Evidence of Reincarnation - Children Remembering Past Lives

I've been reading the book, Life Before Life by Jim B. Tucker M.D. and he gives very compelling evidence for reincarnation. Dr. Tucker is a Child Psychiatrist and the Director of the University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies. His group receives cases of young children that remember their past lives and then his team investigates and verifies the facts. For example, in one case, the child accurately gave the names of twenty-five people from the previous life and their relationship to the previous personality, while giving only one incorrect name. More than 2,500 cases are registered in the files of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia.

Dr. Tucker said that the cases usually involve children that begin talking about their past life around the age of 2 until 4 years old. The children almost always stop talking about their past life memories by the time they are six or seven and they go on to lead normal lives after that.

The case can include the child having birthmarks that match wounds on the past life person, statements that are accurate for the previous life, and the child can have behaviors, emotions, and phobias from the previous life. Dr. Tucker says, "75% of the children describe the way that they died in their previous life, and the mode of death is frequently violent or sudden. The lives that the children describe tend to be very recent ones, and in fact, the median time between the death of the previous personality and the birth of the subject is only fifteen to sixteen months."

Dr. Tucker also explains, "With only rare exceptions, almost all of the children describe only one previous life. In addition, though most children do not talk about the time between lives, some occasionally do. Their statements can involve either events that took place on earth, for example the funeral of the previous personality, or descriptions of other realms."

They have cases from all the continents except for Antartica. He explains in the book that it is much more common to receive cases in other countries because reincarnation is more widely accepted. He said that the original founder and director of the Division of Perceptual Studies, Dr. Ian Stevenson initially travelled to India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, and Turkey to conduct research and it was very common to find cases.

Dr. Stevenson has also written books about his findings. In 1966, he published his first book called Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation which included his work that verified what the twenty children said and how well their statements matched the lives of the individuals the children remembered. He became particularly interested in cases where the child was born with a birthmark that matched a wound from the previous life. In 1997, he published the book, Reincarnation and Biology: A contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects. The book has 2,200 pages and includes the detailed report of 225 cases including pictures of the birthmarks. Dr. Tucker says, "Such birthmarks and birth defects are not rare among our cases. A third of the cases from India include birthmarks or birth defects that are thought to correspond to wounds on the previous personalities, with 18 percent of those including medical records that confirm the match".

Even though reincarnation is not as widely accepted in the US, they still receive dozens of emails from American families every year. He said that just last year they received 150 emails. He also explains that he thinks there are many more families with this occurrence. When Dr. Tucker gives talks, people often speak to him afterwards to mention family members that discussed past lives.

Below are a few of the many examples provided in the book:

John McConnell was a retired New York City policeman working as a security guard. In 1992 after work, he saw two men robbing an electronics store and pulled out his pistol. The robbers shot at him and he was hit six times. One of the bullets entered his back and hit his left lung, heart, and the main pulmonary artery. He was rushed to the hospital but did not survive. John had told his daughter, Doreen that no matter what, he would always take care of her. Fast forward 5 years to when Doreen has a son she named William. William was diagnosed with a condition called pulmonary valve atresia which was very similar to the wounds suffered by his grandfather. When William is three years old, Doreen threatens to spank him. William says to his mother, "Mom, when you were a little girl and I was your daddy, you were bad a lot of times, and I never hit you!" William then asks her questions about her cats growing up, and remembers John's nickname for the cat. William also says that he died on a Thursday and went to heaven. He said that he saw animals there and talked to God. He said that both animals and humans are reborn. William said, "I told God I was ready to come back, and I got born on Tuesday." The days of the death and birth were correct. Doreen said that William reminds her of her father.

Sam Taylor is a boy from Vermont who was born a year and a half after his paternal grandfather died. When Sam was 1.5 years old, his father was changing his diaper and Sam told his father, "When I was your age, I used to change your diapers." Sam would also say, "I used to be big, and now I'm small." Sam also correctly remembered that his grandmother made milkshakes everyday for his grandfather. He specifically pointed to the food processor and not the blender that the milkshakes were made in, which was also correct. Sam also said a peculiar statement to his mother. He told her the following about his sister from his past life, "Some bad guys turned her into a fish and she died". In fact, sixty years before, the sister of Sam's grandfather was killed in her sleep, rolled into a blanket, and dumped in the bay. Sam also recognized pictures of his grandfather and said, "that's me!"

Patrick Christenson is a boy who was born in Michigan in 1991. His mother had a child with her first husband that died of cancer at the age of two in 1979. Her first son, Kevin began to limp and then broke his leg at 1.5 years old. This led to a medical workup that included a biopsy of a nodule on his scalp above his right ear. Doctors diagnosed him with metastatic cancer. His left eye was also bruised due to a tumor. He received chemotherapy through a central line in the ride side of his neck. Five months later he was brought back to the hospital and appeared blind in his left eye. He died two days later. When Patrick was born he had a birthmark on the right side of his neck, a nodule on his scalp above his right ear, and corneal leukoma in his left eye that caused him to have very little vision in that eye. When he began walking, he limped, favoring his left leg. Patrick also asked his mother if she remembered when he had surgery and pointed to the area above his right ear. Patrick also saw a picture of Kevin and said that the picture was of him.

Bobby Hodges, a 4.5 year old boy from North Carolina, frequently talked about wanting to live with his cousins. He explained to his mother that he remembers when him and his 2.5 year old brother named Donald were in his Aunt Susan's tummy at the same time. Bobby then became upset yelling at his little brother and said, "Donald, it is all your fault. I told you I wanted to get born real bad, and you didn't want to. How did you take me out of there, Donald?" His little brother yelled back, "No! I wanted Daddy". Aunt Susan was pregnant with male twins seven years before Bobby was born. She had a miscarriage with the twins and the family never spoke of it. Bobby made other comments intimating that him and Donald had been Aunt Susan's miscarried children. Bobby also made comments about other past lives he had, remembering that in one he died from a gunshot wound and another he died in a car accident. He also shared information about the spirit realm with his mother, explaining to his mom, "Mom, people in the other world don't get sick." She responded, "The other world?" and he said, "The world where I was waiting to get born. People don't get sick there. They are just happy and never get sick. I wish we didn't get sick in this world." There were more interesting comments that Bobby made in that chapter but I will keep it short here to summarize.

There are a multitude of cases like the above in the book. Dr. Tucker does not write this book with religion or spirituality in mind and he comes off very academic and neutral in tone. In regards to evidence, Dr. Tucker says the following, "These cases are not about proof, they are about evidence. Since this work has taken place in the messy real world rather than a tightly controlled laboratory, proof is not possible. This is often the case in science and medicine."

Dr. Tucker also discusses how physics supports the theory that consciousness is separate from the brain. He quotes different physicists and scientists. I won't go into detail in this post because I won't be able to summarize it well but essentially recent findings by quantum physicists seem to be moving the study of consciousness forward in a very scientific way.

I'll share my thoughts on this book....

What I noticed is that children discuss these past life memories between the ages of 2 and 7 years old and this correlates with the fact that children are in a theta brainwave state until the age of 6 or 7. The theta brainwave state is the same state a person is in under hypnosis. Interestingly, those under hypnosis have similar experiences of remembering their past lives and the spirit realm. So there is a connection between this work with children and the hypnosis work of Dr. Michael Newton and Dr. Brian Weiss. Dr. Michael Newton's books were based on 7,000 cases where patients under hypnosis described past lives and the life between lives state (the spirit realm). The Michael Newton institute states that they have over 55,000 facilitated sessions worldwide of those that have undergone past life and life between lives regression therapy. Furthermore, there is also the fact that near death experiencers describe being shown their past lives while in the spirit realm. See my reincarnation post for more detail on this.

With all this evidence, I found it strange that this wasn't discussed more. This data from the University of Virginia isn't just a few fluke cases but 2,500 confirmed and verified cases, and that's just cases that have been submitted by curious parents taking their child seriously. My thought was that religion may be the reason this information is not discussed more, which had me questioning why religion doesn't support reincarnation or at least question the possibility if this evidence exists.

In the book, Many Lives, Many Masters, Dr. Brian Weiss says the following: "There were indeed references to reincarnation in the Old and the New Testaments. In A.D. 325 the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, along with his mother, Helena, had deleted references to reincarnation contained in the New Testament. The Second Council of Constantinople, meeting in A.D. 553, confirmed this action and declared the concept of reincarnation a heresy. Apparently, they thought this concept would weaken the growing power of the Church by giving humans too much time to seek their salvation."

I realized that I could really go down the rabbit hole researching this topic of Christianity and reincarnation but it occurred to me that I would end up in the same place. It was 1700 years ago so no one knows for sure. Either way we can say that humanity does not have it all figured out but isn't that fun that we have mysteries to unravel. My opinion is that we should let our curiosity and new research into consciousness guide us, instead of decisions made 1700 years ago.

In regards to why some children have this experience and others don't....based on all my research, I believe that this is part of the soul plan. Dr. Tucker explained that the cases most likely occur when the person in the past life dies quickly and then returns as the child about two years later. It's as if the spirit from the first life is going into the spirit realm and quickly turning around into the next life which is why the child may have these clear memories. Why would souls want to create this situation where children are talking about reincarnation and the spirit realm? To awaken humanity to the fact that there is more than the physical reality and that consciousness continues on past physical death.

Why does the topic of reincarnation matter? For me, it has been important to know that I am more than this one physical incarnation. There is so much more to the story.

Below is the link to the Division of Perceptual Studies:

https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/our-research/

Below is a link to books published by Dr. Stevenson and Dr. Tucker:

https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/publications/books-by-dops-faculty/study-of-reincarnation/