In their 5/29 Friday Afterlife Report, researchers Wendy and Victor Zammit produced a document of unusual importance on reincarnation. Its focus is on the memories of a previous life by very young children. In these cases, the child, usually between two and four years old, remembers their life in detail, including their death. Researchers check to see if the child’s remembered life matches the remembered person’s actual life, which can be traced. If there is a match, the case is considered “solved.” The celebrated reincarnation researcher Ian Stevenson solved 1250 such cases during his life. The Friday Afterlife Report turns to the PSI cyclopedia for examples, 60 altogether. Here is one:
“Born 1954 in Song Klong, Thailand: At one year of age, Ampan began telling her mother about ‘another mother and father’ at Klong Bang Chag (fifteen kilometres away). Ampan cried and asked to be taken there. She said she had been a boy, described a house and various objects it contained, and told how she had drowned after being bitten by a snake. One day, aged seven, she recognized a woman she saw in the street as her aunt, embraced her and asked to be taken to her family. She showed strongly masculine inclinations when she was a child, preferring to dress as a boy and wear trousers, and playing boy’s games such as boxing. Ampan’s statements and behaviours were found to correspond closely to the life and death of Chuey Puang Pei, a boy who was four when he drowned at Klong Bang Chag in 1950. Ampan was taken to meet the family where she made additional statements about the previous life and recognized people and places connected with Chuey.”
Residents of Chuey’s town remembered the case. Ampan’s memories closely matched events in the life of little Chuey, and reincarnation seemed the only explanation for such specific and accurate memories.
The encyclopedia groups reincarnation memories under 14 headings, including
- People Who Knew Each Other in Past Lives,
- Suicide and Reincarnation,
- Reincarnation Cases with Sex Change, and,
- Reincarnation Research on twins.
Two of my grandchildren are twins. Sometimes I wonder if there might have been a connection between them in their previous lives. Stevenson was curious about twins, too. The encyclopedia had much to say on the subject:
“Of the 42 pairs in Stevenson’s study, the previous persons of both twins had been identified in 31 cases, based on statements made by one or both twins in early childhood. “Of every one of these 31 pairs, the previous persons had known each other in some way. Five pairs had been married to each other, eleven had been siblings – two of them twins – six had been relatives of other kinds and nine had been friends, acquaintances or business associates.”
In a video I made last year, I shared my conviction that homosexuality and gender dysphoria more generally were no random genetic accident. Read Stevenson on this subject, again from the PSI cyclopedia:
“Gender non-conforming behaviours include dress, speech, play, gender identification and some other behaviours and persist in life to varying degrees in different subjects…. Stevenson suggested ways in which reincarnation as a theory could help answer long-standing questions. One he lists is the cause of gender-identity confusion and gender dysphoria, that is, distress resulting from the feeling of being in a body of the wrong sex. He notes that in reincarnationist cultures where sex change across lives is acceptable, if children or adults behave in a way appropriate to the other sex, it is simply assumed that they were of that sex in a past life.”
The PSI encyclopedia is of endless interest to those interested in reincarnation. What’s here is only the tip of the iceberg. You can access it by clicking on Read More in the Friday Report.
I’m Stafford Betty, the Afterlife Professor, wondering when, or if, I should tell my grandchildren about Steenson’s intriguing research on twins, who are six at this time. Have a good day.
Stafford Betty, Professor of Religious Studies, CSUB, (ret) is the author of When Did You Ever Become Less by Dying? and Heaven and Hell Unveiled. His novels include The Imprisoned Splendor, The Afterlife Therapist and Guardians of the Afterworld. His latest book, The Hell Dwellers: A Novel about the Dark Side of the Afterlife is coming in 2026. Stafford can be found at staffordbetty.com.
Stafford,
Personally, I’m not attached to whether reincarnation is a fact or not. My current thinking is that I’m happy to come back, or not.
What intrigues me are the afterlife communications reported by people such as Swedenborg, Padgett, and others, in which Jesus (let’s assume for a moment that it is Jesus) claims that there is no reincarnation in the sense that the soul will never inhabit the same physical body twice.
How do we square that circle if indeed it needs squaring?
As far as I can see, there are at least three possibilities.
First, reincarnation: the soul inhabits many bodies over multiple lifetimes.
Second, one continuous life: we live once on Earth and then continue our existence in the spirit world and beyond.
Third, the Group Soul: a child may be tapping into the memories of a larger soul group and experiencing those memories as if they were his or her own. In rare cases, this influence might even manifest as birthmarks. Putting aside the possibility of false memories, the group soul/family of souls might also explain some of the hypnotherapy research that is dismissed by certain reincarnation researchers.
Importantly, of all the evidence for the continuation of life, the Stevenson research is compelling.
There is also evidence suggestive of possession or attachment in adults, yet that does not readily explain the rare birthmark cases.
From what I have read, It appears to be as much a topic of debate in the afterlife as it is here.
When Barbanell reportedly communicated after his death (let’s assume for a moment that it was Barbanell), to Paul Beard, he was unable to conclude that reincarnation was a fact. The subject sounds simple, but it may be far more complex than we imagine.
I agree that this is an in conclusive subject. I find it hard to find fault with Stevenson.
Dear Stafford,
A particularly sophisticated and satisfying answer is given in Ch.VI of the privately circulated Gaelic Manuscripts through Stewart and Betty White, excerpted as follows. In brief, reincarnation – understood narrowly as re-embodiment in specifically earthly conditions – can happen but as a marginal phenomenon, not as a general one: “As a usual thing,” states Gaelic, “we do not return.” Too often, the not inconsiderable suggestive evidence for reincarnation – as presented by Ian Stevenson or Jim Tucker, for instance – is taken as evidence of reincarnation as a general and common phenomenon, which doesn’t follow in the least. The phenomenon of a student repeating a grade is perfectly real; it is a rarity for all that.
WHAT IS REINCARNATION?
“It is a very chancy subject,” said Gaelic, “The best we can hope is to approach it at different angles; and so perhaps obtain a glimpse of principles rather than methods. “It is always well to define what you are talking about,” he pointed out. “What is reincarnation? Have you ever defined it? Reincarnation in what? The consciousness with an awareness-mechanism, which makes it a consciousness, must always be incarnated in something. It is embodied, always; and embodied for one purpose: expression, progress, awareness.”
This might seem self-evident, and a quibble, but Gaelic merely wished to emphasize that reincarnation, as a general principle, is not only true, but inevitable. “But,” he immediately acknowledged, “what you mean by reincarnation is undoubtedly in what your present senses can recognize.” And also, he implied, the question is whether such is a methodical procedure; at least until we have finished with all the earth can teach us. He seemed to find this idea a trifle amusing.
“How can you postulate,” he demanded, “that it is either necessary or important whether, in embodiment, the consciousness should happen, in its need, to occupy precisely the one pinpoint, in an almost infinite range of vibration, that it has happened to occupy before? It does so happen from time to time by what you would be justified to call a fortuity of circumstance – provided you admit fortuity at all – but as for there being a regulation or rule or common sequence, from our point of view, that seems rather an unimportant speculation. Whether you happen to manifest, in your particular need of the moment, on a rather minute globe which you call the earth; or on various other globes whose embodiment happens to be visible within the narrow limits that obtain reaction from your eyes or your other limited senses; or whether you are embodied in other spheres of substance which happen to lie outside those limits; it is all the same thing.”
…“It is a singular arrogance to appropriate the word ‘carnate’ for your extremely straightened field of visibility and to throw into a ‘discarnate’ discard all that you happen not to see or taste or touch or hear or smell or apprehend.”
…“Consciousness,” continued Gaelic, “must go through a steadily expanding continuous embodiment in that to which his awareness-mechanism responds. Continuous, from the earliest birth of individuality. It is not a series of lives, as you call them; it is one life, continuously embodying itself; and shifting in the conditions in which it exists, solely as its own development of all sorts causes those conditions to change. Its range of sense-vibration is continually expanding.”
…“A soul is indeed once-born, or many times born. There are cases wherein a human soul is born again, or yet again, to one environment; either to learn a lesson which is best taught by that environment, or very rarely because of an unfinished service which can better be fulfilled there. As a usual thing, however, if anyone during a lifetime on earth fails to get what should be reasonably expected from that sojourn, it is an indication that he had better change his school. As a usual thing, we do not return.”
Best,
Paul
Paul, I find Gaelic’s claims attractive and very well argued. I hope he is correct and that Stevenson, Tucker, and Ziewe, not to mention Hindu and Buddhist thought, are wrong. If they are, that might explain why very few kids have memories of a previous life: they didn’t have one. Am I correct in assuming that Gaelic thinks most of us are new creations with no past-life memories? One of the challenges for all of us if this is true is the question of fairness: It is consoling to think of those born to good fortune as deserving it, and those born to misery as also deserving it. If we are fresh souls, then karma doesn’t exist, and justice issues scream out at us for some sort of resolution. What say you, Paul?