By Roy Stemman
Not only do many of world
religions embrace the concept of reincarnation but New Age followers with no
religious affiliations are increasingly adopting it into their personal philosophy
of life. Which means that around half of our planet’s inhabitants – including
Hindus, Buddhists and Jains – believe we live more than one life on Earth.
But
where’s the evidence to support that belief?
There
is no shortage of reincarnation cases to investigate, if you know where to
look, but finding the perfect case –
one that satisfies the most diligent of researchers as well as hardened skeptics
– has proved impossible until now. There are, however, some extremely
impressive cases which, although not watertight, are very difficult to explain
persuasively with any other theory.
Much
of this evidence revolves around children who begin talking about a previous
existence almost from the moment they can speak. Some chide their parents for
not having things they enjoyed in the life they claim to remember: perhaps a
car, servants, fine food and clothes or good schooling. A few even try to run
away to find their past-life family.
Toran
“Titu” Singh, born in a village close to the Taj Mahal in northern India, was
typical of such children. He began
speaking at the age of one-and-a-half, sooner than his five siblings, and early
on he demanded, “Tell my grandfather to look after my children and my wife. I
am having my meals here and I am worried about them.”
Asked by his mother who he was, Titu replied, “I am
from Agra. I don’t know how I came here.” Later, he admonished his mother with
the words, “Mummy, please don’t go out in these clothes. I feel embarrassed by
them. My wife had beautiful saris.” He also told her: “Your house is dirty. I
will not stay. My house is very big.” When expected to walk or take a bus, he
complained, “I used to go by car. I will not go on foot or in a bus.” As he
grew older, he would cry almost every day saying he wanted to “go home”.
He
recalled many details of a previous life when he was Suresh Verme and owned
Suresh Radio, a shop in Sadar Bazaar in Agra. Suresh, who was also a noted
smuggler on the black market, was shot dead on 28 August, 1983. Titu’s memories
were so accurate and detailed that his past-life wife and parents accepted the
boy as Suresh’s reincarnation.
As a
journalist, I realised when I encountered these stories – minutely researched
and carefully documented in scientific and parapsychology journals – that they
deserved a wider audience. I launched a magazine, Reincarnation International, in 1994 to share some of these reports
with a wider public. The publication also examined the similar memories that
are often recalled by adults under hypnosis, though I view these with far more
skepticism for the simple reason that their minds have already been exposed to
a wealth of information from books, movies and television that could influence
or even produce the dramas they recall during a hypnotic regression.
Reincarnation International later evolved into Life & Soul Magazine whose editorial
scope broadened to look at other evidence of an after-life. But, like so many specialist
magazines, it eventually ceased publication, in 2001, as the impact of digital
publishing began to make itself felt.
However,
with a wealth of material that was unpublished and with fascinating new reports
and research continuing to appear in academic journals, it was time to put all
this information together into a single volume that sets out to answer many of
the questions that puzzle those who delve into past lives.
Do we
all reincarnate? Do we return as the same sex? What role, if any, does karma
play? Do we have soul mates? Are we part
of a group soul? Do animals have souls? Where do new souls come from?
A
total understanding of reincarnation is only possible if we can provide answers
to most of these questions, but acceptance of reincarnation for most people
will depend on far more than philosophical conjectures.
Fortunately,
reincarnation research has taken us beyond that with impressive new evidence
that some individuals are not only born with memories of a past life which are
subsequently verified but also bring with them into their new life physical evidence that appears to
corroborate those claims, in the form of birthmarks and birth defects. For
example, scars on his head, coinciding with the entry and exit of the bullet
that killed him in his previous incarnation, are also a notable feature of the
Titu Singh case, mentioned earlier.
I have
dedicated The Big Book of Reincarnation
to the memory of the late Dr Ian Stevenson, a professor of psychiatry whose
ground-breaking two-volume study of such cases has added considerable weight to
the already impressive volume of evidence collected over several decades. My
book deals with some of these cases in detail and also provides an overview of
his work.
Stevenson
was a cautious scientist who, for most of his career, referred to his special
area of interest as cases suggestive
of reincarnation. This reflected the fact that none of the cases he
investigated provided 100 percent evidence. However, it is clear that he
eventually accepted reincarnation as the best explanation for some of the
claims he investigated.
It’s a
view I share. In presenting the case for reincarnation, I have also been at
pains to explore alternative theories and to dismiss some claims that can be
interpreted adequately by more mundane explanations.
However,
even if we refute some of the evidence as wish fulfillment, forgotten memories
or other psychological aberrations, we are still left with an important residue
of cases which indicate some individuals appear to have been born with memories
of a former life and that cannot be explained by normal means.
When a
child is able to describe a previous existence and name the key players in that
life, even directing his new family to the village in which he or she was born
and identifying the former home and various relatives, it either challenges our
understanding of human perception and memory, or points very clearly to the
possibility that a soul is not destroyed when the body dies, but continues to
exist until a new “home” is available for it to occupy. And when that new child
– animated by an “old” soul – is born, displaying marks and defects that, it
soon transpires, mirror wounds or injuries from that previous life, then it is
time for humanity to ponder the enormous implications of that discovery.
It is
easy to dismiss such cases as oddities that simply cannot be explained–and do
no more about them. But they have occurred for centuries and show up in most
cultures. The numbers are small but sufficient to be recognized as a phenomenon
that deserves intense study.
After
all, they could provide the answer to the age-old question: “Do we live after
we die?”
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