One of the most important questions of mankind is death. Is there life after death, what happens after death, is the body just a cover? Ian Stevenson is a scientist who is looking for answers to all these questions and I am publishing his work on reincarnation and also an interview with him that was published in Omni magazine. Ian Stevenson is a Westerner and that is very important because in the Eastern part of the world there is no problem with the belief in reincarnation. They see it as normal and they don't see it as superiority. Evolution is really about good people and bad people. ... Let's take a look at this topic that will interest you.

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MYSTERY REINCARNATION, WHAT HAPPENS AFTER DEATH

Ian Stevenson is known as the scientist who introduced reincarnation to the West, where it is more widely known and believed in the East. What is reincarnation? Although simply defined as the transmigration of souls, many parapsychology experts agree that the dynamics of reincarnation are complex.

Dr. Ian Stevenson, a professor of psychiatry born in Quebec, Canada, became chairman of the Department of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Virginia before the age of 39 and remained at the helm of the department until his retirement in 2002. He is a renowned scientist who, with the support of the Parapsychology Foundation, has been collecting significant events from India, Africa, the Near and Far East for many years. Wherever in the world he went when he heard a young child telling an unusual past life story, he went to the countries I have mentioned and delved deeper into the subject.

Let us now take a look at what Ian Stevenson has uncovered in the reincarnation cases to which he has devoted his entire life and career. You will also find an interesting interview with Stevenson in this article. I say interesting because the questions are the kind of questions that almost any curious person would ask.

These children, followed by Stevenson, described their homes, neighbors, friends, and relationships from their past lives, and mind you, they talk about them all the time until they reach a certain age and forget them. Of course, there are rare people who do not forget. These children remembered important events in their lives and told about their horrible deaths, and interestingly enough, some of them have scars on their bodies from their deaths. The stories of all these people have often appeared in the popular press in the past. It is still possible to come across them from time to time. As one might expect, the low-level approach of the mainstream media has a negative impact on serious research. In this context, Stevenson's single-minded focus, the rigor, objectivism, and methodological perfection of his work have attracted attention.

Herbert Ripley, former chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Washington, said, "We are fortunate to have someone of talent and integrity doing research in such a controversial field.

Dr. Harold Lief, writing in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, said, "Either way, Stevenson is either making a colossal mistake or he will be called the Galilee of the 20th century," to illustrate the gravity of the situation.

2500 Reincarnation Cases Compiled

Stevenson was born in Montreal on October 31, 1918, the son of a Scottish lawyer. His father later became a writer for the Toronto Star newspaper. His English mother had a large collection of books on metaphysics, comparative religion and alternative healing. Stevenson was devoted to Theosophy as a child. Stevenson read most of his mother's books. These subjects had their appeal, but Stevenson did not take a serious interest in them at the time because he could not see a way to approach them scientifically.

He began his university studies at the University of St. Andrews, one of the oldest universities in Scotland. As his health did not permit him to serve in the military, he transferred to McGill University in Montreal in the fall semester of 1939, just as World War II was beginning. At McGill, he studied history as well as physics, chemistry and biology. After receiving his bachelor's degree in 1940, he enrolled in McGill's medical school. He completed the four-year program in three years and graduated at the top of his class in 1943.

Ian Stevenson turned his studies first to psychosomatic diseases and then to psychiatry, and did extensive research in Freudian psychology; today he says with a smile: “I'm sure that Freud will be a comic figure one day, I sat and thought after reading his first book based on clinical experiments; it seemed to me that he was immersed in theoretical ideas, that he had put them into the subject matter and lost interest in doing research. Freud ended his working model by creating a conical theory and instead used fabrications based on tiny bits of information.”

Ruth Stevenson, whom he married, was a librarian and interested in spiritual phenomena, but her interest did not impress Stevenson that much. “In truth,” he said, ”the subject has brought me nothing, I would like to, but it hasn't, my curiosity sometimes gets me into trouble. He was the author of numerous professional psychiatric articles and published two major psychiatric papers, which included interviews and diagnoses.

In 1964, he stopped practicing psychiatry and turned to the study of spiritual phenomena, with a particular emphasis on reincarnation. This turn brought him money, and he was fortunate; his “Vital Evidence of Past Incarnation Claims and Memories” was published in 1960 and attracted the attention of Chester Carlson, the inventor of the Xerox copier, who first established a fund to enable Stevenson to continue his work. The work required huge expenses, for example, between 1966 and 1971 he traveled 90,000 km a year, sometimes interviewing 25 people for a single case. At one point, Stevenson's archive contained more than 2,500 case files and a lot of research, which required a lot of money.  When Carlson died in 1968, he placed Stevenson in a position of influence at the university and wrote in his will that the income from the fund he had established would always finance Stevenson's work.

Stevenson complained about the media

Many years later, Stevenson continues to investigate past life claims. He now gives priority to claims made by children, focusing his attention on the differences between "imagined memories" and "behavioral memories. The interests, talents, and phobias of a child who has no conscious memories, i.e., imagined memories, from a past life (these are behavioral memories) can be uncovered through experimentation, and may be forgotten information from a past life, and perhaps reincarnation can explain the nature and characteristics of human personality, and this discovery would mean that all explanations of other theories are false.

In his last years, Stevenson made a special study of moles and physical defects. He made significant progress toward creating a massive study, and in 1966 published the best-selling book 20 Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. He also wrote books on reincarnation, such as the two-volume Reincarnation and Biology, Children Who Remember Their Past Lives, and books on psychiatry.

For a time, Stevenson was unhappy with the environment, seemed to have lost his enthusiasm, and complained about the false and distorted reports of reincarnation on television, in newspapers and magazines. He left Virginia and went to Cambridge, England, and then to India. Throughout his life, Stevenson was known to be quiet and reserved. Here is an interview he gave to the well-known American journalist Meryle Secrest in 1988.

What matters is what the kids say

Secrest: In your latest book, Children Remembering Their Past Lives, you include very rare events. Why is this book different from your previous books and more influential than any other documented case?

Stevenson: It also seems to me that I don't have a wide distribution of cases, and in my previous works I have underestimated the impact of cases. For example, "Twenty Cases of Reincarnation" was a bestseller, but it was far from a scientific work; it was translated into seven languages, sold 50,000 copies, and covered a period of twenty years. There were no scientists among the readers and it was a bit of a popular book. In short, what happened there raised problems in medicine and psychology that needed to be clarified. I was dissatisfied, the methods of developing psychology were helping people more and more, and I was falling behind. According to traditional theories, the genetic material of human personality is naturally constructed by the ancestors through their mothers and fathers, and the effects of change are added to it. These influences come from the environment before and after birth. However, some of the phenomena I uncovered were not satisfactory enough, namely explanations of genetic and environmental influences, or a combination of the two... In particular, I've studied early childhood phobias, and I've uncovered abilities that seem unnatural, beyond the known, and that seem to have developed spontaneously. There are convincing examples of children who support this; we have irrational phenomena such as births of the wrong sex, deformities due to arterial blockages and differences between identical twins, different eating habits, and so on. So we have to be more serious and investigate. That's what I wanted to talk about.

Secrest : Is this the first time this type of study has been published?

Stevenson : Yes, and it's unique in the world. I was working with a team of scientists in India and now I have started independent research.

Secrest: Will you be observing or waiting for reactions?

Stevenson: Both; I have too much information, I want to get it out of my field of work. I want to write more, but I'm not talking about writing books, because books are published after the author's death; I don't like that.

Secrest:  When will you reach the goal you want to reach with the children?

Stevenson : That goal came in the late '60s, after I went to India. Adults were writing to me, and I realized later that most of it was worthless. You can't really control the effects of the subconscious, the adults reveal it. The information that a small child learns is more valuable, easier to understand, and safer, especially if it is a child living in a small Asian village. Here I have found events that are fascinating and important. Obviously, children absorb a lot of information when they are young. They have absorbed a lot of information about deaths in cities that are very far away from each other. I have seen many cases in the Northwest, in North America, and in Burma. There is a possibility that some adults or older children will talk about a person who has died and the younger children will hear it and absorb it and so the question will be answered. But it's not like that, there are consequences and I can give examples from India, there are relationships between very large distances, like 25-50 km or more, there was no relationship between villages. The children gave precise information about places and people they never knew.

"Information disappears..."

Secrest: You found children who gave accurate results, and you proved that their stories were not related to their family histories. But it's still a valid view that children's past life stories are directly related to phobias or traumas, and you've found that these children are psychopersonalities.  Isn't the idea of heredity an adequate explanation?

Stevenson : That's right; it's very easy to see environmental influences. For example, famous composers, I'm talking about Bach, Mozart or Beethoven, whose fathers were also very good musicians. But what about Handel, his family had nothing to do with music and his father was very strict about it. Or take Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing; she was far beyond her childhood and made her choice at a very advanced age. I could give endless examples, and it is difficult to explain them with valid theories. But if we accept the possibility of reincarnation, we can find an amusing aspect. These children could be evidence of strong likes or dislikes, or even the natural consequences of talents and even genius from previous lives. I think some children's talents come from previous lives.

Secrest: What do you suggest for a child who remembers a past life? Is there a method?

Stevenson: When a child remembers a past life, there is no harm or evil in it. In one case, the child and his grandfather had two identical pigment spots in the same place on their bodies, and the cause was genetic, but the same child knew about his grandfather's life when he was young and when he was young. How? Take another child who was born without fingers, a mute, or a hand, and he tells us that he died of murder in a previous life. You might be able to explain the cause of the defect that way, but it's like pumping, and I don't like to talk to children that way.

Secrest: Is information from the children's families, or what happens when two families meet, is that lost?

Stevenson: Most of the time I got it after the fact, important information was lost, I always recorded what was said, but often the children were embarrassed to talk and I couldn't hear what their parents said. My colleagues and I tried to separate what the children said when they were with other families from what they said afterwards. Admittedly, the latter is of less value. I can't stress this enough, but when a child begins to remember his or her past life, it happens around the age of three, and the child talks and tells. Before that it is impossible to understand anything, after the age of five other things happen in his life and he starts to forget.

Secrest: How often do children claim to remember past lives?

Stevenson: We don't yet know the frequency of recurrence of events. We only know of events that come to us, in North India I have seen one event in 500 people, and the events are usually taken lightly and do not extend beyond the family. Reincarnation is accepted in many cultures, but families often feel that such memories are harmful and so the stories of the children fade away. Families don't like the idea of having children who were murdered or who are murderers.

"The manner of death is important to remember..."

Secrest: To what tendencies do the events of memory relate?

Stevenson: Violent and painful deaths are a major factor. In six different cultures, 700 cases, 60% of them remembered a violent death. But is that really enough? Messy accidents, murders and suicides get more attention. Children usually remember only the last few years of their previous lives, and 75% can talk about their deaths. If it was a violent death, they can be very detailed.

Secrest: Is there any difference between boys and girls?

Stevenson: Yes, boys are ahead of girls. If a girl has a bad incident in her past and it's remembered, it can make her unable to marry in the future in these societies. 62% of the cases recorded in 1995 from around the world were boys. I can't give an explanation, but I think boys are more likely to have bad deaths.

Secrest: Most of Western civilization is cynical about the idea of reincarnation, why?

Stevenson: It's hard to find a single explanation, some southern European Christians believed in reincarnation until a religious meeting in Nice in 553 A.D. outlawed such beliefs. The thinker Plato, in his Republic, spoke of souls choosing their future lives and being reborn. Schopenhauer was more serious, and Voltaire's observations about the once common belief in reincarnation came as no surprise. The scientific world still does not believe in life after death. I suspect that Darwin's approach contributed to the dethronement of the soul. The idea of reincarnation can be tedious, in part because it has been so misrepresented and embraced. For example, Hinduism and Buddhism believe in rebirth as an animal. This cannot be true.

Secrest: This is a bit like swimming in a tidal event?

Stevenson: (laughs) It's exhilarating...

Secrest: What is the level of criticism of your work?

Stevenson: A lot of people believe in reincarnation. When a child talks about a past life, the most common claim I hear is that the parents guided the child, or that the child received information from the environment. I am open to that kind of social-psychological interpretation, but that is not my work. When I hear about a case, I don't rule out those possibilities, but I want to hear everything through the normal channels. If you believe that in a previous life you were killed by a knife wound, it can create a phobia in you, and you are afraid of knives, and this phenomenon can be interpreted in a psychological way. There is a lot of controversy; a child says things about a family living far away that his own family never knew, and my critics still say that I am missing something, whereas the child can only learn through death.

Secrest : Why are almost all the events in Asia? Couldn't the critics find something to criticize in the West?

Stevenson: How could they? How can a child say such things when there are child psychologists, psychiatrists, educators, family doctors, mothers, fathers? Every moment is observed and extrapolated. Children remember their past lives either when they play or when they draw.

Secrest: In your new book there are some controversial concepts related to the idea of reincarnation, can you summarize them?

Stevenson: There is only one controversial concept and that is that it involves what Hindus call "karma", specifically the concept of karma as a response to what you do...

Secrest: A reactive karma formation is not a nice thought. If what you do in this life you pay for in the next life, isn't that kind of retribution tantamount to doing evil?

Stevenson: According to some people it is, but it may be more original. There is no evidence for the idea of karma based on cause and effect, but it may be the integrity of beliefs to think that there are perpetual lives and to think that there is a rehabilitator. I worked with a Druze in Lebanon who believed that God had sent him into the world to live various lives, a fisherman, a banker, a pirate... But in each life he would get better. In the banker's life he would be richer but more honest, and this would be reckoned on “Judgment Day”. Nothing could be done, nothing could be corrected or understood in a single lifetime.

Hypnosis is a false and dangerous path.

Secrest: People are very easily deceived and they believe immediately, but in your case and in your thinking it seems that reincarnation can never be proven?

Stevenson: In this book, I have explained the idea of reincarnation, in my other books I have given case studies. I say that reincarnation is acceptable and it never forces beliefs. In all my work I have gone very deep looking for an omission and they have not brought me any contrary evidence. In time we will get more favorable evidence. I am not a missionary. I met Ramakrisnha Swami, a sage in India, he asked me what I was doing; I told him I had a natural excitement. After a long silence he replied, “We know that reincarnation is real, but that is no advantage, this is India, there are crooks and bad people here as in the West.”

Secrest: There are claims of returning to past lives under hypnosis and countless frauds. But even though you're not a proponent, you don't really rule it out?

Stevenson: In my experience, almost all claims of past lives can be awakened by hypnosis, but the influence of illusions is very great here, and it is a difficult business, and it is only after long, patient and diligent work that one can come under the influence of the hypnotist. It is no secret that under hypnosis one can be open to any kind of suggestion and this kind of research can be very dangerous indeed. Some people are so afraid of their memories that they refuse to go back in time under hypnosis. It's difficult and requires medical training, it's tricky and over-enthusiastic.

Was Kennedy born as an Alevi child in Turkey?

Secrest: Have you come across many impostors?

Stevenson: Not many, I can spot them easily. The average peasant in Asia and Africa does not have the time to think of a trick. If they do, they are just stealing my time, there is no possibility of making money or fame. A successful hoax is very difficult because it requires many witnesses and consistent childhood memories, which we immediately recognize with our methods. For example, I saw two Alevi children in Turkey, one of whom claimed to have been President Kennedy in a previous life, and it was very easy to prove that this was not true.

Secrest: Is reincarnation a natural phenomenon or does it have a very big purpose?

Stevenson: Of course there is. In my concept of God, He is an evolutionary and evolving God. I don't believe in a watchful God, the Creator is not a watchmaker, so He can't have made the watch and then wound it and gone away. I believe in a "self-creating and evolving God. He is evolving and experimenting and we are part of it... Bodies are worn out and discarded, while souls need periods of rest and reflection, because later they will start all over again with a new body.

Secrest: Can the sexual changes of the soul bring an answer to homosexuality? Can the mixing of the sexes be a new light?

Stevenson: Yes. Western experts disagree enough, but not so in Southwest Asia. Gender identification and determination and even confusion is a consequence of reincarnation and I think there is little time left for a possible explanation.

Secrest: It is striking that there is continuity in the case studies, i.e. the person is often reborn in the same environment, why?

Stevenson: If he's a Muslim, he believes it's God's will; if he's a Hindu or Buddhist, it's karma. They have to learn or learn as they go along. The important thing is to realize that if someone really wants to evolve, he can be reborn in the family of a saint. Can you imagine living as a Mafia killer and being reborn as a Mafia killer? That would be a very severe punishment, and I think there is no such system. But all this is hypothetical and in the next century we can only ask some questions, the answers are even further away...

Secrest: Do you have children?

Unfortunately, I don't.

Secrest: Isn't it a disadvantage to remember past lives?

Stevenson: I think so. These children have disorders and split personalities. Sometimes they reject their parents, saying they are not real. Things get very complicated, ex-husbands, wives, children get involved. One Indian boy went after a woman he thought was his former lover and tried to get her back, but he was just a boy. In short, there is a lot of trouble.

Secrest: Where would you like to be reincarnated?

Stevenson: That is a very personal question.

Secrest: Lastly, has your work influenced your attitude toward life and death?

Stevenson: I think it has. I don't claim to have gotten rid of the fear of death, but it's a little less than others. These children, though rare, can reassure adults. A woman who has lost her husband can cry and at the same time say, "Don't cry, death is not the end, look at me, I died and I'm here again."

Yes, these are Stevenson's words; Prof. Ian Stevenson, the most important Western scientist on reincarnation, obviously believes in reincarnation, but he is not a fanatic and does not try to prove it. He is very careful in the way he presents the facts, he just says it has to be this way from time to time. If reincarnation has a divine purpose, as Stevenson says, then it would be really impossible for us to understand such a system and such an idea. On the other hand, if there is no such thing, and what happens is psychological, then good and evil, sin and good deeds, do not matter much in a single life.

 

Levent Aslan

5 January 2024