PARANORMAL - REINCARNATION
Posted by anthonynorth on March 13, 2007
Mary Lurancy Vennum. a thirteen year old girl, lived in Watseka, Illinois in 1877. Following a fit, she woke up claiming to be a neighbour’s dead daughter, Mary Roff. For four months she literally became the dead girl before reverting to her former self.
This is one of the most famous cases of reincarnation. Typical was Dorothy Eady, who became convinced she was an ancient Egyptian. She moved to Egypt to live the life of her previous incarnation in a small village until her death in 1981. Jenny Cockell from Northamtonshire had dreams from a child about ‘Mary’ who lived close to Dublin. In the late 1980s she located the woman, who had died in 1932, and met her children.
Reincarnation is the belief that people live many lives, the soul transferring to another upon death. Centred around eastern religions, the belief can be traced back to early tribal societies, who lived according to the cycles of nature.
This understanding of ‘cycles’ could lie at the heart of the belief, with everything in eastern religions being cyclical. Therefore it is obvious that such cycles would intrude upon beliefs in life after death.
Dr Ian Stevenson researched many eastern cases from the 1960s onwards. Typical of such cases is Kumari Shanti Devi, born in Delhi in 1926.As a girl she claimed to be the wife of Kedar Nath Chaubey, a hundred miles away. Taken to his village, she had accurate information about this previous life.
Evidence of reincarnation can come in two forms. Typically, as seen, a child can awake and seem to have knowledge of a previous life. Often the facts are confirmed, but could similarly arise from hearing of a dead person and taking the facts into the mind.
The second form is evidence grasped from past life regression during hypnosis. However, it is often the case that such previous lives are only gained when hypnotized by a therapist who believes in the phenomenon. Has he transferred the belief on?
One explanation for the correct information that can be given is cryptomnesia. This is the ability of the mind to remember facts from films, books, etc, that you seem to have ‘forgotten.’ When remembered, they ally themselves to a believed previous life.
A typical case is that of Jane Evans who, in the 1970s, recounted six previous lives. One was of Livonia from York when the future Constantine the Great lived there. The accurate facts were eventually traced to a novel by Louis de Wohl.
A related phenomenon to supposed reincarnation could be multiple personality. Here, a person’s mind fragments into many different characters which take it in turn to take over the body. A combination of this and cryptomnesia could account for much of what we think of as reincarnation.
© Anthony North, November 2006
See my Mysteries page, above, for more paranormal; or why not try my Paranormal UFO Occult page on Eye on the World?
March 13, 2007 at 10:27 pm
multiple personalities and cryptomnesia does not account for children having knowledge of people and places that are accurate and not have any way of knowing these facts from normal means or children having birthmarks corresponding to a past life injury. It is a well known fact that hypnotism is not a reliable method of remembering past life memories, the best cases of reincarnation come from young children who remember their past life.
March 13, 2007 at 11:07 pm
The birth marks correlation is not as fascinating as it seems. Everyone has many blemishes, birth marks, etc. It would be quite common for one to resemble an injury from a previous life. Take an injury on an arm. A future child has a birth mark on the arm. It is rarely pointed out where on the arm the injury was. A mark on the arm will do.
As for information ‘remembered’ by a child, let’s take the two most often used cases - Mary Vennum and the Pollock children. Mary was a neighbour of the family of the dead child. Are we to say that she never overheard the bereaved father talking about her dead daughter? Unlikely.
As for the Pollock children, are we saying that the mother never spoke about her dead children, the new children overhearing? I’d say quite impossible. There is some fascinating research yet to do on the human mind. We should not pollute it by invoking ’supernatural’ explanation.
I am not saying reincarnation is not exactly what believers think it is. But it is a belief. There is nowhere to go from this explanation. By researching psychological possibilities, we have room to further our knowledge. Where that knowledge will end up, we cannot say. Maybe it could even extend the mind to the point that a link with the dead could come. Closed mindedness can involve sceptics and believers both.
March 14, 2007 at 12:42 am
I have read about stronger cases of reincarnation that thoses you mention above, as im sure you probably already know they have ammased over 2500 cases at the university of Virginia. Personally im unsure if reincarnation exists or not because the evidence supporting reincarnation is mostly anecdotal. I am open minded enough to see that there probably is some other exlpanation to explain the evidence, but i cannot rule out the possibility of reincarnation being true either. I have respect for the integrity and honesty of the late Dr Stevenson and the man taking his place Dr Jim Tucker and in their opinion on some of the stronger cases reincarnation seems the best explanation. So i guess my stance on reincarnatoin is that its a possible phenomenon, i think to completely rule it
out would be a sign of close mindness.