. Chaokhun Rajsuthajarn, Thiang San Kia, Maung
Yin Maung, and Maung Htay Win exemplify this.
24. Subject Remembering Previous Life as First Spouse of a Parent The
other two illustrative cases are those of Ma Tin Tin Myint and Asha Rani.
25. Animosities Toward Parents Carried Over from Previous Lives I have
secondhand information about two cases in Lebanon in which a child was reported
co have remembered the previous life of a man his father had murdered. In one
instance, the child was said co have kept his father squirming with reproaches for his
crime. The other child adopted a different strategy; he remained silent until he
reached adulthood. Then he obtained a gun, a passport, and a visa. Thus equipped,
he confronted his father with the father's earlier crime, shoe him, and Acd from
Lebanon. Noc surprisingly, both of these cases were closed co my investigation.
26. Apparently Irrational Aggression Ocher subjects who showed vengefulness toward the murderers of che concerned previous personalities include Ravi
Shankar Gupta, Ramoo and Rajoo Sharma, and Semih Turu~mu~.
Subjects who generalized animosities from the previous personality's killer to
an entire group of persons resembling the killer in sect or occupation include Nirankar
Bhatnagar (Moslems), Ravi Shankar Gupta (barbers}, Salem Andary (Bedouins), and
Cemil Fahrici (policemen).
27. "Japanese" Character Traits of Some Burmese Subjects I described some
of these "Japanese" traits in che summary of the case of Ma Tin Aung Myo (chapter
4). In addition to the traits I mentioned there che Burmese subjects who remember
previous lives as Japanese soldiers have also shown che following behaviors: industriousness, insensicivicy co pain, slapping other children's faces (as Japanese soldiers
had done to Burmese villagers who annoyed chem), and desire for strong cea and sweet
foods.
None of these traits are specific for Japanese persons. As a group, however, chey
are much more likely to be found in Japanese people than in Burmese ones, and the
subjects with whom we are concerned here each showed a few or many of these
"Japanese" craics.
28. Abnormal Appetites During Pregnancy Ocher examples of this type of
experience occurred in the cases of Gamini Jayasena, Sujirh Lakmal Jayaratnc, and
Ornuma Sua Ying Yong.
29. Lord Nelson's Adjustment to the Loss of His Right Arm An edition of
Southey's Life ofNelson that I remember from my childhood reading included reproductions of specimens of Nelson's handwriting before and after he lost his right arm.
The loss of his right arm occurred eight years before his death in 1805 (Southey,
1962/1813).

Notes- Chapter 9

299

30. The Uniqueness of the Individual I have deliberarely raken rhe ride of
this subsecrion from Medawar (1957) because I wish ro challenge rhe idea that our
uniqueness derives only from rhe generic insrrucrions for rhe development of our
physical bodies.
31. Syndromes of Unusual Behavior Related to Previous Lives In chapter
5 I mentioned several ocher examples of syndromes or combinarions of unusual
behavior that had occurred in rhe cases of Ma Tin Aung Myo, Sujirh Lakmal
Jayaracne, Shamlinie Prema, and Erkan Kilt~.
32. Excessive Claims Made for Genetics Several biologists have protested
against the excessive claims of genericisrs and rhe hegemony they have imposed on
biology (Goodwin, 1994; Holdrege, 1996; Hubbard and Wald, 1993; Lewontin, 1991;
S. Rose, 1997; Srrohman, 1993).
33. Criticisms of Investigations of Genetic Factors in Schizophrenia Schulsinger (198 5) provided a concise summary of resulrs from adoption srudies in a variety of disorders (including obesiry and schizophrenia) and a bibliography of more
derailed reports; he did not, however, address all criticisms of the merhod. Rose,
Kamin, and Lewonrin (1984) summarize rhese criricisms. Readers wishing to enter
into more derail should consult Cassou, Schiff, and Srewart (1980), Lidz, Blare, and
Cook (1981), and Lidz and Blare (1983). All these aurhors provide references to the
investigations criricized.
One should, however, also study reports of evidence for a generic factor in
schizophrenia (Cannon, et al. 1998; McGuffin, Owen and Farmer, 1995; Schultz and
Andreasen, 1999).
34. The Myth of the Crucial Importance of Early Experiences in the Later
Development of Personality Stone (1954) published one of the firsr criricisms of
srudies of infanr isolarion char were claimed ro show rhe crucial imporrance of such
experiences for lacer personaliry developmenr. In the same year Clarke and_~lar~e
10
(1954) published data that raised questions abour rhe permanence of ~eficm
behavior observed in early childhood. In 1957 I published a paper expressing skep.

h developr1c1sm
a b out rhe primacy of early (compared with later) expenences
10 r e
menr of human personaliry (Stevenson, 1957). In char paper I did no ~1ore than show
rhar rhe assumption of rhe special importance of rhe early years of life lacked support in credible observarions. I did nor pursue rhe subjecr furrher and soon afterward turned to rhe investigations from which this book derives.
Further reports and reviews have been published by Cass and Thomas (1979),
Clarke (1968), Clarke and Clarke (1976) (an anthology of pertinent papers), Kagan
(1998), and A. Thomas (1981).
.
I should emphasize chat rhe harmful effects of severe social seres~ are nor m question, only the idea that such social stress has a more damaging effect m the early years
of life than later.
35. Individual Differences in Newborn Infants Korner (1969, 1971) published descriptions of some individual differences observed in neonates.

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NOTES-CHAPTER 10

Chapter JO: Some Further Questions and Topics Related

to Children Who Remember Previous Lives
1. The Idea of a Splitting of the Soul in Reincarnating R. F. Spencer (1959,
pp. 287-88) described this concept among the Inuit, Norbu and Turnbull (1969)
described it among the Tibetans, and De Laguna (1972) described it among the Tlingit of Yakutat. I have given an account of it among the Haida (Stevenson, 1975b).
Information about duplication or multiple reincarnations among rhe Igbo can
be found in my paper on rhe belief in reincarnation among chem (Stevenson, 1985).
Sometimes informants for cases, especially among the Igbo, cite particular cases
in support of the idea of a splirring of a soul. They have, for example, sometimes
shown me several children, all of whom are said to be the reincarnation of the same
deceased person. Among the Igbo, a deceased person figuring in such a multiple case
seems usually co have been someone of high status, so chat descendants and collateral members of his family would wish him to reincarnate among them. This aspiration may contribute co the idea that the deceased man has reincarnated in several
children. My own examination of a few such cases suggests chat one child may give
stronger evidence of remembering rhe previous life of the deceased person than the
other candidates do. The Igbo seem to accept a child as being a particular person
reincarnated on the basis of much slighter evidence rhan informants in most ocher
cultures require before rhey make such a judgment. Some Igbo cases may develop
from self-deception, like the alleged reincarnations of President John F. Kennedy in
Turkey co which I referred in chapter 7.
The occurrence of mulriple candidates to be the reincarnation of a particular
deceased person leaves unanswered the question of whether souls or minds may, in
fact, duplicate or split. (These are nor the same concepts.)
2. How Many People Have Lived on the Earth? I previously (Stevenson,
1974a) gave several different estimates of the number of people who have lived on
earth and references to original publications of these estimates. In that paper I used
estimates - 600,000 co 1,600,000- for the number of years chat have elapsed since
the first hominids developed chat are lower than those now accepted. Some more
recent estimates place that origin back to between 3,000,000 and 5,000,000 years
ago. Haub (1995) offered the figure of "several million years." His assumptions and
calculations led him to estimate that about 105 billion people have lived on earth
"since the dawn of the human race."
3. Previous Lives as Nonhuman Animals The following additional subjects
are among those claiming to have had intermediate lives as nonhuman animals: Warnasiri Adikari (life as a hare) and Pratomwan lnthanu (vague impression of a life as
a monkey).
4. Violent Death as a Fixative of Memories Numerous experiments by psychologists have shown a relationship between the strength of a stimulus and the size
of the response it evokes. Kupalov and Gantt (1927) reviewed the abundant evidence
for this statement from experiments with conditioned reflexes. Experiments with
aversive stimuli have confirmed the adage that a burnt child dreads fire. Dutta and
Kanungo (1975) observed a clear relationship between the intensity of emotion and
memory.
E. L. Thorndike gave a particularly clear statement of the connection:

Notes-Chapter JO

301

The likelihood that any mental state or act will occur in response to any situation
is in proportion to the frequency, recency, intensity and resulting satisfaction of its
connection with that situation or some part of it and with the total frame of mind
in which the situation is felt [1905, p. 207].
What Thorndike wrote about "intensity and resulting satisfaction" would apply
equally well if the situation evoked "intensity and dissatisfaction," including physical
discomfort and pain. Psychologists have also noted that an intense experience, such as
being involved in a serious accident or surviving an earthquake, may lead to unusually detailed memories (hypermnesia) not only of the event itself but of events in the
hours preceding that event, even though these, by themselves, would not have been considered unusual or particularly memorable (Brown and Kulik, 1977; Colegrove, 1899;
Conway, 1995; Stratton, 1919). It is possible that the fixation of detail in memories of
events that arouse strong emotion occurs, not at the time of the event, but later, and
derives from reviewing the event and attributing to it a significance that it may not
have been given when it occurred. One's own death might be such an event, the
significance of which might seem greater later than at the moment it happened. This
could be equally true of the detailed circumstances attending the death.
An ample tradition from accounts of this life suggests that a violent death may
make a greater impression on the memory than a natural one. Here I am thinking
of Dr. Johnson's remark about the execution of Rev. William Dodd: "When a man
knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully"
(Boswell, 1931/1791, p. 725). Further testimony on this point came from a condemned criminal, who, as he was being led to execution, said: "This is going to be
a great lesson to me." Dostoevsky wrote a moving account of how it felt to be about
to be shot to death (Mochulsky, 1967). His own experience of expecting to be shot
surely influenced the vivid description of a condemned criminal's last th~ughcs char
he included in The Idiot (Dostoevsky, 1914, p. 61). In chis he dwelt pamcularly on
the heightened mental activity of the man about to die:
How strange that criminals seldom swoon at such a moment! On the contrary, ~he
brain is especially active, and works incessantly- probably hard, hard, hard- like
an engine at full pressure. I imagine chat various thoughts must beat loud ~nd fast
through his head - all unfinished ones, and strange, funny thoughts, very li~ely!
like this, for instance: "That man is looking a.r me, and he has a ware on his :orel
head! and the executioner has burst one of his buttons, and the lowest one is al
rusty!" And meanwhile he notices and remembers everything.
The children who remember previous lives have provided apparent confirmation of Dostoevsky's insight into the intensity of perceptions during r.he las~ ~omems
before death, especially one chat is sudden or violent. Events occurnng wi~hm a few
hours or even minutes of death figure frequently in the children's memories.
One subject, Udho Ram (oflndia), recalled that just before a wall collapsed and
killed the person whose life he remembered, a snake had crawled out from the building of which the wall formed part.
Ma Myint Thein, a girl of Burma, recalled a ring, a gold bracelet, and a wristwatch that the man whose life she remembered had worn when he was killed; these
articles would have come within the man's visual field as he held up his hands to ward
off the sword blow that struck off his fingers. The fatal cut followed immediately.

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NOTES-CHAPTER IO

Zouheir Chaar (of Lebanon) recalled a handkerchief held ro her face by an aunt
of rhe previous personaliry who had been in his bedroom and weeping jusr before
he died.
5. Suddenness of Violent Death Improvements in medical care in the Wesc
and rheir widespread deployment have changed che rreatmenr and prolonged che lives
of many persons who would formerly have died suddenly from serious injuries. In
che West coday, cherefore, a person may die from a violent cause wichouc dying suddenly. However, in che countries of Asia where mosc of che cases here considered were
found, modern faciliries and rechniques of medical care are still not available in rhe
villages and also not in many of the towns; in chese places a violent death is usually
also a sudden one.
6. Sudden Death in Other Types of Cases Having Paranormal Processes
A high incidence of death char is sudden, even though natural, has been observed in
ocher types of paranormal cases. In an analysis of a series of apparitional cases char
were first scudied in rhe nineteenth century {Gurney, Myers, and Podmore, 1886), I
found char in 25 percent of rhe cases in which rhe death of the person seen in the
apparition had been natural, it had been sudden, by the definition I have mentioned
(Stevenson, 1982).
Men everywhere seem co dread a sudden death more than a gradual one. The
Turks have a phrase: "May God rake me in duce days." This expresses the hope of
avoiding both inscanraneous death ("dropping dead") and prolonged suffering before
dying. Christians have often feared a sudden death because ic gives no rime co prepare oneself spiritually for dying. The combscone of a New England man (of the midninereenth century) who became entangled in machinery warned passersby that "his
?eat~ w.as sudden and awful." Indeed, an anthology of similarly monitory graveyard
mscnpt10.ns had rhe tide Sudden and Awful (Mann and Greene, 1968). Sudden death
also depnves rhe dying person of che opportunity of taking leave of chose he loves
and leaves behind. (Aldrich (1963) has described che dying patient's grief.) I chink
the intense wish to communicate with loved ones may account for the high incidence
of sudden death among natural-dcach cases figuring in apparitions.
7. Previous Personalities Dying Natural Deaths When Young Examples
o~cu~r~d in the cases of Gnanatilleka Baddewithana, Jagdish Chandra, Rajul Shah,
Gamm1 Jayasena, Veer Singh, Prakash Varshnay, and Praromwan Inrhanu.
8. Previous Personalities Dying Natural Deaths with "Unfinished Business" We could subsume cases with "unfinished business" under the Zeigarnik (1927)
effect, name_d after the psychologist who first studied che tendency we have co remember the derails of an uncompleted task better than we remember chose of a completed
one. A waiter in a German restaurant was the subject of the first informal observations of this effect. He could remember precisely what all the persons he served had
eaten until they paid him, ar which point he promprly forgoc whar rhey had ordered
and eaten.
9. Previous Personalities Dying Natural Deaths Who Left Young Children
Examples occurred in the cases of Sukla Gupta, Lalitha Aheyawardena, Shanti Devi,
and Swarnlata Mishra. The children of Biya (previous personality in the case of
Swarnlata Mishra) were somewhat older rhan chose lefr behind ar rhe deaths of che
previous personalities in the ocher cases.
10. Previous Personalities Dying Natural Deaths with "Continuing Business" Examples occurred in the cases of Parmod Sharma, Suleyman Andary, Sunil

Notes- Chapter 10

303

Dutt Saxena, Erkan KilH;, and Indika Guneratne. The previous personalities of all
these subjects except Suleyman Andary were prosperous or even wealthy and had
more than enough money for ordinary needs. For them the "continuing business"
expressed a need to accumulate still more money and to keep what they had.
11. Desire to Be Reborn Quickly The Buddha caught chat the cause of rebirth
is a craving for the pleasures of a terrestrial incarnation. I am not aware of any statement in the Buddhist canon or oral cradicions of Buddhism char predicts a quicker
reincarnation when the craving for rebirth is scrong chan when it is weak; bur such
a belief could be a corollary of the basic belief char rebirth itself occurs because of
the desire for it.
12. Previous Personalities Belonging to Two or More Subgroups Examples
occurred in the cases of Puri Parra, Cevriye Bayn (violent death with small children
left behind); Gopal Gupta, Erkan K1lic;: (violent death during an active business
career); Ampan Peccherat, Shamlinie Prema, Susan Eastland, Gillian and Jennifer Pollock, Ruby Kusuma Silva (violent death when a child); Faruq Faris Andary, Rabih
Elawar, Michael Wright, and Salem Andary (violent death when under twenty).
13. Mnemonists Not Having Previous Life Memories Reports of mnemonists can be found in Luria (1969), Neisser (1982), and Susukita (1933-34).
14. Previous Personalities Dying Natural Deaths Who Were Unusually
Pious and Philanthropic Ocher examples occurred in the cases of Ma Than Than
Aye, Kumkum Verma, Shanti Devi, Hair Kam Kanya, Ven. Chaokhun Rajsurhajarn,
and Yen. Sayadaw U Sobhana. Haraldsson and Samararame (1999) published reporcs
of three young children in Sri Lanka who remembered the lives of monks and showed
corresponding monklike behavior.
15. Lopsided Ratio of "Demotion" and "Promotion" Cases in India The
cases of Go pal Gupca, Bishen Chand Kapoor, and Sunil Durr Saxena illustrate socioeconomic demotion; chose of Swaran Lara, Kumkum Verma, Judith Krishna, and
Rajul Shah, socioeconomic promotion. These are all subjects of Indian cases. . .
We have studied che promotion and demotion cases mainly in India: Thi~ is
partly because socioeconomic differences are greater in India, where rhe lmgermg
caste system accentuates them, than they are in ocher cultures where the cases occur
frequently, and i c is partly because we have a large sample oflndian cases.
Cases illustrating demotion and promotion do, however, occur in ocher cultures.
In Sri Lanka, for example, Disna Samarasinghe and Anusha Senewardena are su~~
jeers of promotion cases; Indika Guneracne, Wijanama Kirhsiri, and Warnasm
Adikari are subjects of demotion cases.
16. Learning from Memories of a Previous Life Bishen Chand Kapoor said
chat reflecting on rhe life of his previous personality, a wealthy debauch who had murdered a man, had helped him to become a better person. Pan:iod Sha:ma rhoughr
the enlarged perspective provided by remembering a previous life gave !um an a~van
tage in dealing with current troubles chat arose; it made him aware of rhe transience
of fortune and misfortune. These, however, are exceptional instances. Mose of the
children have forgotten cheir memories before they mature enough to become introspective about chem.
17. Subjects Who Have Recalled "Intermediate Lives" Examples occurred
in rhe cases of Pushpa, Swarnlata Mishra, Warnasiri Adikari, Gopal Gupta, Manju
Tripatti, and Imad Elawar.
18. Fading of Memories in Discarnate State "G. P.," a mediumistic

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NOTES-CHAPTER 10

communicator with as good credentials for being a real discarnate mind as any communicator, complained of the fading of his memories with rime (Hodgson, 1897-98,
p. 324).
.
.
The exceptional case of Pratomwan lnthanu may not disprove the imporrance
of the passage of time in the forgetting of memories. The two lives chat she remembered were boch of infants and both had occurred within a few years of Pratomwan's
birth.
19. Previous Personalities Who Remembered Previous Lives Illustrative
cases are those of Bishen Chand Kapoor, Ma Win Shwc, Maung Aung Myint, and
Mounzer Ha"idar.
20. Children Who Remember Lives That Ended in Suicide Examples
occurred in the cases of Marta Lorenz, Ramez Shams, Maung Win Aung, Paulo
Lorenz, Faruq Faris Andary, Navalkishore Yadav, and Cerni! Fahrici.
21. The Pain of a New Idea The quotation is from Bagehot (1873, p. 163).
22. Familiarity a Requirement for Belief "Pour croire complecement a un
phenomene ii faut y etre habitue" (Richer, 1926, p. 441). My translation is in the
text.
23. The Difficulty of Imagining That One Will Some Day Be Old After
King Charles II dismissed Lord Clarendon as lord chancellor in 1667, some of Clarendon's enemies (among them the king's still-young mistress, Lady Casclemaine) exulted
gleefully over his fall. As he was leaving the king's palace he heard their voices through
an open window, turned and said: "O Madam, is it you? Pray remember that if you
live, you will grow old" (Crewe, 1893). He was right; she died in 1709 at the age of
sixty-eight.
Of all the great writers of fiction who have given me pleasure, only two have
at~em_pred to porrray a person throughout an entire life into old age and death. I am
thmkmg of Arnold Bennett's The Old Wives' Tale and Guy de Maupassant's Une vie.
Biographers have often tried to portray an entire life from birch ro death, bur
psychologists have shown even less interest than novelists in studying a person's entire
life. The longest follow-up studies of psychologists and psychiatrists rarely extend
beyond a decade or two, although exceptions occur.
. 24. Imagining the Process of "Younging" The Trobrianders believe that a
d1scarnate soul (baloma) undergoes a process of becoming younger before it reincarnates (Malinowski, 1916). Malinowski described the process as resembling that of
a snake shedding its skin, bur I am uncertain whether chis somewhat inappropriate
analogy is Malinowski's or was used by che Trobrianders themselves.
25. Children Commenting on a Change in Bodily Size In note 11 of chapter 5 I named twelve subjects who had commented - direccly or indirectly- on their
awareness of a change in body size. All these subjects, when they were small, had
memories of what it was like to be fully grown. Pratomwan Inrhanu had a different
type of experience: as a young adulc remembering the previous life of an infant, she
actually felt herself being small like the infant.
26. Opinions About Reincarnation-Type Cases Among Educated Persons
in Asia and Africa I have described stances commonly taken, but educated persons
both in the West and in Asia and Africa often differ in their attirudes toward the
cases and knowledge of them. The following examples may help readers ro appreciate this. In Thailand, a professor of biology (with some education in the West)
worked tirelessly during many years to assist me in the study of cases. Another

Notes- Chapter JO

305

(former) official (also with some training in the West), although he believed that Buddhism was true beyond doubt (and he sometimes gave lectures about it that
approached propaganda), considered the actual cases ridiculous and never took the
trouble to study one at first hand. In Burma, one retired government official (he, too,
had had considerable training in the West) assisted me for many years in the study
of cases; but it was in Burma also that I met a professor of psychology with a higher
degree from a Western university who, when he learned about my research, could
barely remain polite to me, although the area where he lived happened to be rich in
cases within a few miles of his office; he had had no idea that they were there, and
he showed no interest in leaving his desk to study one.
27. The Brain Is the Messenger to Consciousness The cited sentence occurs
in Hippocrates's essay "The Sacred Disease" (Hippocrates, 1952, p. 179). Later, on
the same page, Hippocrates says: "The brain is the interpreter of consciousness."
28. Bergson on Brain and Memory Bergson (1913) suggested many years ago
that impairments of memory related to brain disease may only indicate that we need
a healthy brain in order to locate and communicate memories; they are not evidence
that memories exist only in the brain.
29. Neuroscientists Doubtful of the Identity of Brain and Mind Two
neuroscientists who have expressed misgivings about attempts to reduce the mind
to a function of the brain are Penfield (1975) and Eccles (Popper and Eccles, 1977).
A third, toward the end of his life, wrote: "That our being should consist of two fundamental elements offers I suppose no greater inherent improbability than chat it
should rest on one only" (Sherrington, 1947/1906, p. xxiv).
30. Brain the Instrument of Mind In one of the most important theoretical
papers concerned with paranormal phenomena, Thouless and Wiesner (1946-49)
suggested that the normal action of a person's mind on his brain and its occasional
paranormal action on another person's mind, as in telepathy, might both be subsumed
under the same principle.
31. Mind the Most Direct Thing in Our Experience The quotation is from
Eddington (1930, p. 37), who is here surely referring to consciousness.
.
32. The Irreducibility of Consciousness Here I may seem co pass too quickly
over the question of what we mean by consciousness, a question that has exercised
philosophers for centuries. William James (1904) doubted che value of the term
"consciousness." However, he stated that he meant "only to deny that che word
stands for an entity, but to insist most emphatically that it does stand for a function .... there is a function in experience which thoughts perform, and for the P.erformance of which chis quality of being [consciousness] is invoked. That funcnon
is knowing" (p. 478).
For a reader who has time for only one article about the irreducibility ~f conscious experience, I recommend Nagel (1979/1974). A single article advancmg the
monist position could be chat of Place (1956), who argued chat consciousness is a
brain process. Josephson and Ramachandran (1980) edited a useful introduction to
the study of consciousness.
It seems to me chat consciousness may never change, only the presentations in
it of images and feelings. An emphasis given in publications of recent years to "states
of consciousness," especially "altered" ones, may have been misguided. It has tended
to link unusual mental experiences with extraneous and sometimes exotic inducers,
such as hallucinogenic drugs, hypnosis, and medication. Even persons who take

306

NOTES-CHAPTER

10

hallucinogenic drugs may not undergo a change of consciousness so much as presentations of different imagery and different feelings within the same consciousness.
That is certainly how I now consider my own enriching experiences with mescaline
and LSD-25: not chat my consciousness changed at chose times, but chat I had in ic
images and feelings vastly different from those I ordinarily have. The distinction I
am trying to make may be thought a quibble, but I think it is not. I would prefer
to see wider awareness chat most psychical experiences, including everyday manifestations of telepathy, apparitions, and children's memories of previous lives, occur
to ordinary people in their ordinary scare. Ac che rimes of their experiences, their consciousness has a new content, but their "state of consciousness" is not necessarily
different from what it usually is. The people who have these experiences may differ
from ocher persons who do not, bur we have almost no knowledge about how they
differ.
33. Lack of Isomorphism Between Sensory Experiences and Neuronal Patterns Smythies (1956, 1960), Malcolm (1977), and Paterson (1995) have discussed
this topic further.
34. Inadequacy of Current Ncurophysiological Explanations of Memory
Beloff (1980a, 1980b), Gauld (1982), Malcolm (1970, 1977), and Paterson (1995) have
written on this subject. L. R. Baker (1981), Dreyfus (1979), and Heil (1980) have criticized the computer model of the brain and hence of the mind.
35. Mental Space and Physical Space In addition to Ducasse (1951) and Price
0953), Smychies (1951, 1960, 1974, 1994), Whiteman (1973), and Poynton (1983)
have written about the concept of mental space. I have described my own ideas on
the subject more fully elsewhere (Stevenson, 1981).
I believe Descartes (1912/1641, p. 139) made an important error in saying chat
minds, unlike bodies, do nor have the property of extension. Despite Hume's
(191111739, 1:228) correction, and similar critiques by other philosophers, Descartes's
mistake has continued to impede acceptance of che idea char minds as well as bodies have che property of extension.
36. Incompatibility of Telepathy and Materialism Nearly all scientists who
have considered che matter hold chis view. However, Godbey (1975) has argued char
telepathy (and ocher paranormal phenomena) are not incompatible wich materialism.
Some scientists, including a few physicists, believe chat further developments
in physics will provide explanations of paranormal phenomena. I am not a member
of this group, and I think that che understanding of paranormal phenomena that we
seek requires postulating an aspect of reality beyond that envisaged by the concepts
of physics.
37. Telepathy a Guarantee of Survival I have taken this quotation from Caringron (1945, p. 143).
38. Experiments in Paranormal Cognition I do nor intend by chis remark
ro devalue rhe contribution that many experiments have made to the evidence of
telepathy and clairvoyance. That rhe experiments cannot be repeated on demand puts
them on an equal footing with many of those conducted by psychologists, which are
by no means free from capricious instability. And other scientists study without
apology such phenomena as meteorites, volcanoes, and earthquakes, which also do
nor occur ro order.
Persons studying paranormal phenomena make a serious mistake when they
expect chem to conform to the pattern of repeatability familiar in the experiments

Notes- Chapter JO

307

of physics and chemiscry. Almost all paranormal phenomena occur under one or ocher
of two circumstances. Some occur, as I have tried ro show, during a life-threatening
situation. Others derive from the special skill that only a few unusual persons can
exhibit (Whiteman, 1972). Everyone does not have a little extrasensory perception
any more than everyone has absolute pitch.
Experimenters fortunate enough co work with one of the rare gifted sensitives
have published evidence of telepathy and clairvoyance far superior to anything that
experiments with groups can generate. I am here chinking of such gifted persons as
Stefan Ossowiecki (Besrerman, 1933; Borzymowski, 1965; Efron, 1944; Geley, 1927),
Olga Kahl (Osty, 1929, 1932; Toukholka, 1922), and Craig Sinclair (Sinclair,
1962/1930).
39. Mind-stuff a Canvas on Which Memories Are Collected The quotation
is from Schrodinger (1955, pp. 91-92).
40. Conceptions of a Discarnate World Ducasse (1951), Paterson (1995), and
Price (1953, 1972) have written persuasively on this subject. Carington (1945) also
made suggestions about the nature of life after death.
The scriptural and exegetical literatures of Hinduism and Buddhism contain
descriptions of a world (or rather worlds) of discarnare souls. The Tibetan Book of
the Dead (Evans-Wentz, 1969/1927; Thurman, 1994) provides an accessible account
of life immediately after death.
41. Memories of Existence as a Discarnate Person Examples will be found
in the cases of Disna Samarasinghe, Pracima Saxena, Ven. Chaokhun Rajsurhajar~,
Ven. Sayadaw U Sobhana, and Ven. Som Pit. Two ocher examples, with less deratl,
occurred in the cases of Nasir Toksoz and Maung Aye Kyaw.
42. Lucid Dreams Descriptions of them may be found in C. Green (1968a),
LaBerge (1985), Van Eeden (1912-13), and Whiteman (1961).
43. Experiences of Persons Who Almost Die and Do Not Examples and
analyses of these experiences (now often called near-death experiences) can be found
in Cook, Greyson, and Stevenson (1998), Fenwick and Fenwick (1995), Greyson and
Stevenson (1980), Noyes and Klerri (1976, 1977), Owens, Cook, and Stevenson
(1990), Ring (1980), Sabom (1982, 1998), and Stevenson and Greyson (197~).
44. Information Warranting Conjectures About the Nature of Life and
Death I have nor mentioned in the rexc the copious information furnished by many
mediumistic communicators about life where they claim to be. Most of rhi~ is worr~
less, because i c has been expressed through mediums who have nor pro.vided sa.nsfacrory evidence of having paranormal powers, for example, by furnishtng derailed
information about a deceased person that they could not have lea~ne? non:nally. In
addition, much of what mediumistic communicators stare about life 111 a disc~rnace
realm shows obvious coloring from rhe medium's mind, although not necessarily her_
conscious mind. On che other hand, I do not discard statements about the nature ot
life after death made by communicators who merit our attention through their participation in a medium's demonstration of paranormal powers. Emmanuel Swedenborg, for example, provided evidence of paranormal powers sufficiently strong to
satisfy Kant (1976/1766) and also described life after death (Swedenborg, 1906/1758).
Derails about some other members of this small group may be found in the papers
by Balfour (1935), Hodgson (1897-98), and C. D. Thomas (19~5).
45. Dominance of Images in the Discarnate World Pnce (1953) suggested
chat che next world would be an "imagy" one.

308

NOTES-CHAPTER

10

In suggesting chat the chinking of discarnate pers_onalities_ would have mo:e

images than that of most living adults, I am not suggestmg that It would be devoid
of words. The subjects of reincarnation-type cases frequently remember proper
names, and sometimes they remember words of a language used by the previous personality, but not by members of the subject's family. If these words derive from a
previous life, they were presumably retained during the state between lives.
46. Good Men Need Not Fear Death The exposition of this belief attributed
to Socrates by Plato is in the Phaedo (Plato, 1936).
47. Life Review Mentioned by Children Who Claim to Remember Previous Lives Nasir Toksoz was one of the few examples of such children.
48. Life Review (Panoramic Memory) of Persons Coming Close to Death
These data are taken from Stevenson and Cook (1995). Earlier series of smaller numbers of cases showed a higher percentage of persons who experienced a life review
(Greyson and Stevenson, 1980; Noyes and Kletti, 1977; Ring, 1980).
49. Telepathy the Normal Mode of Communication Among Discarnate
Persons The quotation is from Driesch (1930, p. 26). (I have translated it.)
50. Postmortem Apparitions Examples can be found in Gurney (1889,
pp. 422-26); Myers (1889, pp. 29-30); and Perovsky-Petrovo-Solovovo (1930).
51. Death-Bed Visions Examples can be found in Barrett (1926), Bozzano
(1906), Osis and Haraldsson (1977), and Stevenson (1995).
52. Now Equals Here Several persons have described having had - when near
death or after death - the experience of chinking about a person or place and instantly
being with the person or at the place. Ven. Chaokhun Rajsuthajarn remembered such
an experience. Geddes (1937) and Radin (1926) have reported other examples.
53. Baudelaire and Individual Progress The passage I have cited occurs on
page 1362 of Baudelaire (1967). (I have translated it.)
54. Gibbon and Chance in Birth The passage I have cited occurs in Gibbon
(1907, p. 217).
55. Western Acceptance of the Idea of Chance Yet many Westerners, especially Americans, show ambivalence with regard to chance. The increasing profits of
insurance companies and the blurring of the distinction between mistakes and malpractice when something goes wrong in medical care reveal a strong desire for a life
free of risks, that is, of chance happenings. Lawsuits against obstetricians for nor
delivering a perfect baby are particularly germane to one topic of chis book: who or
what causes birth defects. We rend to think that chance causes other persons' misfortunes, but should nor cause any for us. Are we becoming a society of victims?
56. Fear of Postmortem Punishment as a Deterrent Against Depravity A
strong belief in life after death in which one would pay a penalty for one's sins did
nothing to deter crime and wickedness during the Middle Ages in Europe, when such
a belief certainly prevailed. However, the belief in life after death (and the possible
postmortem consequences of one's actions} char was then held did influence the conduce of some persons, both blameless and peccanr.
Since rhe Middle Ages the Christian religion has jerkily recreated doctrinally in
rhe face of advances in science. Among educated persons in rhe West its representatives deserve credit for the loving lives some of them live and for the help they give
to suffering others, but few people - again I speak of educated persons - believe
anything these spokesmen say about life after death and what may happen therein.
For most Westerners life after death has become unthinkable and - along with death

Notes- Chapters JO, 11

309

itself- a tabooed subject. The idea of reincarnation- now coming forward with
some supporting evidence - poses again a question most thinking Westerners would
rather not think about: "What will happen to me after I die?"

Chapter 11: Speculations About Processes Possibly

Related to Reincarnation
1. Psychophore I derived this word from the Greek meaning "soul bearing."
(I wish to thank Professor David Kovacs of the Department of Classics, University

of Virginia, for approving the word psychophore and for suggesting correct cognates.)
The psychophore corresponds to Schrodinger's (1955, pp. 91-92) canvas on which
experiences are collected.
I am familiar with a considerable literature in Hinduism and Buddhism about
nonphysical bodies that are said to act as vehicles of minds between lives. However,
these writings derive from religious traditions; moreover, if they have an observational basis, this must only be the subjective one of personal insights achieved by seers
and transmitted to their followers. I do not devalue such evidence, but it differs from
the publicly verifiable data that we find in the cases I have investigated. These cases
also, I should acknowledge, provide no direct evidence for anything like a psychophore; but since they include some verifiable and apparently paranormally derived
information stated by the subjects, I think we can base conjectures on them with more
confidence than we can give to scriptural authority, however deserving of our respect
the latter may otherwise be.
Some of the ideas of South Asian religions about such intermediate vehicles have
passed - often through theosophy and its derivatives - into popular writings in the
West about out-of-the-body experiences; but terms such as "astral bodies" have co~
notations that I think we should avoid. For these reasons, it seemed wise to devise
a new word that would have no connections with religious or occultist teachings.
Since unembodied existence is difficult to conceive, philosophers and psychologists interested in the question of the survival of human personality after death ha_ve
sometimes concerned themselves with the nature of an embodied postmortem existence, and this has brought them to consider the question of a postmo~tem ve~icle
or, if reincarnation occurs, an intermediate vehicle for use between rncarnauons
(Broad, 1958; Wheatley, 1979).
2. Imaged Memories of Previous Lives During Infancy Ven. Chaokhun
Rajsuthajarn claimed that during his infancy he could recall all the details of the previous life that he remembered.
Subjects of other cases have sometimes told me that they were fully aware of
their surroundings in early infancy but lacked words with which to communicate
their experiences to adults. Some remembered the fatuous remarks of adults who
gazed down at them as they lay in their cribs and remembered also that they could
only reply with helpless gurgles. None of these claims, including that of Ven.
Chaokhun Rajsuthajarn, has been verified.
However, a few persons have claimed to remember some verified event that
occurred during their infancy, or even before birth, when their bodies were fetal. The
better examples of these cases include evidence chat the persons concerned had not

310

NOTES-CHAPTER 11

learned normally about the events they remembered. I have given a list of published
examples elsewhere (Stevenson, 1983a, p. 140).
Physiological measurements show that newborn infants spend one-third of their
day and one-half of the time when they are asleep in a state corresponding to what
older children and adults report as dreaming (Roffwarg, Muzio, and Dement, 1966).
The authors of the paper reporting this fact also observed that:
in the REM [Rapid Eye Movemcm, indicating dreaming] scare, newborns display
facial mimicry which gives the appearance of sophisticated expressions of emotion or thought, such as perplexity, disdain, skepticism, and mild amusement. We
have not noted such nuances of expression, in the same newborns wh<.:n awake
[p. 609].
Later, in the same paper, the authors wrote:
There can be little question that che stage of sleep in newborns char manifests REMs
... is related to adult REM sleep. Therefore che REM scare muse originate from
inborn neurophysiological processes, as opposed co being engendered by experience
[p. 611].
Why must ic so originate? Only on the assumption that the infant can have had
no experiences before the conception of its body. If reincarnation occurs, however,
the infant, when he is in the state corresponding to adult dreaming, might have scenes
of his previous life running through his consciousness; if so, this would account for
the varying expressions on the faces of the infants when they are in this state. These
would reAect the different emotions that memories of past experiences were evoking.
3. Personality and Individuality Ducasse (1951) used these terms in considering man's survival after death and possible reincarnation.
The question of whether what is reborn is the same or not the same as what
died (or perhaps the same and not the same) has engaged Buddhist exegetists in discussions that the Buddha himself considered otiose. The evidence from the children
who remember previous lives suggests a continuity berween the rwo personalities concerned in a case. le also suggests similarities between them. This does not mean, however, chat they are the same; everything- the human mind most of all - is constantly
changing.
4. Learning a New Skill in Old Age Cato the Censor is said, on perhaps
doubtful evidence, to have taken up the study of Greek in his old age (Cicero, 1923).
The great mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss began the study of Russian when he
was an old man (Dunnington, 1955). If reincarnation occurs, these men did not waste
their time in the efforts of their old age.
5. Emotional Intensity of Shared Experiences and Psychic Links Any association will lead to the formation of some psychic link, and the longer the association, the stronger it will become. Intense shared experiences will also grearly strengthen
such bonds. Persons sitting with each other at the same cable of a cruise ship ordinarily become friendly and may continue the friendship for a time at the end of the
cruise. However, the friendship lasts longer if the cruise ship sinks and the group
spends a week in a lifeboat before being rescued. Similarly, rhe memories of sufferings
that were endured and survived together sustain the societies of veterans of wars.
Intensity of experience also strengthens memory, as Thorndike (1905)-whom

Notes - Chapter 11

311

I quoted earlier - and, before him, Butler (1961/1877) pointed out. Buder gave
another example from sea travel:
Thus, if an object ... be very unfamiliar, as ... an iceberg co one travelling co America for che first time, it will make a deep impression, though bur little affecting our
interests; bur if we struck against the iceberg and were shipwrecked, or nearly so, it
would produce a much deeper impression, we should think much more about icebergs,
and remember much more about them, than if we had merely seen one [p. 152].
6. Communications in Apparitions and Telepathic Impressions Between
Persons Who Love Each Other These connections were shown for apparitions in
Gurney, Myers, and Podmore (1886) and for telepathic impressions in Stevenson
(1970b). The latter work provides references to similar data in ocher series of cases.
In addition to collective apparitions, "bystander cases" are another exception to
the general rule of a close personal relationship between agent and percipient. In these
rare cases a person who is with or near someone known to the agent sees the appari~ion, but the person to whom the appearing personality seems to be communicating does not. The percipient is thus a bystander, so to speak, bur a person with greater
sensitivity than the presumably intended percipient. I have published references to
illustrative case reports (Stevenson, 1982).
7. Unusual Strength of Psychic Links Between Family Members The
strength of psychic links between family members may derive not only from shared
emotional experiences in one life. In same-family cases the subject is saying, in effect,
t~at in his previous life he shared experiences with members of his family during the
life of the deceased member chat he claims to have been. The subject of such a case
would thus begin a new life already having strong ties to members of his. family char
would become stronger as the family unit persisted. I have suggested earh~r th~t successive incarnations in the same group may explain not only strong family ues but
also the larger circles of clan and national loyalcies.
c

ight find one,, h

L aunc h e d on the waters of speculations like t h e roregomg, one m
self floating toward such concepts as that of a common soul or a "world s.oul t at
4
unites all of us, as all continents and islands are joined beneath the oceans (Pnce, l9 0,
1972). I do not find unattractive the idea that we are all bonded to each ocher, but
h b on d s stronger to some persons than to others. Furt h er rnqumes
may
wn
one
. "day
provide an objective confirmation of what mystics have been saying for cenmnes. All
16
religions are forced to admit plurality inherent in che One" (Zaehner, l957, P 7).
8. Paucity of Telepathic and Apparitional Experiences Be~veen ~trangers
is easier
to venry apparent ly paranorma l exp er"iences with family
B ecause lt
. mem.
hers and close friends, the paucity of cases occurring benveen strangers might anse
c.

the lacter type

fr om d enc1enc1es
in mvesngatmg
an d repor t"ng
i
. . of case. However,
Schouten (1979) in an analysis of the cases in Phantasms ofthe Lrvmg (Gur~,e~, Myers,
and Podmore, 1886) showed that the paucity of reported "stranger cases is almost
certainly not an artifact of reporting and is therefore a feature of the process of paranormal communication.
9. Friendship Acting as a Psychic Link in Reincarnation Cases Examples
occur in the cases of Maung Yin Maung, Marta Lorenz, Maung Aung Than, Sivanthie and Sheromie Hettiararchi, Ma Win Myint, and Maung Aung Than.
In two of the cases of Burmese children who remembered lives as Japanese
soldiers killed during World War II, the subjects' parents recalled having been

312

NOTES-CHAPTER 11

friendly with a Japanese soldier (something not usual for Burmese during the Japanese
occupation of Burma). Ma Tin Aung Myo is one of these subject~.
.
Even when subject and previous personalicy are related, friendship between
particular members of the family seems sometimes to be in play i~ determining wh_r
a subject is born to one pair of parents instead of another. A moving example of thts
occurred in the case of a Burmese subject, Maung Htoo. He remembered the life of
his mother's uncle, who had died of leprosy. The uncle, his face horribly disfigured
by his disease, had died alone after his marital family deserted him, but Maung
Htoo's parents had continued to succor him until he died.
10. Animosity Acting as a Psychic Link in Reincarnation Cases Another
(possible) example occurred in the case of Sam path Priyasanrha.
11. Binding Effect of Guilt Over Indebtedness Guile over a debt or theft
figures as an apparent motive in some apparirional cases (Myers, 1903, 2:348; Owen,
1874, pp. 226-29).
12. Subject's Claim to Have Known a Member of His Family in a Previous Life Ocher subjects who have made similar statements include Ratana Wongsombar and Bajrang B. Saxena.
I did not include Sukla Gupta's statement about having known members of her
family in a previous life in my derailed report of her case.
In cases having twins as subjects, one or both of chem has often remembered a
previous life with a close association to the other twin. Examples occur in the cases
of Sivanthie and Sheromie Hecciararchi, Ma Khin Ma Gyi and Ma Khin Ma Nge,
Gillian and Jennifer Pollock, and Ramoo and Rajoo Sharma. In all of these cases both
twins recalled previous lives.
13. Belief Concerning the Contribution of Particular Places to the Likelihood of Pregnancy Informants in other cases have described similar events; shortly
before the subject's mother became pregnant with him, she (or sometimes her husband) had gone to see the dead body of the person whose life the subject lacer remembered. An example occurred in the case of Ma Hmwe Lone, another Burmese subject.
R. Rose (1956) described the belief among the Aranda of Australia that discarnace spirits gather around a particular stone. Women who wanted to become pregnant would go there with their husbands; those who did not, would cry to pass by
inconspicuously if they needed ro go near the stone. Spencer and Gillen (1968/1899),
also writing about the natives of central Australia, described similar places where spirits agglomerated and women were at special risk to become pregnant.
14. Future Parent of a Subject Visiting Area Where Previous Personality
Died Another example occurred in the case of Puri Parra.
15. Analogy of Clothes and Physical Bodies for Reincarnation The quotation is from Mc Taggart (1906, p. 125). McTaggarr was not the first person to think
of this analogy, because the Arabic word for reincarnation - widely used by the
Druses - is taqamos, which literally means "change one's shirt." Qamos is, rather
obviously, cognate with such words as "camisole" and "chemise."
16. Premortem Wishes to Change Sex in the Next Incarnation The cases
of Gnanarilleka Badddewithana and Paulo Lorenz provide examples. Paulo Lorenz's
case is one of the same-family type, bur in Gnanatilleka's the families concerned were
complete strangers before the development of the case. I should add, however, that
Tillekerarne (the boy whose life Gnanatilleka remembered) expressed his desire ro

Notes - Chapter 11

313

change sex only indirectly, yet as clearly as he could without purring che wish into
explici c words.
17. Greater Likelihood of Male Conceptuses with Coitus Just Before
Ovulation Details will be found in Guerrero (1974) and Harlap (1979).
18. Date of Coitus and Sex Ratio in Natural and Artificial Insemination
Details will be found in Guerrero (1974).
19. Greater Motility of Y Chromosome-Carrying Sperm Details will be
found in Rohde, Porscmann, and Dorner (1973), Ericsson, Langevin, and Nishino
(1973); and Roberts (1978).
20. Unsuspected Pregnancies in Healthy Women Whittaker, Taylor, and
Lind (1983) estimated char about 8 percent of human pregnancies "are lost at such
an early stage of development that rhe patients are unaware chat conception has
occurred" (p. 1126).
2 1. Marking of a Dead Body to Identify a Reincarnating Person Information about the marking of bodies of persons expected ro reincarnate can be found in
Fielding Hall (1898), Mi Mi Khaing (1962), Noon (1942), Parry (1932), and Uchendu
(1965). In my monograph on cases with relevant birthmarks and birch defects I
included chapters on "experimental birthmarks" and "experimental birch defects."
They included reports of twenty cases whose subjects had such birthmarks and six
cases whose subjects had such birch defects (Stevenson, 1997a, 1997b).
22. Manipulation of a Mother's Eggs by Two Discarnate Personalities
When the twins' mother knew the concerned previous personalities, and especially
when she had pertinent announcing dreams, she may have expected the birch of
twins and induced in herself psychophysiological changes chat affected her ova or a
zyg?re; bur chis leaves hanging the question of why she-even unconsc~ousl~
dec1ded to have twins in a particular pregnancy. In addition, there are cases m.':hich
the mother did not know anything about the concerned previous personalmeseither when they were alive or in subsequent dreams.
.
In the case of Gillian and Jennifer Pollock, these twins remembered the previous lives of their own older sisters. Their mother had strongly disbelieved her husband's prediction, when she became pregnant again, chat she would give birch co
twins. If she brought about che twin birch, she did not do so consciously.
.
In considering the division of a zygote into rwo pares, it is unhelpful co imagine rwo discarnare personalities cleaving it in rwo as one might halve a ~ound chee~e
with a kitchen knife. A better analogy would be chat of rwo overlapping magnenc
fields (in which iron filings have become aligned), which then separate and form two
new magnetic fields, each taking with it a portion of che iron filings.
.
23. Sickle-Cell Anemia and Repeater Children Edelstein a~d I explored ~m
a preliminary way) the connections berween sickle-cell disease and mfan.r mortality
in an Igbo community of Awgu. Nigeria. We found the sickle-cell anemia had contributed nothing to the high infantile mortality in the families of the children '~e
examined (Stevenson and Edelstein, 1982). Despite this outcome, I find the possible relationship between reincarnation and sickle-cell anemia a useful one to consider, if only as a model from which we might explore the interplay between genetic
and paranormal factors.
24. The Concept of the Ogba11je (Repeater Child) Among the lgbo I have
collared my accounc from several sources: published accounts of repeater children,
informants in Nigeria whom I have interviewed on the subject, and my own inves-

314

NOTES-CHAPTER

11

rigarions of cases (Srevenson, 1997a). I never invesrigared d~e case o~ a repearer child
rhrough a full cycle, so co speak, of birch, dearh, an~ rebirrh. I. did, however . see
differenr pares of rhe cycle, including children born with conge111ral malform~nons
char were said co derive from murilarion of rhe body of a deceased repearer child.
No srudies of rhe efficacy of the Igbo riruals related ro rhe ogbanjes have been
made. A baby born wirh a birth defect or birthmark char is rhoughr ro derive from
marking or murilarion of an ogbanje in a previous life is believed ro have reformed
and is therefore expected ro live through infancy and childhood, bur I learned of rwo
such children who nevertheless had died in infancy.
Further derails may be found in Edelstein (1986) and Stevenson (1985, 1986,
1997a).
25. Demonstrations of Extraordinary Clairvoyance One of rhe besr, and
best-investigated, mediums of all times, Gladys Osborne Leonard, had rhe ability
somehow to read passages in closed books, locared in a house where she had never
been, and to indicate che page of the passage (sometimes its position on the page)
and the place of the book on its bookshelf. E. M. Sidgwick published a careful analysis of Mrs. Leonard's book rests (Sidgwick, 1921). Smith (1964) and Gauld (1982)
have provided shorrer summaries of rhe essenrials of the book tests.
The clairvoyant, or possibly telepathic, feats of Olga Kahl (Osty, 1929, 1932;
Toukholka, 1922) and Stefan Ossowiecki (Besterman, 1933; Borzymowski, 1965;
Efron, 1944; Geley, 1927) approach the same degree of exactitude.
Experimenting with bacteria, Nash (1984) showed a psychokinetic effect on the
rare of mutation of a gene. This involves reaching and influencing a minute "target."
26. Voluntary Apparitions The records of psychical research include reporrs
of a small number of cases in which a person has willed himself, so to speak, to appear
ro anorher distant person and has then been seen by char person as an apparition.
Borzymowski (1965) and Gurney, Myers, and Podmore (1886, 1:103-10 and 2:67576) published examples.
27. Biochemical Changes Accompanying Pscudocycsis Details will be found
in the article by Schopbach, Fried, and Rakoff (1952).
28. Psychophysical Inhibition of Pregnancy Among the Trobrianders I
derived this information from Malinowski (1927). I have used the present tense co
describe the Trobrianders' cusroms, bur conditions among them have probably
changed since Malinowski srudied chem.
29. Overripeness of the Ovum I based chis statement on the work of Jongbloer and Zwecs (1976).
30. Mediums Manifesting the Physical Symptoms Experienced by Dying
Persons Examples will be found in Balfour (1935) and Oscy (1923).
31. Psychic Fields and Morphogenctic Fields In my monograph (1997a) I
discussed these concepts further and gave references to research in biology chat supports the concept of morphogenetic fields. Some of che cases reported in the monograph make plausible the idea of a psychic field.
32. Doing to Ourselves What We Do to Others The quotation from friar
Giles occurs in Okey (1910, p. 160).
33. The Vale of Soul-Making Keats used chis phrase in a letter to his brother
and sister-in-law (Forman [1931], p. 362).

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Index
S 11 bjects of rt'incr1r1111tio11 cases are listed in alphabetical order according to
then firsr or given names, with ''cme of"following the 1111me. Subjects ofany
other ~ype ofcase are listed last name first, with the case type in paremheses.
Honorifics (s11ch m /vfa1111g, U, Ma, a11d Daw) that have been used in the
text (especially for Burmese subjects andfor mo11ks i11 Thai!tmd) are 1101 used
in the inde.\..
.;lssumc', where appropriate, that i11dex headers a11d sub-headers refer to
the subject, unless otherwise i11dicated.

abborrio~, d~scarnare PP objects co 73, 243

a sorpcion ll1 memories 108, 125
Adams, Susan vii
addictions related to previous life 119, 187,
198, 237-38, 295-96 n9
Adnan Kelle<;i, case of 242
"adulr arrirude" 66, 70, 92, 96, 120, 194,
283 n27, 298 n23
a<lults, attitudes toward subject 61, 78-79,
84, 120-23, 125-26, 288 nll, 288 n12
Africa (West), belief in reincarnation 29
age of s_u_bjecrs 4; at first speaking of previous life_ 105-6_, 281 nlO; ceasing co speak
of pn:v1ous life 108-10, 123, 282 nl6
aggress_ion related to previous life see ani. mosny and aggression
Ainu (Japan), belief in reincarnation 30,
266 n2
alcohc~I: craving during pregnancy with
suh1ecr 198; suhject's fondness for 198,
237-38, 295-96 n9
Alessandrina Samona, case of 285 116
Alevi~ <Turkey): announcing dreams 99;
bcl1d 111 reincarnation J2, 267 n9
Alice Robenson, case of 49-50, 292 n3
Alvarado, (:arias vii

335

American Indians 266 n2; see 11/so tribes by

name
Ampan Peccherat, case of 113, 125, 283
n28, 296 nl2, 303 nl2
analysis of cases see inrerpreration of cases
animal, reincarnacion as 177, 209-IO,
293-94 nl3, 300 n3
animosity and aggression: generalize~ ro.
rou s 196-97, 298 n26; as psychic link
gin re1ncarnat10n
p
cases 195 , -137 3P- nlO
rowards parents, relared ro rrevious life
19 5, 298 n25; rowards prev10us personaliry's murderer 70, 92, 196-97, 298 n26
announcing dreams 39, 99-101, 175, 276
n 2 , 280 n8; absence among Druse
(Lebanon) 175, 293 n7; Burma 39, 60,
175, 229, 243; cultural differences 175;
defined 276 n2; Finland 73; India 89,
175; petitionary 39, 99, 243, ~~?;_Sri
Lanka IOI, 175, 292-93 n6; l l111g1t
(northwestern Norrh America) 59, 99;
Turkey 91; United States 79-80, 85
anomalous daces of previous personality
death and subject birth 127-28, 161,
284 n35
Anusha Sencwardcna, case of 119, 303 n15

336

INDEX

Apollonius (of Tyana), case of 31, 129, 267

n6, 272 nl
apparitions 5, 11, 229-30, 262-63 n8;
belief in 24; bystander cases 311 n6; case
reports 16-19, 21-22, 23-24; chance as
explanation 20-22; incidence of 24;
incidence of violent death in 291 n28;
postmortem 229-30, 308 n50; in reincarnation cases 229; reliability of percipients 20, 263-64 nl6; "voluntary" 249,
314 n26; see also death-bed visions
appetites of mother during pregnancy
197-99
Arif Hamed, case of 51
Asha Rani, case of 278 nl4, 298 n24
Athabaskan (northwestern North America)
33, 178
Arreya, B. L. 285 n6
attitudes toward case: family of subject
120-23, 150; family of previous personality 139, 150, 156
Aung Cho Thein and Aung Ko Thein, case
of 190
Aung Myint, case of 304 nl9
Aung Than, case of 100, 311 n9
Aurangzeb, Emperor 129, 269 nl7, 284 n3
Australia, belief in reincarnation among
tribes 30, 266 n2
authenticity of cases 24-25; defined 285
n9
automatic writing 273 n8
Aye Kyaw, case of 240, 282 n21, 293 nll,
307 n41
Bacon, Francis 14, 22, 263 nll, 264 n20
Bajrang B. Saxena, case of 117, 283-84
n33, 288 nll, 312 nl2
Barker, D. R. 97, 288 nl3
Baudelaire, Charles 231, 308 n53
Bayer, Re~at 152, 285-86 nl3
Beethoven, Ludwig van 231
behavioral memories (behavior related to
previous life} 26-27, 59, 72, 115-20,
138, 160, 182-84; persistence after verbal
memories fade 119, 123, 125-26; syndromes of unusual 118-19, 160, 202, 289
1117, 299 n31; see also addictions; adult
attitude; cross-dressing in sex-change
cases; eating habits; food preferences and
cravings; phobias; play; precocity of
subject; skills
beliefs as inAuences on postmorrem events
180, 294 1116
Beloff, John vii

Berger, Hans (telepathy case} 19-20

Bergson, H. 224, 305 n28
Bernheim, H. 266 n28
Bernstein Brothers Parapsychology and
Healch Foundation viii
Bhagavad-Gita 269 n16
biological features of cases 101-5; see also
birthmarks and birth defects; constriction rings; internal diseases related to
previous life
Bir Sahai, case of 126
birth defects, causes of 197
birthmarks and birth defects related to previous life 1, 28, 101-5, 131, 197, 280-81
n9; chance as explanation 102-4; as corporeal memories 28; description of typical 102; examples in cases 59, 72, 83, 89,
91; "experimental" 104, 144, 246, 248,
313 n21; ignored in early investigations
131; incidence 101; in possession cases
161-62; prediction 104; unusual details
102-3
Bishen Chand Kapoor, case of 119, 252,
284 n6, 295 n7, 295 n9, 296 nll, 303
nl5, 304 nl9
Blanche Poynings (automatic writing case)
273 n8
body size, awareness of change in 223, 281
nll, 304 n25
Bongkuch Promsin, case of 68-71, 111,
116-17, 183, 188, 196, 198, 242, 278 nl3,
281 nll, 281 nl3, 283 n27, 293 nll
Boswell, James 264 nl9, 268 nl2, 301 114
Brahmins (of India}, customs of 57, 124,
130
brain and mind 223-27, 305 n29, 305
n30
Braude, S. 288 n16
Brazil: belief in reincarnation 29; case in
106
Bridey Murphy, case of 46, 273-74 n9
Brijendra Singh, case of 287 n8
Broad, C. D. 32, 262 n6
Brougham, Lord (apparition case) 18-19,
20
Brown, Norman 30-31
Buddhism: belief in reincarnation 4, 35,
38-39, 237, 303 nll, 310 n3; beliefs
about discarnate realm 112, 177, 307
n40; karma 38, 238, 251-53; rebirth as
nonhuman animal 177, 209-10
bullet wounds, of entry and exit 103-4
Burma 2, 177, 237; announcing dreams
39, 60, 99, 100, 175; case reports 60-62,

Index
240; discarnate realm 177; experimental
birthmarks 104; honorifics 277 n3; incidence of cases 279-80 n4; Japanese previous personalities 60-62, 197, 239, 298
n27, 311 n9; mode of death 218; names
from previous life remembered frequently 150; same-family cases 174; sex
ratio of cases 218; sex-change cases 178,
294 nl5
Butler, S. 310-11 n5
"bystander cases" (apparitions) 311 n6
Caesar, Julius 271 n26
case, "fully developed, " features of 98,
280 n5
case of the reincarnation type defined 278
nl
caste-change cases in India 56-58, 12526, 214-15, 303 nl5
Castrcn, Rita vii
Cathars, belief in reincarnation 34, 269
nl8
Catherine of Siena (Saint) 185
Cclal Kapan, case of 107
Celts (Great Britain), belief in reincarnation 36, 270 n26
Cerni) Fahrici, case of 275 nl8, 281 nl3,
298 n26, 304 n20
Cevriye Bayn, case of 280 n8, 282 n21,
288 n 12, 303 nl2
Chadha, Narendar 108, 120
Champollion, J.-F. 185, 295 n4
Chanai Choomalaiwong, case of 117, 282
n23
chance: belief in non-Western cultures
171; belief in Western cultures 231-32,
308 n55; explanation of birthmarks and
birth defects 102-4; explanation of paranormal events 20-22; genetics and 201-2
Chang and Eng ("Siamese twins") 193
Chaokhun Rajsuthajarn, case of see Rajsuthajarn, Chaokhun
child-parent relationships see parent-child
relationships
Choe Hnin Htet, case of 114, 286 n2
choice of circumstances for next life 3940, 237, 271 n35; see also embryo, influenced by discarnate personality; predictions/ aspirations for next life
Christianity and reincarnation 36, 222;
cases in Christian families 76-79, 7983, 83-87, 87-89; Cathars 34, 269 nl8;
early beliefs 36
clairvoyance defined 15, 263 nl3

337

cleft lip and palate, in twins 191-92

communication between two families in
"stranger cases, "possible channels 13738, 153, 238-39
comparisons with previous family 77, 78
conduct, moral and reincarnation 251-54;
see al.so karma
conjoined twins, differences between 12,
193
consciousness 11, 224-25, 305-6 n32
Constantinople, Council of 36
constriction rings on embryo 105
"continuing business" of previous personality 212, 302-3 nlO Cook, Emily
Williams vii, 2
Corliss Chotkin, Jr., case of 58-60, 103,
104, 113, 186, 200, 280 n6, 280 n8
cravings: mother, during pregnancy 19?99, 29 8 n28; subject, related co previous
life 116-17; see al.so addictions related to
previous life
criticisms of reincarnation research 14344, 286 nl5, 289 n19
cross-cultural cases 60-62, 117, 239, 24 ~43; see al.so Japanese previous personalities for Burmese subjects
cross-cultural comparisons of cases 169-80
cross-dressing in sex-change cases 61, 78,
88, 125, 188
7
crypcomnesia 153-54, 273 !18: 287 n d
cultural variations in cases: incidence. an
c
169- 78, possible explanataons
1eacures
178-80
.
5 16
culture shock and reincarnanon 21 Daniel Jirdi, case of 117, 295 n5...
Darwin College (Cambridge) v111 .
Daw (Burmese honorific) see first given
name, e.g .. Tin Hla
.
. e of previous personality
at. 211.
d eat h . ag
12 anomalous dares in remcarnauon
' 12 7- 28 , 161 284 n35; fear of 35,
cases
, 0 n22, 308-9 n50; n~cural mo~c
238 27
of 211 _ 12; stimulus for psychical experiences 25. 300 n4; violent mode of 16566, 210-11, 300-1 n4
death-bed visions 230, 308 n51
deception, cases of 122, 151-52, 287 n6
definitions of terms 13-16
deja vu 48-49; neurological explanations
49, 275 n16; precognition and 48; reincarnation and 48, 275 nl5
De L1guna, F. 294 nl4
Delanne, G. 285 n6

338

INDEX

Della! Beyaz, case of 111, 293 nlO

democion cases 214-15, 303 nl5
deparcure dreams see dreams, communicacion wich living persons
Derek Pirnov, case of 183
Descarces, Rene 14, 263 nll, 306 n35
derails mentioned by subject 21-22, 1067; as evidence of paranormalicy 154, 287
n8
Dickinson, G. L. 273 n8
difficulties of invesrigaring cases 95-96,
134-39
discarnace scare 227-30, 307 n40, 307-8
n45; communicacion wich living persons
229-30; cultural differences in beliefs
and cases 177; fading of memories 218,
303-4 nl8; memories of 177, 227, 293
nl2, 307 n41, 308 n52; sages/guides
encountered 112, 282 n20; see also intermediate lives; intermission period; psychophore
Disna Samarasinghe, case of 111, 112, 11415, 186, 188, 198, 202, 214, 223, 281 nl2,
282 n22, 283 n26, 293 nlO, 293 nl2,
295 n7, 303 nl5, 307 n41
Dolan Champa Miera, case of 149, 282
n24, 288 nl2, 296 nl2
Dostoevsky, Fyodor 301 n4
draw-a-person resr 141
dreams 43, 49-52; communications by
previous personality during 73, 100,
229; in infancy 309-10 n2; previous lifr
recalled in 49-52, 64, 108, 275 nl8, 281
nl3; recurrenr 49-52; teleparhic 5, 17,
19; vividness and paranormality 51-52,
275-76 n 19; see 11/so announcing dreams
Driesch, H. 229, 263 n9, 308 n49
Druids, belief in reincarnation 271 n26
drugs and memories of previous life 5253, 276 n20
Druses (Lebanon): absence of announcing
dreams 175, 293 n7; belief in immediate
rebirth 67, 175-76, 278 n9; case report
64-68; desire ro find deceased reborn
family member 150, 155; reincarnarion
bL"liefs 252, 277 n7; sex-change c1sl'~.
absence of 179
dualism (mind and brain) 224-27
Ducasse, C. J. 32, .B, 261 n3. 262 116,
268 nl4, 306 n35. 307 n40
Dulcina Karasek, case of 281 nl I. 28.) n28,
288 nl6, 296 nl2
Dunn, Irene 2
Duran incirgilz, Cl~L' of

early experiences and human personality

205-6, 299 n34
earing habits related to previous life 56-57
Eccles, John 305 n29
Eddington, A. S. 224-25, 305 n31
Edelstein, Sruarc vii
Edward Ryall, case of 106
embryo, influenced by discarnate personality 244-51
emotions, incense: accompanying expression of memories 159-60; initiating
memories of previous life 54; psychic
experiences and 310-11 n 5; related ro
previous life 60, 107-8, 115, 159-60;
response co ceasing about previous life
108, 281 nl2; sudden change after meeting previous family 281 nl5
"enemy" cases (lgbo} 241-42
environmental factors, limited in explaining personality 195-%, 205-6
Erin Jackson, case of 87-89, 120
Erkan Kilt<;, case of 117, 119, 302-3 n!O,
303 nl2
Eskimo see Inuit
Estes, Patricia vii, 2
experimental birthmarks 104, 144, 246,
248, 313 n21
extrasensory perception: alternative explanation for reincarnarion cases 159-61,
288 nl6; defined 15; reincarnation subjects exhibited 159, 288 nl6
facilirarors of previous lifl' memories 21016
fading or persistence of memories of previous life 108; attention 109; increased
social activity 109; loss of visual imagery
109; verbal language <ll'velopmenr l{)l);
visit co family of prL"vious personality
109
family: desire co sec prl'vious 61, 115-16,
277 n4; factors inAucncing reincarnation
236-44, 254, 312 nl2; psychic connecriom 311 n7; n:larion-.hip with previous
115-16, 282 n23, 282 n24, 288 nil;
sL"lcccion by previou~ per-.onalirv Y>-40,
271 n35; see tdso parl'nt-child re larionships
Faruq Faris Andary, casl' of 30.) nl2, 304
n20
fearures of rhe cases: "fully developed" case
98, 280 n"i; recurrent 164-68, 174; see
1dso addictions; adult a !Ii rnde; announcing drL"ams; birrhmarks and birrh
0

Index
defects; cul rural variations in cases; earing habits; food, subject's preferenes;
gender identity confusion; mode of
death; phobias; play; precocity of subject; predictions/aspirations for next life;
recognitions; same-family cases; sexchange cases; statements about previous
life; violt:nt mode of death
field effrct 93, 251, 314 n31
Finland, case report 73-75
follow-up interviews 143
food: subject's preferences 61, 69-70, 11617; mother's cravings when pregnant
wirh subject 197-99, 250, 298 n27
Francis of Assisi (Saint) 253
fraud 122, 151-52, 287 n6
Freud, Sigmund 184, 295 n2, 296 nll
friendship: psychic connections and 23637, 310-11 n5, 311 n8; reincarnation and
237, 254, 311-12 n9
Fry, Elizabeth 185
"fully developed" case 98, 280 n5
funeral, memory from previous life 177,
293 nlO
Gamini Jayasena, case of 302 n7
Gauss, C. F. 310 n4
gender-identity confusion in cases 188-89,
2_83 n31, 296 nl2; biological explanar1ons 189, 296 nl3; parental influence
189, 296 n14, 296 nlS; see also crossdrcssing
generic defect as possible factor in memories of prc:vious life 174
generic memory 158-59, 275 nl7, 288 nl5
genetics: limited in explaining personality
203-6, 299 n32; reincarnation and 12,
174, 247-49; schizophrenia 203-5. 299
n33; sickle cell anemia 247-49, 313 n23;
Set' also twins
geographical distribution of cases 4-5
geographical factors, selection of new family 239-42, 278 nlO, 312 nU, 312 n14
Ceorg Neidharc, case of 54, 106
Ceorgina Feakes (apparirion case) 23-24
gesturLs, used by preverbal subjects 105
Cihhon, Edward 231, 238, 308 n54
Cilcs, Friar 253
Cillian and Jennifer Pollock, case of 7173, 190, 303 n12
Citksan (Brirish Columbia) 178; belief in
reincarnarion 208
glossophohia (relucrance to speak native
congue) 127, 284 n34

339

Gnanarilleka Baddewichana, case of 114,

115, 302 n7
Godbey, J. W., Jr. 306 n36
Goodwin, Brian vii
Gopal Gupta, case of 56-58, 96, 119, 176,
303 1112, 303 nl5, 303 nl7
guilt: factor in psychic experiences 312 nll;
factor in reincarnation cases 237
Haida (British Columbia), belief in reincarnation 120, 178, 208, 237, 243
Hair Kam Kanya, case of 303 n14
hallucinations of widowhood 24, 265 n24
Handel, G. F. 184-85
Hanumanr Saxena, case of 89-91, 102
Haraldsson, Erlendur 1, 141-42, 144-45,
213, 283 n32
Hinduism, belief in reincarnation 4, 32,
34, 38, 173, 208, 209-10, 307 n40
Hippocrarcs 224, 305 n27
Hmwe Lone, case of 312 n13
Hnin Aye vii, 247
hoaxes see deceprion, cases of
Hume, 0. 268 n12
Hum, Dawn 2
Husam Halibi, case of 287 n4
hypermncsia 300-1 n4
hypnosis: accuracy of recall 42-47, 47,
272 n2, 272 n3, 273 n7; normal sources
of information 47, 273 n8, 274 nll;
posr-hypnoric suggestion 266 n28; r.roposed research 47; regression co prev10us
life 42-47, 272-73 n4, 273 n6; therapeutic value 46; xenoglossy during 46
Ibekwe, Nicholas vii
Igbo (Nigeria): anno~n~ing ~reams, .
absence of 175; belief 111 remcarnanon
32, 38-39, 122, 208, 241-42.' 267 nlO;
"enemy" cases 241-42; expenmen~al
birch defects 248, 313 n24; ogban1e
(repearer child) 248-49, 313-14 n24;
same-family cases 174, 175, 292 n5; sex
rario, pronounced 218, 294 nl5
Imad Elawar, case of 136-37, 160, 188,
303 n17
incidence of cases 95-97, 279 n3; culrnral
variations 169-74, 279-80 n4; survey in
India 97, 285 n8
independent investigators 1, 143-45; see
also Haraldsson, E.; Keil, J.; Mills, A.;
Pasricha, S.
India: announcing dreams 175; case
rcporrs 56-58, 89-91, 106, 176-77, 252;

340

INDEX

caste-change cases 56-58, 126, 214-15,

303 n15; early investigations 129, 130,
269 nl7; intermediate lives 176-77;
Moslem cases 173-74; reasons for high
incidence 170-72; sex-change cases 178;
south India, paucity of reported cases
173; suppression by parents 108, 283
n30; variations in cases 173-74
Indika and Kakshappa Ishwara, case of
192-93
lndika Guneratne, case of 149-50, 302
nlO, 303 n15
individuality: defined 235; survival of
235, 310 n3
infancy, possible memories during 309 n2
informants for cases: firsthand 133, 285
nll; reliability of testimony 146-48,
154-58
inherited memory 158-59, 275 nl7, 288
n15
inhibitors of previous life memories 21016
intensity of experience and psychic connections 265-66 n27, 311 n6
interests of subject related to previous life
184-86, 295 n5
intermediate lives 176, 202-3, 210, 218,
303 nl7; Druses (Lebanon) 67, 176, 278
n9; India 176-77
intermission memories 111-13
internal diseases related to previous life
104
interpretations of cases: cryptomnesia 15354, 273 n8, 287 n7; excrasensory perception 159-61, 288 n16; fraud 122, 15152, 287 n6; genetic memory 158-59,
275 nl7, 288 nl5; normal communication 137-38, 150-51; paramnesia (memory distortion) 154-58, 288 nl3;
possession 161-62, 289 nl8; reincarnation 162-63; self-deception 136-37, 152;
sociopsychological hypothesis 112-13,
288 n13
interpreters, use of in interviews 135-36,
285 n12
interval between death and birth 120;
anomalous dares 127-28, 161, 284 n35;
see also intermission memories
interval between first meeting of families
and first written record of case 134, 15556
Inuit (Eskimo) belief in reincarnation 31,
33, 36, 37, 208
investigation of cases: difficulties 134,

136-37; history of 129-32; interview

methods 133-36; psychological rests
141-42; questionnaires 140, 285-86 nl3;
written and printed documents 142-43
written records 135
Ishwar Godbole, case of 270 n21
ismail Alt111kil11;, case of 160
Ismail is, belief in reincarnation 36
Jagdish Chandra, case of 125, 242, 284
n6, 289 n19, 302 n7
Jains (India), interval between death and
birth 175-76, 293 n9
James, William 305 n32
Japanese previous personalities see Burma,
Japanese previous personalities
Jasbir Singh, case of 114, 124, 130
Jataka tales (Buddhism) 269 nl6
Jayawardene, Tissa vii
Johnson, Samuel 264 nl9, 301 n4
Judith Krishna, case of 117-18, 303 nl5
Juggi Lal Agarwal, case of 238-39
Kahl, Olga 307 n38, 314 n25
Kam, I. 25, 307 n44
karma 4, 38, 238, 251-53; recributive
251-53
Katsugoro, case of 129
Keats, J. 253
Keil, Jurgen 1, 71, 104, 125, 144, 157, 164,
178, 216
Keith, A. B. 267 n7
Kelly, Emily W. (formerly Cook) 83, 84,
86, 87
Kenedi Alkan, case of 152
Khin Ma Gyi and Khin Ma Nge, case of
190
Khin San Tin and Khin San Yin, case of
239
Khin Sandi, case of 200-1
Klinefelrer's syndrome 189
Koestler, Arthur 282 n17
Kovacs, D. 309 n 1
Kumkum Verma, case of 105, 118, 303
nl4, 303 n15
Kyaw Myint Naing, case of 247
Lal Jayasooria, case of 116
Lalitha Abeyawardena, case of 117, 241,
302 n9
lamas of Tibet 35, 213-14, 280 n7
language of previous life, subject's inability
to speak 127, 283-84 n.B
later development of subjects 123-27, 143

Index
Laure Raynaud, case of 285 n6
left-handedness 59, 199-201
Leonard, Gladys Osborne 314 n25
Little Hans, case of 184, 295 n2
long-distance cases 151, 238-39
love, as facror in psychical experiences 25,
265-66 n27, 311 n6
Lown, Bernard 101
lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD): memories of previous life 52
Ma (Burmese honorific) see first given
name, e. g., Myint Thein
Mahes de Silva, case of 107
Mallika Aroumougam, case of 107
Manju Bhargava, case of 239
Manju Tripatti, case of 176-77, 303 n17
Marta Lorenz, case of 106, 217, 304 n20
Mary Magruder, case of 50-51, 159
maternal cravings during pregnancy related
ro previous life 197-99, 298 n28
maternal impressions 101-2
Maung (Burmese honorific) see first given
name, c. g., Aung Than
McClean-Rice, Nicholas vii
Mc Taggart, J. M. E. 32, 33, 244, 268 nl4,
312 n15
meditation: memories of previous life
53
mediumistic communicators 15, 303-4
n18, 307 n44
Mehrotra, L. P. 141
memories of previous life, age and manner
of speaking 105-10; strong emotion
with 107-8
memories of previous life, events recalled:
discarnate state 111-12; events following
previous personality's death 111-12;
evenrs preceding previous personality's
death 300-1 n4; mode of death 110,
167; names 110-11, 148-50, 167, 308
n45
memories of previous life, expression of:
in present tense 107; with gestures 105;
with strong emotion 107-8
memories of previous life, factors facilitating: dreams 49-52; drugs 52-53; emotion 54; hypnosis 42-47; illness 52-53,
276 n21; meditation 53; piety of previous personality 213-14; shock, emotional
214-15; violent death 165-66, 210-11,
300-1 n4
memories of previous life, factors inhibiting: increasing age 108, 123-24; lack of

341

attention 109; social activity 109; suppression 95-96, 108

memories of previous life, types of: behavioral 26-27; see also behavioral memories; biological features of cases 28, 104;
genetic see genetic memory; imaged 26;
inherited see genetic memory; panoramic
228, 308 n48
mental illness see schizophrenia
methods see investigation of cases
Michael Wright, case of 83-87, 194-95,
303 n12
Mills, Antonia I, 37, 144, 173
mind and brain 223-27
monism 224; see also dualism; mind and
brain
Monod, Jacques 13
moral conduce, effect on next life 251-54
morphogenecic fields 251, 314 n31.
Moslem: Shiite belief in reincarnanon 36,
38; Sunni disbelief in reincarnation 174
Mounzer Hai'dar, case of 304 nl9
Mu Mu, case of 276 n21
Mu'akkasah, Majd vii
Muklyananda, Swami 232
mulciple previous lives 218-19, 304 nl9
. ,
Murphy, G. 262 n6
mutilation of previous personality s corpse
by parents 248
Myanmar see Burma
Myint Myint Zaw, case of 125
Myint Thein, case of 301 n4
Myint Tin, case of 198, 237-38
Nakphairaj, Sophon ~9 .
names from previous life: in play of subject Il8; subjects' failure co remember
IlO-Il, 167
Nam Toksoz, case of 270 n21, 307 n41,
308 n47
National Technical Information Service vii
Navalkishore Yadav 304 n20
Nawal Daw, case of 284 n34
near-death experiences 228, 307 n43
Necaci <;aylak, case of 183
Necip Onliitaktran, case of 100
Nelson, Lord 200, 298 n29
Newman, H. H. 193
Nightingale, Florence 185, 295 n4
nightmares see dreams
Nirankar Bhatnagar, case of 298 n26
northwestern North American tribes 266
n2; see also Athabaskan; Gitksan; Haida;
Tlingit; Tsimsyan

342
Obeyesekere, G. 271 n32
ogbanje, Igbo concept of 248-49, 313-14
n24
Om Prakash Mathur, case of 296 n9
Ornuma Sua Ying Yong, case of 198
Ossowiecki, Stefan 307 n38, 314 n25
Owen, George vii
Palmer, John 274 nl3
Paquet, Agnes (apparition case) 21-22,
264 nl8
paramnesia 154-58, 288 nl3
paranormal, defined 14-15
paranormal cognition, trustworrhy witnesses of 263-64 nl6
parapsychology 13-14
parent-child relationships, relevance of
cases ro 194-96; triangular see Michael
Wright, case of
Parmod Sharma, case of Ill, 125, 138, 153,
203, 302 n!O
Pasricha, Satwant vii, 1, 97, 102, 122, 144,
164, 219, 283 n30, 290 n21, 292 n30
past-life readings 41-42
Paranjali 35, 228
Paulo Lorenz, case of 124, 125, 304 n20
Penfield, Wilder 305 n29
PL'ris, M. 268-69 nl6
prrsonaliry, defined IO
Perrzoff, Margaret viii
phobias of subjects of cases 60, 62, 75,
116, 182-84, 220; variations with mode
of death 183
physical body, influence of discarnate personality on: disease 104; during gL'starion 250-51; embryo selection 248-49;
sex-change cases 245-46; occurrence of
twins 247
piety: maternal, during pregnancy 198; of
previous personality 198, 213-14; of subjm 198
Piper, Lc:unora 289 nl7
Plato 32, 39-40, 228, 268 n 13. 308 n46
play of subject reLued to previous life 11718, 185

Polar, Can vii, 116, 152

J>olkinghornc:, J. 262 n3
population growth and reincarnation 2079, 300 n2
possession, as interpretation of c;1~cs 161()2

post-traumatic stress disorder {PTSD) 118

Prabhu, case of 284 116
Praka~h Varshnay, case of 275 nl4, 275

INDEX

nl8, 277 n4, 279 n2, 281 nl3, 288 nil,

298 n22, 302 n7
Pratima Saxena, case of 223
Praromwan lnthanu, case of 218, 304 nl8,
304 n25
precocity of subject: sexual 70; of unusual
inreresrs 184-86
precognition 15
predictions or aspirations about next life
98-99, 238
pregnancy: cravings during 197-99, 298
n28; psychophysical inhibition of 246,
250
present tense, use of by subjects 107
previous personality: defined 25-26, 235;
identification of correct 148-50; prediction of rebirth 98-99
Price, H. H. 228, 307 n45
Prince, W. F. 275 nl9
"private cases" 95
prompting of SL1bject 122
psychical, defined 15
psychological tests of subjects 141-42
psychophore, concept of 234, 309 nl
Push pa, case of 105, 137, 153, 176, 303 n 17
Puri Parra, case of 303 nl2
Pythagoras 254, 268-69 nl6, 284 n J
questionnaires 140, 285-86 nU
Rabih Elawar, case of 303 nl2
Raddalgoda, E. C. 141-42
Rajani Sukla, case of 243
Rajsuthajarn, Chaokhun %, 112, 229, 281
nil, 283 n27, 284 n35, 293 n!O, 293
nl2, 298 n23, 303 nl4, 307 n41, 308
n52, 309 n2
Raju! Shah, case of 293 n9, 302 n7, 303
1115
Rakesh Gaur, case of 288 n13
Ram Prakash, case of 219
Ram Tirath, case of 238
Ramesh Sukla, case of 295 n5, 295 n9
Ramez Shams, case of 118, 304 n20
Ramoo ,111J Rajoo Sharma, ClSL' of 190
Rani Saxena, case of 124, 12'>, 188-89
Ranjirh Makalanda, case of 287 n4
Rarana Wongsomhat, case of 11 '1, 18(), 214
Ravi Shankar Gupta, case of 11(>, W>. 183
recognitions: sponraneous 113; by subjects
)]j-15; rnhjecr's failure to nuke 277-78
n8; under conrrolled condiriom I U-14
records, written U ">
reincarnation: of individualitv LVi

Index
reincarnation, belief in (countries and culcurcs): Ainu (Japan) 266 n2; Alevis
(Turkey) 32, 267 n9; American Indians
266 n2; sa 11/so tribes by name Athabaskan 33, 178, 266 n2; Ausrri~ 30;
Brazil 29, 266 n2; Buddhists 32, 35, 38;
Canada 30; Carhars (France) 34; Celts
(Grc:at Britain) 36; central Australian
tribc:s 266 n2, 312 n 13; Druses (Lebanon) 175-76, 179; East Africa 29; educated persons in Asia and Africa 304-5
n26; France 30; Gitksan 208; Great
Britain 30; Greece 32, 39-40; Haida
(Alaska and British Columbia) 208;
Hindus 4, 32, 34, 38, 208, 209-10,
307 n40; Igbo (Nigeria) 32, 38-39,
208, 241-42, 267 nlO; see also repeater
childn:n; India 36, 38, 95; Inuit 31, 33,
36, 122, 208, 268 nlS; lsmailis (Shiite)
36; Jains 175-76, 179; !vloslems (of
India) 36-37; North America 30;
northwestc:rn North American tribes
266 n2; St't' rtlso tribes by name; Shiite
Moslems 29, 36, 38; Tibet 35. 98-99;
Tlingit (Alaska) 32, 37-39; Trobriand Islanders 266 n2; United Scares
30; Vikings (Scandinavia and Iceland)
36; West Africa 29, 38-39; \X!est Europe
30
reincarnation, belief in, special features of:
carried from one life to another 172;
decline of 36-37; desire to be reborn
quickly 211-12; development of cases
94-95, 169-70; nonhuman animal,
rebirth as 209-10
reincarnation, obstacles co belief in:
difficulty in imagining ''younging"
222-23; familiarity, lack of 220-23;
Hinduism and Buddhism, association
with 221-22; monism 224-26; posr~1orrem existence, difficulty in conceivmg 227; responsibility for personal
destiny 231-32
rc:incarnac ion, population growth and
2()7 _l)

rc:incarnation. whether universal 216

repeater children 247-48, 313 n23, 313
n24
replication srndies 143-45
rerrocognirion 15
Richer. ( :harlcs 220, 304 n22
Robena Morgan, case of 76-79, 194
Ronald Mapatunage. case of 295 n9
Ruby Ku~uma Silva, case of 303 n12

343

Sahay, K. K. N. 284 n6
Said Zahr, case of 213
Salem Andary, case of 303 nl2
Samararame, Godwin vii, 122, 283 n32
same-family cases 151, 174-75; previous
personality's predicrion of rebirrh 98-99
Samparh Priyasanrha, case of 312 nlO
Samuel Helander, case of 73-75, 243
Sanjeev Sharma, case of 295 n9
Sayadaw Sobhana, case of see Sobhana,
Sayadaw
schizophrenia, genetic factors 191, 203-5,
299 n33
Schliemann, Heinrich 185
Schopenhauer, A. 30, 32, 266 n3, 267 nll
Schouten, Sybo 112-13, 157
Schrodinger, Erwin 307 n39
The Search for Bridey Murphy 46, 273-74
n9
selection of nexr parenrs, premorrem 98,
238,271 n35
self-deception 122, 152
Semih Tucu~mu~. case of 91-93
sex-change cases 120; examples of 60-62,
87-89; influence of discarnare personality 245-46; variations in different cultures 177-78
Shamlinie Prema, case of 62-64, 119, l9 4,
303 nl2
Shami Devi, case of 270 n21, 302 n9, 303
n14
Sherringron, Charle.s ~05 ~29
.
Shiite Moslems, belief 111 re1ncarnanon 36,
38; see also Druses
sickle-cell anemia 247-49
Sidath Wijeracne, case of 149
Sidgwick, Henry 264 1117
"silent" cases 144
Sirorasa, Nasib vii
.
.
Sivanrhie and Sheromie Hemararch1, case
of 190
skills related to previous life 27, 235-36;
see also xenoglossy
Sleimann Bouhamzy. case of 118
Smythies, J. R. 306 1135
Sobhana, Sayadaw, case of 112, 229, 303
nl4
socioeconomic srarus of persons concerned
97, 119, 283 n26
Socrates 32, 228
Soc Ya, case of 287 114
solved cases, defined 26
Som Pit, case of 295 nl, 307 n41
soul-splitting in reincarnation 208

344
source amnesia see crypromnesia
Souch Asia (also soucheasr Asia) see Hinduism; Buddhism
south India see India
space, mental, concept of 225, 306 n35
spontaneous cases, difficulties 15-16
Sri Lanka 110, 112-13, 131, 213
srabilicy of case fearures 164
Scanley, H. M. 17, 20, 23
sraremenrs, by subjects: accuracy of 112-13;
age and manner 105-10; principal
themes 110-12
Stendhal 163, 290 n22
subject, lacer developmenr of 123-27, 143
subject's comparison of new and previous
parenrs 76-79, 119, 277 n6
subject's longing for previous family 115
suicide of previous personality 219-20,
304 n20
Sujirh Lakmal Jayararne, case of 119, 161,
295 n9
Sukla Gupta, case of 118, 160 302 n9
Suleyman Andary, case of 64-68, 302 nlO
Si.ileyman Zeyrun, case of 183, 287 n7
Sundar Lal, case of 240
Sunderlal, R. B. S. 284 n6
Sunil Durr Saxena, case of 211, 302 nlO,
303 nl5
Sunira Khandelwal, case of 138, 153
suppression of subjecr's memories: by parenrs 95-96, 108; by subjecr 172-73
survival afrer death: belief in IO; possible
modes of 261 n3
Susan Easrland, case of 79-83, 303 nl2
Suzanne Ghanem, case of 150, 213, 243
Swaran Lara, case of 118, 119, 303 n15
Swarnlara Mishra, case of 106, 114, 176,
202-3, 239, 302 n9, 303 nl7
Swedenborg, E. 307 n44
Taru Jarvi, case of 195
rcleparhic dreams see dreams, relepathic
relepathic impressions 5, 171, 236-37
releparhy: as alrernarive inrerpretation of
cases 16; defined 15
remperamenr of subject relared ro previous
life 187-88
testimony, reliability of 146-48, 154-58
Thailand 110, 112, 279 n4
Than Than Aye, case of 210, 303 n14
Thein Htoon Oo, case of 243
Thiang San Kia, case of 298 n23
Thomas, L.-V. 285-86 nl3
Thorndike, E. L. 300-1 n4

INDEX

Thouless, R. H. 261 n3, 305 n30

Thusari Wijayasinghe, case of 287 n5
Tiber: belief in reincarnation 35, 98-99;
choice of next parents premorrem 39;
Gclugpa seer 35; lamas 35; previous personality's prediction of rebirth 39,
98-99, 280 n7; rulkus 35, 213-14, 280
n7
Tin Aung Myo, case of 60-62, 117, 119,
124, 125, 182, 188-89, 197, 311 n9
Tin Hla, case of 125
Tin Tin Myinr, case of 278 nl4
Tinn Sein, case of 112
Tlingit (Alaska): announcing dreams 59;
belief in reincarnation 32, 37-39; previous personality's prediction of rebirth 98
tobacco, subjecr's fondness for see addictions rclared to previous life
Trobriand Islanders: belief in reincarnation
266 n2
Tsimsyan (Brirish Columbia) 178
Tucker, Jim l, 2, 104, 144
rulkus 35, 213-14, 280 n7
Tulsi Das 269 nl7
Tulving, E. 282 nl7
Turkey, cases in 32, 144, 175, 178, 267 n9
twins, differences between: conjoined
(Siamese) 12, 193; identical (one-egg)
71-73, 190-94
U (Burmese honorific) see first given
name, e.g., Win Maung
Udho Ram, case of 301 n4
"unfinished business" of previous personality 212
uniqueness of individual 201-3
United States: belief in reincarnation 30;
cases in (nontribal) 76-89; characteristics of informants 97
unsolved cases, defined 26; fearurcs 16667
unverified cases see unsolved cases
Uttara Huddar, case of 106, 108, 283 n32
variations in features of cases see cultural
variations in cases
Vasiliev, L. L. vii, 19, 20
Veer Singh, case of 111-12, 126
vengefulness, of subjects 70, 92, 196-97,
298 n26
Ventris, Michael 185
Vias Rajpal, case of 117, 281 nll
Vikings (Scandinavia and Iceland) 36, 271
n27

Index
Vinita Jha, case of 242-43
violent death see death, violent mode of
vitalism 12, 263 n9
Voltaire 29
Warnasiri Adikari, case of 303 n15, 303
nl7
Werner, Carolee vii
West Africa: belief in reincarnation 29; see
also lgbo
Whately, R. 163
Wheatley, James vii, 262 n6
Wijanama Kirhsiri, case of 117, 303 nl5
Wijeratne, case of 131
William George, Jr., case of 271 n35, 280
n6, 280 n8
Wimalawathie Samarasekera, case of 137
Win Aung, case of 118, 304 n20
Win Aye, case of 239-40

345

Win Maung vii, 198, 243, 279 n4

Win Myint, case of 242
Win Shwe, case of 304 nl9
wishes, premorrem, about next life 98,
245, 312 n16
written records before verification 155, 157,
162, 289 n20
xenoglossy 46, 127, 283 n32
Yin Maung, case of 229
"younging" 222
Yusuf Kase, case of 240-41
Zeigarnik, B. 302 n8
Zouheir Chaar, case of 195, 237, 252
Zuger, B. 296 nl4
zygosity, testing of 73