Science of Reincarnation
Last updated
Last updated
“The statistical probability that reincarnation does in fact occur is so overwhelming . . . that cumulatively the evidence is not inferior to that for most if not all branches of science...” - Doris Kuhlmann-Wilsdorf, physicist
The Theory of Reincarnation states that every human being has an immortal soul - defined as an etheric body of non-material consciousness. The soul is an energy body. Just as energy cannot be created nor destroyed - the soul cannot die or has no end. The soul only can be modified or converted to other forms.
Serious scientific study of reincarnation has indeed been undertaken, despite the fact that it is a touchy subject, and the results ultimately challenge the belief systems of many. This topic has been studied by numerous scientists who belong to various academic institutions from all over the world. In the interest of concise but compelling argument choosing which examples and studies to highlight can be difficult given how many of them exist. Worldwide, more than 5,000 specific cases have been examined in great detail, more so where these beliefs are more culturally accepted (for example in Asia), although cases have been documented on every single continent.
Much of today’s reincarnation research comes to us from the legacy of Ian Stevenson. Ian Stevenson was the Carlson Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Division of Parapsychology, Department of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry, at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.
In 1967, he became the founder and director of the university's Division of Perceptual Studies, which investigates the paranormal. Stevenson became known for his research into cases he considered suggestive of reincarnation. Thank you Ian for your life’s work.
The leading research institute for reincarnation research - the Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) is located at the University of Virginia. Researchers there have investigated cases of young children who report memories of previous lives for over fifty years. Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, the pioneer of this work, published numerous scholarly articles and lengthy books about cases from all over the world.
Over 2,500 cases have been documented of young children with memories they say are of a previous life and 1400 cases - like that of James Leininger - have resulted in the identification of what Stevenson called the “previous personality” based on facts provided by the child.
In 250 of these solved cases, the previous personality was a complete stranger to the child’s family. Most of them have occurred among families in Thailand, Burma, India and Sri Lanka, some of them many decades ago, where the cultures accept the notion of rebirth and are more likely to make the cases known. It is somewhat of an irony that one of our strongest cases on record happens to be in america.
After working with Stevenson for several years, Jim Tucker took over his research when Stevenson retired in 2002. A board-certified child psychiatrist, Tucker is an associate professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia. He is the director of DOPS and has published two books on children with past-life memories and numerous paper and supervises cases at the University Child and Family Psychiatry Clinic.
Past Life Memory Research (PLMs)
Children can have verifiable past life memories that can be independently corroborated. Over many decades, researchers have documented cases of children - often as young as two - reporting memories they say are from a previous life. In some cases, the children can present specific names, places and events that they never can had a chance to know about. These specifics can be used to “solve” the case by going back years in the public records.
💡“There are claims in the parapsychology field which, in my opinion, deserve serious study,” with [one] being “that young children sometimes report details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation.” - Carl Sagan, 'The Demon Haunted World', in his chapter "The Marriage of Scepticism and Wonder"
Young children may exhibit nightmares about a previous death, behaviors and knowledge related to a previous career, longing for past family members and phobias related to the past life. About 35% of children who claim to remember previous lives have birthmarks and/or birth defects that they (or adult informants) attribute to wounds on a person whose life the child remembers [1].
These cases have been studied systematically for almost sixty years (since 1961) but they are little known outside a small group of specialist researchers.
The James Linegar case is one of a handful of solved American cases on file. How can one explain a two year old boy providing specific details about someone unknown to him or his family who died 53 years before he was born? Well little James Leininger insisted he was that person and never had any doubt about that. It turned out that all his memories matched the life of one person: James Huston Jr. - a committed World War II pilot who loved to fly and who died in Japan in 1945. There was absolutely no connection between the two families.
Crucial to the importance of the Leininger case is the fact that there was a record of James's statements made long before the identity of Huston was discovered. This is always important because it shows that no memories were altered or adjusted after the fact to make them fit the life of the discovered previous personality -they were all on the record before that person was located. There were many additional details and comments, some witnessed by relatives, veterans and James Huston’s sister Anne, that were not dated correctly.
Equally important were the intense emotions connected to the memories, especially those manifesting in repritive, terrifying nightmares so vivid it was as if the small boy were reliving the crash. The acting out of the memories in play and the display of inexplicable knowledge about World War II aircraft, also added to the strength of the case.
“The children in our cases often show behaviors that appear connected to their reports of past-life memories, which relate to the occupation or skills of the previous person” Jim says. Examples in James’s case include the “cockpit” he created in a closet of Bruce’s home office in an old car seat, the scores of aircraft drawings he made and his knowledge of obscure details such as a missing antenna on a model airplane and a Japanese Zero plane being miscalled a “Tony” as it shot across a television screen.
Even though no one conducted psychological assessments of his parents: Bruch and Andrea, there is no evidence that anything external to James, such as trauma of psychological disturbances in the family, contributed to the memories that were surfacing in his mind.
James's parents did not appear to have an undue influence on the unfolding of the memories and have stated that they only asked James about them when he brought them up. Anecdotally, James’s parents are catholic and initially did not believe in reincarnation.
“We have found no evidence that parental influence causes the cases to become exaggerated” Jim Tucker states. “The initial attitude that each parent has toward the past-life claims shows no correlation with the number of accurate statements that child is eventually credited with making or with the overall strength of the case. Rather than enlarging the claims, many of the parents actively discourage their children’s talk about a previous life” Despite Andrea’s openness to belief in past-life memories, Bruce was determined to disprove the case, not prove it. Regardless, the differing beliefs of James’s parents regarding the source of his information would not and did not, change the precision of the details James provided. Both parents were primarily concerned for Jame’s well-being above all else.
Although James provided many more statements overall, those relevant for research are the memories recorded and written prior to the resolution of the case. These could then be checked against the life of James Huston Jr. discovered later. It is this group of primary statements, dated by Bruce’s printed documents, emails and the ABC video footage, which I will focus on now.
Twelve statements were well established by the time James was 3 years old. They were:
3-yr-old recalls past life murder, identifies killer and locates his body
In a shockingly surreal incident, a three-year-old boy has not only revealed the details of his murder in his past life, but has also recognised his killer.
The boy, who belongs to the Druze ethnic group in the Golan Heights region near the Syrian and Israeli border, has a long, red birthmark on his head and claims that he was murdered with an axe.
According to Druze beliefs, birthmarks are related to past-life deaths and when the boy was old enough to talk, he told his family that he had been killed with an axe blow to his head.
It is customary for Druze elders to take a child at the age of 3 to the home of his previous life if he remembers it. The boy already knew the village he was from, and upon reaching the village, he also remembered his past life name.
Village locals told the elders that the man who the boy was claiming to be a reincarnation of had gone missing before four years.
The boy also remembered the full name of his killer, who upon confrontation, turned white and refused to admit to the murder.
The three-year-old then claimed that he could take the elders to where the very spot where the body was buried. On reaching the spot, they not only discovered the skeleton, but also the wound to the head, which was strikingly similar to the boy's birthmark. They also found the axe that had killed the boy in his previous life.
The killer then had no option but to admit to the crime.
The entire story has been documented in German therapist Trutz Hardo's book 'Children Who Have Lived Before: Reincarnation Today'.
Ian Stevenson published many academic research papers and books on his research. One of them is 20 Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation which was originally published in 1966 as Volume 26 of the Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research.
Thukdam (Tib: ཐུགས་དམ་) is a Buddhist phenomenon in which realised master’s consciousness remains in the body despite its physical death. Though they are declared clinically dead, their bodies show no signs of decay and are found to remain fresh for days or weeks without preservation. Scientific inquiry into this phenomena has begun a few years ago under the initiative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
In Tibetan Buddhism, it is said that certain meditation practices can alter the appearance of the body, transforming it into five radiant lights. The name given to this physical fluorescence is “rainbow body.”
In Vajrayana traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, tangible matter is considered to be made up of five elements: space, air, fire, water, and earth. As described in Tibetan literary sources, including The Tibetan Book of the Dead, the elemental energies that make up the cosmos are understood to be undifferentiated from those that make up the human body. Therefore, the body is simultaneously an individual person and the cosmic whole.
Certain Buddhist meditation practices are meant to alter the gravitational field of these five elements that constitute the body, transforming them into the five radiant lights of the color spectrum. The Tibetan name given to this physical fluorescence is jalu, literally meaning, “rainbow body.” Rainbow body is also the name given to the transformation of the ordinary physical body as a result of years of specific disciplined practices.
Tibetan traditions have identified signs that indicate when a practitioner has achieved rainbow body. While alive, it is said that the bodies of these beings do not cast a shadow in either lamplight or sunlight. At death, it is said that the physical body dramatically shrinks in size, exuding fragrances and perfumes rather than the odors of decomposition. A common Tibetan metric for the shrunken corpse of a rainbow body is the “length of a forearm.” Other signs are the sudden blooming of exotic plants and flowers anytime of year, as well as rainbows appearing in the sky.
There is also a special kind of rainbow body known as the “great transference into rainbow body,” or jalu powa chemo. This is the complete transference of the material body into radiance so that the only thing left of the body is hair and fingernails. While the historical origins of this phenomena are not well studied, the concept of the rainbow body is associated with the eighth-century Dzogchen meditation master Padmasambhava who, according to legend, achieved great transference and entered into a deathless state of being.
Reports from inside Tibet of rainbow bodies have emerged sporadically over the past century, though there has been an upturn of accounts over the past decades. The best known case is that of Yilungpa Sonam Namgyel, who achieved rainbow body in 1952, as recounted by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in his memoir, Born in Tibet. There is also the case of Changchub Dorje, a medical doctor and leader of a Dzogchen community in the Nyarong region of eastern Tibet, about whom Chogyal Namkhai Norbu recounts in The Crystal and the Way of Light.
Material bodies dissolving into light is the subject of Rainbow Body and Resurrection by Father Francis V. Tiso, a priest of the Diocese of Isernia–Venafro who holds a PhD in Tibetan Buddhism. Exploring the body as a vehicle of spiritual transformation, this book presents Father Tiso’s research on postmortem accounts of the rainbow body of Khenpo A Chö (1918–98) in eastern Tibet, historical background on Dzogchen and early Christianity, and a comparative discussion of the rainbow body and the mystical body of Christ.
Incorruptibility is a Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox belief that divine intervention allows some human bodies (specifically saints and beati) to avoid the normal process of decomposition after death as a sign of their holiness. Bodies that undergo little or no decomposition, or delayed decomposition, are sometimes referred to as incorrupt or incorruptible.
Incorruptibility is thought to occur even in the presence of factors which normally hasten decomposition, as in the cases of saints Catherine of Genoa, Julie Billiart and Francis Xavier.[1]
In 2020, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) has reported that the Taiwan-based Tibetan Buddhist monk and scholar Geshe Jampa Gyatso since last month entered the tantric meditative state of thukdam (Tib: ཐུགས་དམ་)—a Tibetan term for the advanced meditative state practiced by Buddhist masters during the intermediate post-death period.
Citing information from the Taiwan branch of the Office of Tibet, the CTA said that Geshe Gyatso was reported to have died on 14 July, and that the unusual circumstances had been taken as an opportunity to gain a deeper scientific understanding of the thukdam state. The geshe’s remains were scheduled to be cremated today, in accordance with an astrological reading taken following his death.
After his clinical death on July 14, the mortal remains of Geshe Gyatso was returned to his funeral home. His close friend, Geshe Norbu of Sera Jey Monastery who had arrived for the prayer services held on the first and second day observed that his body emitted no signs of death in hue or odour, and assessed that the deceased had entered the state of thukdam.
On the third day, President Abbot Jigme Namgyal of the International Tibetan Buddhist Centre had seconded the observation.
At the time, Taiwan was in the midst of peak summer, yet nothing could be detected from an observation of the mortal remains.
The staff of the Office of Tibet revisited the body on the 5th day to determine signs of decay and decomposition. Similarly, it was examined by medical professionals who expressed their complete astonishment at the phenomenon, and the account of which was subsequently apprised to the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. (Central Tibetan Administration)
Geshe Gyatso was a spiritual guide at the Taiwan branch of the Office of Tibet.
Prof. Ting-kuo Lee, who previously participated in a 2018 dialogue in Dharamsala on quantum physics between the Dalai Lama and Chinese scientists, led a research team from Academia Sinica to undertake the first scientific examination of Geshe Gyatso on 24 July.
Under the guidance of the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, changes to the physical state of Geshe Gyatso’s body were documented with photographs and video. The CTA reported that a physical examination showed that oxygen levels in the body were not far below those of a living person, with a reading of 86. A lack of decomposition was observed in internal organs, while the skin was described as remaining supple, and a “facial glow and warmth was noted under close examination.” (Central Tibetan Administration) On 28 July and 1 August, a team from Taiwan University recorded significant activity from neural readings of the brain.
“The observations of the scientists, professors, medical professionals, along with the photo and video documentation, accounts of caretaker and students on the Geshe’s 28 days of thukdam will also be submitted to the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama,” the CTA reported. (Central Tibetan Administration)
Past life regression is a method that uses hypnosis to recover what practitioners believe are memories of past lives or incarnations. The practice is widely considered discredited and unscientific by medical practitioners, and experts generally regard claims of recovered memories of past lives as fantasies or delusions or a type of confabulation.
The technique used during past-life regression involves the subject answering a series of questions while hypnotized to reveal identity and events of alleged past lives, a method similar to that used in recovered memory therapy and one that, similarly, often misrepresents memory as a faithful recording of previous events rather than a constructed set of recollections. The use of hypnosis and suggestive questions can tend to leave the subject particularly likely to hold distorted or false memories.
In 1958, Hypnosis was recognized by the American Medical Association (AMA) as a method for applications in both medicine and dentistry.
Since then hypnosis has become highly respected and sought after to alleviate a number of conditions, to manage habits and relieve stress using the vast resources of the subconscious mind.
The American Board of Medical Hypnosis exists for the purpose of certifying hypnosis practitioners for physicians. Currently, hypnosis is a legal replacement for anesthesia in 7 states in the USA. This means during surgery, the patient forgoes medication and is instead in the hypnotic state while an appendix is removed, for example.
People do not hallucinate in hypnosis. The conscious mind is not unconscious. [In fact] it is very aware of what is going on around at all times around the subject. It is not as if you were in bed asleep at night in a deep Delta state. You are in what we call an alpha or theta state so your conscious mind is able to work and help with information that we're deriving from your subconscious. Whether you want to believe in hypnosis or not depends on your willingness to accept self-reports as data. All I can tell you is that I was a skeptic at first about the whole process of past life regression and working in the life between lives. What convinced me that it was real was that the my patients were telling me everything that had actually happened to them in the past was their consistency of their reports. It didn't matter whether someone came to me who is deeply religious or an atheist or any philosophical persuasion in between. Once I had [my patients] in deep hypnosis they all told me the same thing about the spirit world and about their life between lives. [They said] at the moment of death you rise above your body and you look back at it. There have been a lot of books written about near-death experiences (NDEs) and certainly people who have gone through this have appeared on television and radio and have described to the public in many forums how they felt and what. -Michael Newton 7:00 minute youtube
Dr. Michael Newton, a certified Master Hypnotherapist and founder of the Newton Institute, began regressing his clients back in time to access their memories of former lives, he stumbled onto a discovery of enormous proportions: that is is possible to “see” into the spirit world through the mind’s eye of subjects who are in a hypnotized or superconscious state; and that clients in this altered state were able to tell him what their soul was doing between lives on earth.
Hopefully his research will shake your preconceptions about life after death. Dr. Newton spent his career regressing hundreds of patients and he wrote a book encapsulating 29 specific cases called Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives. His book represents many years of research and insights to help people understand the purpose behind their life choices and how and why your soul - and the souls of those you love - live eternally.
In the Creation story, we read of God blowing a “breath of life” into the man of earth and dust (Genesis 2:7). The jewish people believe in the concept of the the soul which they call neshamah meaning ‘breath or breath of life.’ They believe every form of life possesses a "soul." Animals have souls, as do plants and even inanimate objects; every blade of grass has a soul, and every grain of sand. Not only life, but also existence requires a soul to sustain it—a "spark of Godliness" that perpetually imbues its object with being and significance. Each soul is seen as the expression of God's intent and vision in creating that particular being.
Ancient Jews displayed an awareness of how influential non-Jewish philosophers regarded the soul. For example, the Greek Jew Philo tried to use the three words associated with spirit–neshamah, nefesh, ruah–to support Plato’s claim that the soul has three parts. Literature of the Talmudic period gives us images of body and soul in harmony. “Just as the Holy One of Blessing fills the world, so does the soul [neshamah] fill the body. Just as the Holy One of Blessing sees but cannot be seen, so does the soul see but cannot be seen… Just as the Holy One of Blessing is pure, so is the soul pure” (Berakhot 10a). The Jewish people have a gratitude prayer to say to God every morning for renewal of both body and soul: “I offer thanks to You, living and everlasting King, for having returned to me my soul with compassion and great faithfulness” (the Modeh Ani prayer).
Samsara, the cycle of death and rebirth of the soul, which is a core aspect of the great Dharmic religions: Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Jainism. Reincarnation also features prominently in Jewish mysticism. Often overlooked, both by Jews and by students of Jewish tradition, is gilgul, a concept that is described in great detail throughout the Kabbalah. Very much in line with samsara, which is often depicted as a wheel in Buddhist art, the word gilgul comes from the Hebrew root meaning “to spin.” The soul, in the kabbalistic view, spins onward through a great many bodies, striving after a higher form of perfection.
Though it is likely that Jewish ideas about transmigration are rooted far back in antiquity, the first explications of gilgul appear in medieval Kabbalah, in the Zohar and elsewhere. One of the earliest of these can be found in Sefer HaBahir (“The Book of Brightness”), an abstruse mystical tract of mysterious origin that began to circulate among kabbalists in 13th-century Europe. In a well known passage, the cycle of reincarnation is likened to a vinter who plants grapes that become sour. Disappointed, he clears his vineyard and plants a new crop, which also becomes sour. The Bahir asks: “How many times must he go through the process? He said, ‘Up to a thousand generations.’” Thus it is with the soul, which accrues merit (or not) over the course of countless lifetimes.
