Have You Been Here Before?

Attempts to find scientific evidence for rebirth have not been very successful

Is rebirth possible? Is there any scientific basis for believing in reincarnation?

Such questions have always perplexed man since time immemorial, but conclusive evidence to resolve this eternal mystery still eludes us.

To start with, let us align ourselves to the thought that reincarnation is not an abstract religious concept or a philosophy, but could be a natural phenomenon. The Theosophical Society which draws much of its inspiration from India, was the first institution in modern times in widely spreading the concept of reincarnation in the West. It has taken reincarnation, as well as karma and spiritual evolution, as one of its cardinal tenets.

Probably the best known collection of scientific data that appears to provide scientific proof that reincarnation is real, is the life’s work of Dr. Ian Stevenson - an academic psychiatrist, who led the study of reincarnation in the United States until his death in 2007. 

Dr. Stevenson’s credentials are impeccable. He was a medical doctor with many scholarly papers to his credit before he began paranormal research. He headed the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia. Dr. Ian Stevenson, who often called reincarnation the “survival of personality after death,” saw the existence of past lives as a potential explanation for the differences in human condition [source: New York Times]. He believed past experiences plus genetics and the environment could help elucidate phobias and other unexplained personality traits.

Instead of relying on hypnosis (like Dr. Brian Weiss) to verify that an individual has had a previous life, he instead chose to collect thousands of cases (in India, Africa, the Near and Far East, UK, USA, and elsewhere) of children who spontaneously (without hypnosis) remember a past life.

His studies are scrupulously objective and methodologically impeccable. The late Herbert S. Ripley, former chairman of the psychiatry department at the University of Washington in Seattle, noted, “We are lucky to have someone of his ability and high integrity investigating this controversial area. Wrote Dr. Harold Lief in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases: “Either he is making a colossal mistake, or he will be known as the Galileo of the twentieth century.”

Spontaneous past life memories in a child can be investigated using strict scientific protocols. Hypnosis, while useful in researching into past lives, is less reliable from a purely scientific perspective. He has over 3,000 cases in his files. Many people, including skeptics and scholars, agree that these cases offer the best evidence yet for reincarnation.

In order to collect his data, Dr. Stevenson methodically documents the child’s statements of a previous life. Then he identifies the deceased person the child remembers being, and verifies the facts of the deceased person’s life that match the child’s memory. He even matches birthmarks and birth defects to wounds and scars on the deceased, verified by medical records (such as autopsy photographs). His strict methods systematically rule out all possible “normal” explanations for the child’s memories.

Some of these children have recognized former homes and neighborhoods as well as still-living friends and relatives. They have recalled events in their purported previous lives, including their often violent deaths. In many cases birthmarks and other physical anomalies match up with injuries suffered in the prior life (for more read “Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect”)

The most obvious objection to reincarnation is that there is no evidence of a physical process by which a personality could survive death and travel to another body. Another objection is that most people do not remember previous lives. Possible counter-arguments are that not all people reincarnate, or that most people do not have memorable deaths.

For the foreseeable future, there can be no absolute scientific proof of reincarnation, and none against it. It is up to the individual whether they take a personal stand or not on the issue. Next week I will respond to your questions and concerns about rebirth.

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Thought for the Week

“It is the secret of the world that all things
subsist and do not die, but only retire
a little from sight and afterwards return again.
Nothing is dead;
men feign themselves dead,
and endure mock funerals and there they stand
looking out of the window , sound and well,
in some strange new disguise.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
US Philosopher & Poet
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times