True stories that prove past lives are real. past life of a person

“If your child starts experiencing past life memories, what will you do?”

This amazing book, perhaps, will be the most useful of all the "Sofian" publications. Proving with absolute certainty the reality of reincarnations, Carol Bowman goes much further than mere facts.

You will learn how easy and simple it is to remember your past lives, especially for young children. “After the regression, children and adults become more self-confident and calm, heal from chronic diseases and phobias that have haunted them since early childhood.

For 90 percent of the subjects, remembering death was the best part of the regression.

Remembering their own death, many subjects gained confidence in life. They no longer feared death. They realized that death is not the end, it is a new beginning. For everyone, the memory of death was a source of inspiration, making it possible to change the course of all life.

"...We as parents are part of a plan to help our children benefit from these memories."

In her compelling book, which explodes all conventional notions of life and death, Carol Bowman reveals undeniable evidence of past life memories in children. Such experiences are not only real, they are much more common than people realize.

Bowman's unusual research work was initiated by her son Chase's memories of a past life. He described Civil War war scenes so accurately that the details have been verified by an expert historian. But the most striking thing is that Chase's chronic eczema and his fear of loud gunshots have since disappeared without a trace.

Inspired by this, Bowman collected dozens of such cases and, after working through them, wrote her extensive work to explain how children recall their past lives spontaneously and naturally. In this book, she describes the difference between children's true memories of past lives and children's fantasies, gives parents practical advice, explaining how to respond to a child's memories and in what key to conduct a conversation with him so that these memories really have a healing effect on the child's psyche. . "Children's Past Lives" perhaps one of the most conscientiously documented and compelling works on life after death, which, along with the works of Betty J. Eady, Raymond Moody and Brian Weiss, is able to open new horizons for us and transform our view of life and death.

“An outstanding and courageous book... this is a must know as kids are really trying to tell us about their past lives. You shouldn't be deaf."

When a child talks about a memory from a past life, it is as if circles spread across the surface of the lake. The child is in the center– healed and changed. Parents are standing nearby, spellbound by the truth of the experience.– a truth so strong that it can shake and crush all established beliefs. For someone who did not become a direct witness of the event, the very reading of a book about a child's memories of a past life can set the mind and soul to understanding. Childhood memories of past lives have the power to change lives.

Carol Bowman

This book is dedicated to the memory of Jan Ballantine, whose vision and spirit have changed and continue to change the world.

Words of gratitude

I express my heartfelt gratitude for the help to all these people:

To editor Betty Ballantine for her wisdom, patience and long hours.

Norman Inge, who started it all.

My applause to Elisa Petrini for helping put all the pieces together.

Thanks to Kyle King for her magic; Joseph Stern for the phone call; Juteth Wheelock for her efforts and insights; Ellen Neill Hass, Dr. Emma Mellon, Susan Garrett, Rosemarie Pasdar, Amy McLaughlin, and Michelle Mahjon for all taking the time to read my drafts and give their opinions.

I am extremely grateful to all the parents who shared with me the stories of their children.

Thank you, Drs. Hazel Denning, William Emerson, David Chamberlain, Winafred Blake Lucas, and Colette Long for reporting cases and helping me with advice.

My delight and love to Sarah and Chase for allowing me to tell their stories.

Deepest gratitude to Steve, my co-author in life.

“Sit on your mother’s arms, close your eyes, and tell me what you see when you hear those loud noises that scare you so much,” psychotherapist Norman Inge told Chase.

My heart was filled with excitement. Maybe now we will know the secret of my five-year-old son's hysterical fear of loud noises. I mentally went back a few months to the Fourth of July when it all started.

Fourth of July 1988

Every year, my husband Steve and I have a big Fourth of July party at our house. Our friends are always looking forward to this day to celebrate it with us. The party always ended with a trip to the golf course, where the whole city gathered to watch the fireworks. In the weeks before the holiday, Chase excitedly talked about how much joy such spectacles had brought him in all previous years, especially he loved fireworks. His eyes widened as he remembered the multicolored lights flashing across the sky. This year he expected to enjoy a long and beautiful spectacle.

On the fourth day at noon, friends came to us with rocket launchers, crackers and sparklers. The garden soon filled with people. Children were everywhere, swinging, digging in the sandpit, and playing hide-and-seek behind the open porch. Our usually quiet neighborhood was filled with piercing laughter and screams of children. The grown-ups tried to relax on the porch, while the little ones ran tirelessly around the house, usually with the red-haired Chase in the lead.

Indeed, Chase lived up to his name. He was always on the move, full of energy and curiosity. We always seemed to be two paces behind him, trying to catch him before he flipped anything. Friends teased us, saying that by choosing a name Chase we got what we wanted.

Our nine-year-old daughter Sarah and her friends retired to the back of the house, where they sat down at their own separate table under the fir trees to hide from the eyes of annoying parents. They could entertain for hours on their own, decorating the table with flowers and china toys. It was their personal holiday, where "wild" babies were not allowed. The only time we saw the girls was when they ran in and out of Sarah's room, trying on various outfits, jewelry and hats.

As the sun sank low behind the trees, turning the garden orange, we knew it was time to gather the kids and go watch the fireworks. I grabbed Chase as he ran past, wiped the ice cream and cake from his face, and pulled a clean shirt over his writhing little body. Armed with flashlights and warm blankets, we joined the procession heading for the golf course.

Content:

1. Believe it or not?
2. 1824
3. Amazing close by!
4. Ask relatives!

Believe it or not?

Many people wonder if there really is a reincarnation of the human soul?

On the Internet you can find a lot of testimonies of "eyewitnesses" who remembered past lives under the guidance of experienced hypnotists, but there is always room for doubt. Suddenly, the subject retells not the memories of his soul, but information imperceptibly suggested to him, or does his fantasy simply embark on a flight slightly corrected by the hypnotist, giving rise to such exciting stories that you are amazed?

Argument you can't argue with

However, there is evidence of the reincarnation of the human soul, disarming the most stubborn skeptics. And these are the memories of children, their amazing stories about the events of the past, which they could not know in any way. Usually, such bursts of memory occur spontaneously and put adults around the child into a stupor, which excludes suggestion and fantasy.

This article will give the most interesting examples of such cases.

1824

One of the earliest documented cases of a child remembering a past incarnation of his soul occurred in Japan in 1824. A nine-year-old boy from a wealthy peasant family suddenly told his sister that he was absolutely sure that he had already lived before. Doctors, police and historians became interested in his stories, who were amazed at the degree of detail of his memoirs: he named the names of relatives of his past family, the names of animals, dates and events taking place in a place where he had never been. He was interrogated many times and the information received was checked against the data of the archives.

It turns out that in his previous life the boy lived on another island in Japan, also in a peasant family, and in 1810 he died of smallpox, already a mature person. During interrogations, he told the investigators several dozen cases from the life of the village where he lived, named the exact day of his death and told in detail about his own funeral.

What do scientists think and say about it?

American scientist Jim Tucker traveled to many countries, collecting children's stories about past lives for 15 years, and identified some patterns in this phenomenon:

• Most of the children who remember the past of their soul are between the ages of 2 and 6,
• 20% of them remember the period of the life of the soul between death and the last birth,
• 90% of the children surveyed had the same gender in a past life as in the present,
• the average interval between death in one life and birth in a new one, based on the stories of children, is 16 months.

Amazing close by!

If there are young children in your family, it may well be that they, too, can tell something about their past incarnations as those whose parents gave the following evidence of the existence of reincarnation.

1. A three-year-old child once told me that he really likes the new dad, while his father is his own and the only one! And to the question "Why do you think so?" said his previous dad was a very mean man and stabbed him in the back.

2. My son said that he had other parents and a brother, gave their names, but, unfortunately, they all died in a car accident. The next day I asked him about it again, to which he became angry and said that I was not supposed to know more.

3. Once, out of curiosity, I asked my eldest daughter who she was. She answered with a princess. She smiled. I think any girl would say that, but still asked the youngest. And she says: “Grandmother” and tells me that she lived in a house on the mountain with another old woman and it was very difficult for them to carry water from the river up the mountain home.

4. The son of a friend, who was then 2.5 years old, once went to the refrigerator, where there were photographs of military aircraft, pointed to one of them and said: “I crashed on this one.”

5. When my daughter was one and a half years old, she saw me turn on the table lamp and distinctly said: “Electric lamp”. How could she know English at that age?

6. The daughter told me that for a small part of her life she bore my maiden name. But I actually got married, being pregnant with her. When she was only two, she told me in detail about the industry, I think, metallurgical industry, and told about the nuances of a specific narrow specialization.

7. At the age of four, my son told me: “Mom, it’s good that I chose you!” I asked him, "How is that?" In response, he said: “I saw you. You were so kind, and I decided to go to you ”and named the clothes in which I went during pregnancy.

Ask relatives!

The human soul does live many lives. Some children remember this, and sometimes even adults. Perhaps even you, turning your thoughts to your own childhood or asking relatives, will be able to remember or hear unusual cases confirming this wonderful and indisputable fact!

The project “Regression in past lives and life between lives. Soul Awakening". Zhanna Lysenko.

A few months ago, on one of the information portals, I came across an article in which some rather unusual children's statements were collected. It was also interesting to read the reaction of readers to these statements. In short, the reaction can be divided into two types.

1. Those who believe in reincarnation and past lives. Such users reacted quite calmly to these children's statements, realizing that all this is connected with past lives.
2. Those who do not believe in reincarnation. From such readers one could hear something like: "A child's fantasy is good."

Let's talk a little about this. And I will start with an excerpt from the AllatRa book, where it is very well written about all this.

« What is a human being? A human being during life is a multidimensional spatial object, which is built around the Soul and has its own intelligent Personality. The habitual form and structure of the physical body visible to the eye, together with its physical and chemical processes and control system (including the material brain), is just a part of the overall human structure, which belongs to the three-dimensional dimension. That is, a person consists of the Soul along with its information shells, the Personality and the structure, so to speak, consisting of various fields of other dimensions (including the physical body located in the three-dimensional dimension).

What is an intelligent person? In a new construction, in a new body, a new Personality is also formed - this is who any person feels during his lifetime, the one who makes a choice between the Spiritual and Animal natures, analyzes, draws conclusions, accumulates personal baggage of sensual and emotional dominants. If in the course of life a person spiritually develops to such an extent that his Personality merges with the Soul, then a qualitatively new, mature Being is formed, different from the human, which goes into the spiritual world. This is, in fact, what is called "liberation of the Soul from the captivity of the material world", "departure to Nirvana", "achievement of holiness" and so on. If such a merger did not occur during a human life, then after the death of the physical body and the destruction of the energy structure, this intelligent Personality leaves with the Soul for rebirth (reincarnation), turning, let’s say conditionally, for understanding the essence, into a subpersonality. When the physical body dies, the human being continues to exist. In the transition state, it has a spherical shape with helical structures. This formation contains the Soul along with its information shells - subpersonalities from previous incarnations, including the Personality from a recent life.

In the photograph of the Soul, the marginal shell is clearly visible. It consists (as it deepens towards the ball) of red (the remnant of vital energy - prana), as well as yellow and white-yellow colors of other energies. The spherical shape itself is sky blue with hints of light green; has a characteristic spiral structure, twisted towards the center, with shades of the rainbow and white blotches.

The information shells located around the Soul are sensory-emotional clusters, more precisely, a reasonable information structure, which can be compared associatively with a kind of nebula. Simply put, these are former Personalities from past incarnations. There can be many such subpersonalities near the Soul, depending on how many reincarnations a person had.

Anastasia: It turns out that a subpersonality is a Personality, like you, who was active in past incarnations of your Soul.

Rigden: Yes. In other words, this is a former Personality from a past life with all the baggage of sensory-emotional dominants (positive or negative) that she accumulated in her time during her life, that is, with the result of her lifetime choice.

A personality, as a rule, does not have a direct connection with subpersonalities, therefore a person does not remember past lives and, accordingly, the experience, acquired knowledge of these subpersonalities. But in rare cases, when certain circumstances overlap, a vague feeling of deja vu is possible, or short-term spontaneous manifestations of the activity of the last (preceding the current incarnation) subpersonality. This is especially true for a person in early childhood.

There are cases recorded in the works of psychiatry, when children who do not have any abnormalities, with healthy parents, show short-term unnatural behavior akin to borderline personality disorder. I will give one of the examples. A four-year-old girl began to have the same dream: against the backdrop of light, a boy who calls her to him, but does not let her into the light. She began to complain to her parents about this depressing dream, and in the evenings she began to show unpredictable, previously unusual aggressive behavior and unusual strength. A four-year-old girl in anger overturned tables, chairs, a heavy cabinet, did not recognize her mother, threw a tantrum at her in an accusatory manner that “you are not my mother”, “you will die anyway” and so on. That is, the words and behavior of the girl were unnatural for her, but very characteristic of a subpersonality that survived reincarnation and is in a state of "hell", experiencing torment and animal pain. And the next day the child again became normal, behaved as usual. This is a typical case of a short-term manifestation of the negativism of the previous subpersonality. The best thing that can be done in this case is to actively develop the child's intellect, expand his horizons of knowledge of the world and wait for the primary surge to occur, a new Personality to form.

The primary surge occurs, as a rule, by the age of 5–7 years of a person's life. The fact is that in early childhood, before the primary surge, a similar short-term activation of the previous Personality (subpersonality) can occur. The latter, while a new Personality is being formed, is trying to break through to consciousness and seize power over a person.

But much more often there are other cases of manifestation of subpersonality. This is when children aged 3–5 years (at a time when a new Personality has not yet been formed) begin to reason from the position of an adult, experienced person. In rare cases, these may be detailed details of their previous adult lives that are essentially impossible to know at that age. And most often it happens that a child unexpectedly wisely speaks out for some reason, expressing clearly not childish thoughts, and this sometimes mystically frightens adults. Parents should not be afraid of such manifestations, but should simply understand their nature. When the Personality of the child is formed, they will pass.

So, each subpersonality retains the individuality of its past consciousness in the form of desires, aspirations that dominated during its active life. Personality, as I have already said, has no direct connection with subpersonalities, that is, a person consciously does not remember his past lives. However, on a subconscious level, such a connection between the Personality and subpersonalities is preserved. Indirectly, the latter can influence the Personality and “push” it to certain actions, inclining it to make certain decisions. This happens on an unconscious level. In addition, subpersonalities, figuratively speaking, are like “foggy light filters”, due to which the direct connection between the Soul and the new Personality is significantly hindered, so to speak, between the source of Light and those who need it.” (pp. 83-89)

Well, now, I will give examples of interesting children's statements, of which there are enough on the Internet.

I do not give the full story, because it is long, but in short, Maxim's mother had an older brother, 14 years older than her. He loved and cared for his sister very much, their dad died early. My brother was a civil aviation pilot who died in a car accident while returning home from a flight. The story ends with the words of little Maxim: “Do you remember, I promised to take you on a plane? So, when I grow up, I will definitely become a pilot and fulfill my promise, mom!”

“In a Druze community on the border of Syria and Israel, a boy was born with a long red mark on his head.

When the child was 3 years old, he told his parents that he had been killed in a past life. He also remembered that his death had come from a blow to the head with an axe.

When the boy was brought to the village from his memories, he was able to say his name in a past life. Local residents said that such a person actually lived here, but disappeared about 4 years ago.

The boy remembered not only his house, but also named his killer.

When meeting with the child, this man seemed frightened, but he never confessed to the crime. Then the boy pointed out the place where the murder took place.

And to the surprise of everyone, a human skeleton and an ax were found at this very place, which turned out to be a murder weapon.

The skull of the found skeleton was damaged, and exactly the same the mark was on the head of the child.»

“At the age of three, the boy startled his parents by declaring that he was not their son, and that his former name was Chen Mingdao!

The boy described in detail the place where he lived before, and even named the names of his parents.

He also remembered that he died during the revolutionary actions from saber blows and shots. And on the stomach of the child were actually birthmarks that look like saber marks.

It turned out that Tang Jiangshan's former birthplace was not that far away. And when the boy was 6 years old, he and his parents went to his former native village.

Despite his childhood, Tang Jiangshan was able to find his home without difficulty. To the surprise of everyone, the boy was fluent in the dialect of the place where they arrived.

Entering the house, he recognized his former father and introduced himself as Chen Mingdao. Sande - the boy's former father could hardly believe the child's story, but the details that the boy told about his past life made him recognize his son.

Since that time, Tang Jiangshan has had another family. His father from a past life and his sisters accepted him as the former Chen Mingdao.”

(Eng. IanPretymanStevenson) (October 31, 1918 - February 8, 2007) - Canadian-American biochemist and psychiatrist. The object of his study was the presence in children of information about the lives of people who lived before them (which, according to Stevenson, proved reincarnation, or reincarnation).

Over the course of 40 years, Stevenson investigated over 3,000 cases of reports of children claiming past events. Each time, the researcher documented the child's stories and compared them to the actual events.

Stevenson tried to find explanations for the phenomenon not only from the point of view of the possibility of transmigration of souls, he tried to exclude both deliberate deception and cases when children could accidentally obtain information in the usual way or if there is a high probability of false memories of both the subject himself and members of his current or alleged past family . Stevenson rejected several cases. Stevenson did not claim that his research proved the existence of reincarnations, cautiously referring to these facts as "putative reincarnation", and considered reincarnation not the only, but still the best explanation for most of the cases he studied.

After spending many years researching reincarnation, Stevenson wrote:

“Orthodox theory in psychiatry and psychology presents the human personality as a product of the genetic material of a person (inherited from ancestors through parents), changing under the influence of the environment in the prenatal and postnatal periods. But I have found that there are cases that we cannot satisfactorily explain by genetics, environmental influences, or a combination of both" ("Family Circle", June 14, 1978)

Stevenson had his own system of study, his own set of techniques. In his work, the doctor was based on the following principles:

• families in which there was a child who had information about the lives of people who had already died were never paid a monetary reward,
• studies were conducted mainly with children from two to four years old,
• only one for which it was possible to obtain documentary evidence of the recalled events was considered a proven case.

Jan loved working with children. They usually remember "their" previous life and start talking about it from the age of two or three. The most typical is the age of two to four years, less often memories of a past life appear in older children. Often a child begins to talk about his former life as soon as he has learned to speak. Sometimes he has to use gestures to complete what he cannot express clearly in words (Stevenson. Reincarnation: Field Studies and Theoretical Issues, p. 637.)

By the age of five or six (and almost certainly by eight) these memories fade and disappear. This is the same age at which the child's social circle expands, he begins to go to school, etc. Presumably, this new experience is superimposed in the child's memory on those layers that contain memories of the previous life, and over time, the latter become inaccessible.

(Stevenson. Explanatory Value of the Idea of ​​Reincarnation. - Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, May 1977, p. 317.)

In many cases, the first words spoken by children are the names of the places where they lived or the names of people they knew before, which completely discourages their parents.

Talking about a past life, the child may behave somewhat strangely. His behavior may seem unusual for members of his family, but be consistent with what he says about his previous life (and in most cases it is found to be in full agreement with the description given by the relatives of the deceased person) ... Another feature: the child often shows “ adult" attitude to the world and behaves beyond his years seriously, wisely, and sometimes with patronizing indulgence in relation to other children. This is characteristic of those cases where the subject is convinced that he is still an adult, and not a child.

(Stevenson. Reincarnation: Field Studies and Theoretical Issues, pp. 637-38.)

Subjects often talk about the strangeness of their sensations in physical bodies. They express dissatisfaction with the fact that they turned out to be small children in them.

(Stevenson. The Possible Nature of Post-Mortem States. - Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, October 1980, p. 417.)

The events that children remember best are related to the death of their former self and the circumstances leading up to it. If a person says that in a previous life he did not die by his own death, then traces may remain on the body in the form of moles, birthmarks, scars, scars. About 35% of children who spoke about their past life had birthmarks or birth defects, the location of which corresponds to wounds (usually fatal) on the body of the person whose life the child remembers.

(Stevenson. Reincarnation: Field Studies and Theoretical Issues, p. 654.)

The information from Stevenson's research, which I briefly cited in short passages, in my opinion, correlates very well with what is written in AllatRa. At what age do unusual children's statements begin and end, what is their nature and behavior of the child.

Well, one more thing, which I will leave without comment. In some cases, children talk about how they chose their own parents. Here are some examples of such statements. How true these statements are, I cannot judge.

I won’t call my story scary, it’s rather my mystery for life!
In general, I try not to believe in any nonsense, and I deny reincarnation as a phenomenon in general. There is only one fact that does not allow me to completely abandon it!
When I was little, according to my mother, I said that my parents were not my real mom and dad. Called some strange names. Mom still regrets that she did not write them down, because she did not remember to remember. I don't remember all this, but that's not the point. The most interesting thing is that I remember the last day of my past life! This picture has been in my memory since childhood, and I can still clearly reproduce everything! True, except for the names.
In short, it was an autumn day in the distant past, it feels like it was in wartime, because I remember the field, incinerated by tank fire. And emptiness, not a soul ... A huge forest behind the fence, and our house. Right in the forest .. I, a girl of about five, collect yellow maple leaves in a bouquet, and at home my grandmother does something. Where are the parents - I do not know ... perhaps in the war. In the forest there is a huge path leading from the battlefield, and a company of soldiers is marching along it. They are dressed somehow in an ancient way, in some kind of helmets and with rifles on their shoulders. I stand near the tree and look at them, then I turn away, and suddenly a shot is heard. It gets dark before my eyes ... they seem to fill up with blood ... and I slide down the tree and see how my grandmother is running towards me! And that's it, I don't remember anything else.
When I was a child, when I was talking about this, I would point by the ear, saying, “they shot here.” And in this place behind my ear I have a birthmark! Mom, of course, was always in shock.
I still don’t know what it is: either a memory of a past life, or a dream remembered from early childhood. But how then to explain the birthmark? Maybe someone had something similar? Share!
PS I dream of going to a psychic. Hypnosis would help to remember more!

Finding proof of reincarnation is surprisingly easy: there are thousands of documented and well-researched cases around the world, collected by scientists over the past century, that prove the reality of past lives and reincarnation.

There is evidence that at least some, and perhaps all people, already existed in another body and lived a different life.

When anomalous "memories" of events appear, i.e. those who were not in the present life who experience them tend to believe that these memories come from their own previous lives.

However, the memories that flash into consciousness may not be past life memories. Instead, they appear to be "cases classified as reincarnation". The latter are widespread.

The stories suggesting the possibility of reincarnation are endless, both geographically and culturally: they can be found in all corners of the planet and among people of all cultures.

Of course, there are more memories from past lives than from the present, because there were a great many past lives.

For reincarnation, which actually took place, the consciousness of someone else's personality must enter the body of a certain subject. In esoteric literature this is known as the transmigration of the spirit or soul.

Usually such a process takes place in the womb, perhaps as early as the moment of conception or shortly thereafter, when rhythmic impulses begin what further develops in the heart of the embryo.

The spirit or soul of a person does not necessarily migrate to another person. Buddhist teachings, for example, tell us that the soul or spirit does not always incarnate on the earthly plane and in human form. See also: Our alien children: how to improve the process of communication with children.

She may not reincarnate at all, evolving into the spiritual realm, from where she either does not return or returns only to complete a task she was supposed to complete in her previous incarnation.

But what interests us here is the likelihood that reincarnation can actually occur. Can the consciousness that was the consciousness of some living person be reborn in the consciousness of another?

In his book The Power Within, British psychiatrist Alexander Cannon wrote that the evidence for this was too much to ignore: “For many years the theory of reincarnation was a nightmare for me, and I did my best to refute it, and even argued with my clients after the trance that they were talking nonsense.

But as the years went by, client after client told me the same story, despite their varying and shifting conscious beliefs. Over a thousand cases have been investigated until I agreed to admit that reincarnation exists."

Variants and variables in cases classified as reincarnation

Perhaps the main variable is the age of the person who has reincarnation memories. These are mostly children between the ages of two and six.

After the age of eight, as a rule, experiences fade and, with rare exceptions, disappear completely during adolescence.

The manner in which the reincarnated person died is another variable. Those who have experienced violent death seem to reincarnate more quickly than those who have died naturally.

Reincarnation stories tend to be clear and distinct in children, while in adults they tend to be fuzzy, vague premonitions and impressions.

The most common among them are deja vu: recognizing places that you encountered for the first time as familiar. Or the feeling of deja to the horse - meeting a person for the first time with the feeling that you have known him or her before also happens, but less often.

Are reincarnation stories true? Testimonies and evidence about places, people and events were verified with reference to eyewitness accounts and birth and residence certificates.

The stories often turn out to be corroborated witnesses as well as documents. Often even the smallest details correspond to real events, people and places. Vivid reincarnation stories are accompanied by an appropriate behavior model.

The persistence of these patterns suggests that a reincarnated person manifests even when that person was from a different generation or a different sex.

A young child may show the values ​​and behavior of an older person of the opposite sex from a past life.

Pioneering research into recent reincarnation stories is the work of Ian Stevenson, a Canadian-American psychiatrist who headed the Division of Perceptual Research at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.

For more than four decades, Stevenson has researched the reincarnation experiences of thousands of children, both in the West and in the East.

Some memories of past lives, stated by children, were checked, events described by children were found in a person who lived earlier and whose death coincided in detail with the one reported by the child.

Sometimes the child has birthmarks associated with the death of the person with whom he or she was identified, perhaps some marks or discoloration of the skin on the part of the body where the fatal bullet entered, or a malformation on the arm or on the foot, which lost the deceased.

In a groundbreaking article published in 1958, "Evidence for the Viability of Claimed Past Incarnation Memories," Stevenson analyzed the evidence for children's reincarnation stories, presenting seven cases.

These incidents of past life memories could be identified with events reported by children and often printed in obscure local magazines and articles.

Evidence of Reincarnation: First Hand Stories

Reincarnation Story 1: The Case of Ma Tin Ong Myo

Stevenson reports the case of a Burmese girl named Ma Tin Ong Myo. She claimed to be the reincarnation of a Japanese soldier who died during World War II.

In this case, there are huge cultural differences between the person reporting the experience and the person whose experience she is reporting.

In 1942 Burma was under Japanese occupation. The Allies (the Anti-Hitler Coalition, or the Allies of the Second World War - an association of states and peoples who fought in the Second World War of 1939-1945 against the countries of the Nazi bloc) regularly bombed Japanese supply lines, in particular, railways.

The village of Na Tul was no exception, being close to the important railway station near Puang. Regular attacks are a very hard life for the inhabitants, who tried their best to survive. Indeed, survival meant getting along with the Japanese occupiers.

For Do Ayi Tin (a villager who later became the mother of Ma Tin Ong Myo), this meant debating the relative merits of Burmese and Japanese cuisine with the stocky, regularly bare-chested cook of the Japanese army stationed in the village.

The war is over and life has returned to some semblance of normality. Early in 1953, Prior became pregnant with her fourth child.

The pregnancy was normal, with one exception: she had the same dream in which a Japanese chef, with whom she had long lost contact, pursued her and informed her that he was going to come and stay with her family.

On December 26, 1953, Do gave birth to a daughter and named her Ma Tin Ong Myo. She was a beautiful baby with one small quirk: she had a thumb-sized birthmark in her groin area.

As the child grew older, it was noted that she had a great fear of airplanes. Every time a plane flew over her head, she would start to worry and cry.

Her father, Wu Ayi Mong, was intrigued by this since the war had ended many years ago and the planes were now just transportation vehicles and not military weapons. Therefore, it was strange that Ma was afraid that the plane was dangerous and would shoot at her.

The child became more and more sullen, declaring that he wanted to "come home". Later, “home” became more specific: she wanted to return to Japan.

When asked why she suddenly wants this, she stated that she remembers that she was a Japanese soldier and their unit was based in Na-Tul. She remembered that she had been killed by machine-gun fire from an airplane, which was why she was so afraid of airplanes.

Ma Tin Ong Myo grew older and remembered more and more about her past life and former identity.

She told Ian Stevenson that her previous personality was from Northern Japan, there were five children in the family, the eldest was a boy who was a cook in the army. Gradually memories of past lives became more accurate.

She remembered that she (or rather, he, as a Japanese soldier) was near a pile of firewood stacked next to an acacia. She described herself as wearing shorts and no shirt. Allied aircraft spotted him and bombarded the area around him.

He ran for cover, but at that moment he was hit by a bullet in the groin and died instantly. She described the plane as having two tails.

It was later established that the Allies used a Lockheed P-38 Lightning aircraft in Burma, which has exactly this design, and this is an important proof of reincarnation, because the little girl Ma Tin Ong Myo could not know anything about such an aircraft design.

As a teenager, Ma Tin Ong Myo displayed distinct masculine traits. She cut her hair short and refused to wear women's clothes.

Between 1972 and 1975 Ma Tin Ong Myo was interviewed three times about her reincarnation memories by Dr. Ian Stevenson. She explained that this Japanese soldier wanted to get married and had a regular girlfriend.

He did not like the hot climate of Burma, nor the spicy food of this country. He preferred heavily sweetened curries. When Ma Tin Ong Myo was younger, she liked to eat half-cooked fish, and this preference only went away after she once got a fish bone stuck in her throat.

Reincarnation Story 2: Tragedy in the Rice Fields

Stevenson describes the case of the reincarnation of a Sri Lankan girl. She remembered a past life in which she drowned in a flooded rice field. She said the bus passed her and splashed her with water before she died.

Subsequent research looking for evidence of this reincarnation found that a girl in a nearby village drowned after she left a narrow road to avoid a moving bus.

The road ran over flooded rice fields. Slipping, she lost her balance, fell into deep water and drowned.

The girl who recalls this event had an irrational fear of buses from a very young age; she also became hysterical if she was near deep water. She loved bread and sweet-tasting dishes.

It was unusual, because in her family such food was not accepted. On the other hand, the former personality was characterized by such preferences.

Reincarnation Story 3: The Case of Svanlata Mishra

Another typical case was investigated by Stevenson with Swanlata Mishra, who was born in a small village in Madhya Pradesh in 1948.

When she was three years old, she began spontaneously remembering a past life as a girl named Biya Pathak, who lived in another village over a hundred miles away.

She said that the house Biya lived in had four rooms and was painted white. She tried to sing songs she claimed she knew before, along with complex dances that were not known to her current family and friends.

Six years later, she got to know some of the people who were her friends in a past life. In this she was supported by her father, who began to write down what she said and looked for evidence of her past incarnation.

This story aroused interest outside the village. One explorer who visited the city found that a woman who matches the description given by Svanlata had died nine years earlier.

Research subsequently confirmed that a young girl named Biya lived in such a house in that city. Svanlata's father decided to take his daughter to the city to introduce her to the members of Biya's family and check if she really was this reincarnated person.

Especially for verification, the family presented people who had nothing to do with this child. Svanlata immediately identified these people as strangers.

Indeed, some of the details of her past life described to her were so accurate that everyone was amazed.

Reincarnation Case 4: Patrick Christensen and his brother

Another case that offers significant evidence for reincarnation is that of Patrick Christensen, who was born by caesarean section in Michigan in March 1991.

His older brother, Kevin, died of cancer twelve years ago at the age of two. Kevin's first signs of cancer began to appear six months before his death, when he began to walk with a noticeable limp.

One day he fell and broke his leg. After an examination and a biopsy of a small nodule on his head, just above his right ear, it was found that little Kevin had cancer with metastases.

Soon, growing tumors were found elsewhere on his body. One of them was a swelling of the eye, and eventually it led to blindness in that eye.

Kevin received chemotherapy through a vein on the right side of his neck. He eventually died of his illness three weeks after his second birthday.

Patrick was born with an oblique birthmark resembling a small incision in the right side of his neck, at the same place where Kevin's vein was punctured for chemotherapy, which points to stunning evidence of reincarnation.

He also had a nodule on his head just above his right ear and clouding of his left eye, which was diagnosed as a corneal thorn. When he began to walk, he limped noticeably, again, further evidence of reincarnation.

When he was almost four and a half years old, he told his mother that he would like to return to their old orange brown house. It was the exact color of the house the family lived in in 1979 when Kevin was alive.

Then he asked if she remembered that he had had the operation. She replied that she did not remember, because this had never happened to him. Patrick then pointed to a spot just above his right ear.

Reincarnation Story 5: Memories of Ancestors by Sam Taylor

Another case offers important evidence of reincarnation involving an eighteen-month-old boy named Sam Taylor.

One day, when his father was changing his diaper, the child looked at him and said, “When I was your age, I also changed your diapers.” Sam later gave details about his grandfather's life that were completely accurate.

He said that his grandfather's sister had been killed and that his grandmother used a food processor to make milkshakes for grandfather. Sam's parents were adamant that none of these issues were discussed in his presence.

When Sam was four years old, he was shown a group of old family photos spread out on a table. Sam gleefully identified his grandfather, each time declaring, "It's me!"

In an attempt to test his mother, she chose an old school photo of his grandfather as a little boy and sixteen other boys in it.

Sam immediately pointed to one of them, once again declaring that it was him. He accurately pointed to the photo of his grandfather.

What does this evidence tell us?

Cases identified as reincarnation can be vivid and convincing to some extent, as they appear to testify and prove that a previously living person is reincarnated in a new body.

This belief is reinforced by the observation that moles on a subject's body correspond to the bodily features of the person they embody. This is especially striking when past life personalities have suffered bodily injury.

Corresponding signs or deformations sometimes reappear in the new body, as if offering proof that reincarnation really exists.

Many observers of this phenomenon, including Stevenson himself, are of the opinion that the corresponding moles are important evidence in favor of reincarnation.

However, the coincidence of moles and other bodily functions in a child with the fate of a pre-existing personality is not necessarily a guarantee that that person reincarnates into this child.

It may well be that the brain and body of a child with these birthmarks and bodily characteristics are specially adapted to remember the experience of a person with similar birthmarks and deformities.

This passage on reincarnation is taken from The Immortal Mind: The Science and Continuity of Consciousness Beyond the Brain by Erwin Laszlo and Anthony Pick with permission from the publisher.