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Is it possible some--perhaps all--of us have lived previous lives? Even before U.Va. researches found intriguing evidence to support the possibility of reincarnation, Gen. George Patton firmly believed that in a prior existence, before the birth of Christ, he had fought the Romans at Carthage. |
Many Americans believe in the possibility of an afterlife, but what about the possibility of a before-life? Is reincarnation possible?
Dr. Jim B. Tucker, a child psychiatrist and research director at the University of Virginia Division of Personality Studies, attempts to answer these questions in his book "Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives." Dr. Tucker is now researching children's reports of past lives around the globe.
Children can not only demonstrate detailed knowledge of what they claim to be their past lives, says Dr. Tucker, but also often express strong and enduring emotions attached to these memories. Children as young as 3 have thrown fits in their homes, claiming that their parents are not their real family. These children often insist that they be taken "home" to villages and cities far from their homes, often places where they have never before visited. Once there, they can identify landmarks and often lead family members to the homes of their "past personalities."
Recently, John Whitehead, president of the Charlottesville-based Rutherford Institute, interviewed
John Whitehead: What was it that made you believe in the possibility of past lives?
Jim Tucker: You phrased that correctly. I believe in the possibility of reincarnation. The work we do at U.Va. is taking a scientific, objective approach. We are not trying to be zealots for any point of view, but are just looking at an interesting phenomenon and trying to understand it.
JW: Doesn't your work point more to the factual nature, rather than the possibility, of reincarnation?
JT: It does point to it, but it doesn't prove it. The cases we've studied supply evidence that there can be a carryover from one life to another, but that is certainly not the same as saying the cases prove reincarnation.
But if you look at our strongest cases as a group, the best explanation is that there can be times where memories and emotions and sometimes even physical traumas can carry over from one life and somehow be passed to another.
JW: Are you saying there is an entity such as a soul?
JT: It's hard to know. Dr. Ian Stevenson, who started this work here at U.Va., coined the term "psychophore" to describe an entity that would carry this force on to the next life. What that entity might be like, there is no way of knowing.
Different religions that believe in reincarnation have very differing views of what the process entails. There are some that essentially believe a soul moves from one life to another. But then there are others that believe there is this sort of continuation but not necessarily a separate entity that continues on.
JW: You have used the word "spiritual." Do you believe there is a possibility reincarnation is spiritual?
JT: Of course. But then you reach into the question of how you really define that word. These cases provide evidence that there is something beyond the physical realm.
The implications of some cases, such as a young child who says I was So-and-So and I lived in Such-and-Such place and it proves to be true, point to something that has continued on after the previous person died.
WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE?
JW: Does your work make you think more about the fact that there is a God or the possibility of a God? Who or what is running the show if there is this other world where people go? In your book, people seem to have conversations with entities of the other world, what some people call angels.
JT: There are children who describe that. Of course, those memories are completely unverifiable, as opposed to the ones where they say they remember something from another life and we can check to see if those things actually happened.
Again, the different religions that believe in reincarnation have looked at the situation differently. Some do have a God or many gods controlling the process. For others, it is more of a naturalistic kind of mental energy type or process that wouldn't necessarily have an overarching controlling mind that is running things.
JW: Your studies seem to indicate that we are not simply organisms that climbed out of the Darwinian ooze and we die but that there is something else going on.
JT: I think the evidence is there that the consciousness component of ourselves is an entity in its own right in the universe.
JW: Often, so-called paranormal and/or spiritual activities are portrayed as in opposition to science. Are you saying that is not true?
JT: Absolutely. The whole point of our research division is to look at such phenomena and parapsychology. There is no reason paranormal phenomenon can't be studied with the same scientific approach that you would use to study any phenomenon.
JW: Why don't we hear more about your work? Why do you think it is still an obscure kind of philosophy?
JT: Some of the people in the field such as Ian Stevenson were never really interested in going after the general audience. His goal was to convince the scientific community to seriously consider his work. You have people who are a little reticent to go out there and get lumped in with crazy things and get ridiculed.
FADEOUT
JW: You indicate in your book that children 2 or 3 years old have these memories and then they begin to fade. Why?
JT: They usually seem to lose the memories between the ages of 5 and 7. Most lose their memories at the same time we all lose our memories of early childhood. It is a phenomenon called "early childhood amnesia."
JW: Many of the past memories people have are concentrated in the Middle Eastern or East Asian countries, where religions more predominantly believe in reincarnation.
JT: There are many American cases where the families have no belief in reincarnation whatsoever. It is true that it is easiest to find children within cultures which have beliefs in reincarnation. It may be that they are more common there. However, it is certainly easier to find them because people talk about those cases. Whereas in the United States many families are embarrassed about what their kids are saying. They simply don't tell anyone. Even the grandparents won't know about it.
Now with the Internet, we're hearing from more and more American families, dozens and dozens of them. This phenomenon does clearly exist in cultures and in families without a belief in reincarnation.
JW: What is your approach when you are solving the identity of these past personalities?
JT: It varies. If the child has named a place and people have gone and looked, then we go to the other side of the case and talk with the previous family. We go through every statement and see if it is actually accurate for the past life or not.
Ian Stevenson studied one case where a girl gave 25 proper names and the relationships of the names to the previous person, and then you verify that each one is actually accurate.
THE IN-BETWEEN
JW: What do you believe happens in the divine intermission between lives?
JT: Some kids just talk about hanging around where the previous person lived or died. Some will talk about witnessing their own funeral. Sometimes there are verifiable details.
One girl complained about her ashes being scattered, rather than buried, the way she wanted. She gave a lot of statements. Anyway, the previous person turned out to be a woman who, when she died, had wanted her ashes buried under a tree at the temple where she studied. However, when her daughter went to do that, the root system was too expansive. She couldn't bury the ashes so she ended up scattering them.
Then there are others who will talk about going to other realms. Some of the American children will use the word "Heaven" and say they talked with angels.
JW: Let me quote from your book:
"Seventy percent of the previous personalities died of unnatural means in cases where the mode of death is known, and of course a number of those dying by natural means died suddenly as well. This suggests that a violent or sudden death is much more likely to produce a future case of a child with past life memories than other types of deaths."
Are you saying that the sudden deaths greatly increase a person's chance of being reincarnated? And that people who died a normal death go somewhere else?
JT: It looks like the two factors that are significant are dying young or dying an unnatural death. These either contribute to memories carrying over to the next life or they contribute to the person having a next life. My current thinking is that even if these are cases of reincarnation, it would not mean that we were all reincarnated.
For some individuals, the process continues in other directions. It wouldn't necessarily mean another life on this planet in this physical body. But who knows what other realms? You could call it Heaven or whatever you want to, but something besides being here on Earth.
