Scientific Evidence of Reincarnation

Part 2 of a discussion investigating “Science, Death, and Spirituality” from The Pema Kilaya Death and Dying Project

If we rely on common sense or popular scientific beliefs, reincarnation seems far-fetched. That leaves us with only one other option—to believe in it based on blind faith and/or the authority of religious scripture and of teachers we find authoritative. Maybe—we speculate—our teachers have some direct knowledge of these things or can contact the consciousness of someone who has died.

But then we also hear about reincarnated lamas, such as the Dalai Lamas and the recognition tests they go through to prove that they remember their previous incarnations. Typically, when a candidate is approached, (usually located through a prophesy), the child is presented with a group of articles such as bells, malas, and other ritual and personal objects, only some of which belonged to the previous incarnation. Those doing the testing are often servants, while teachers and aids that knew the previous incarnation intimately stay in the background. If the candidate is genuine, after having chosen the correct objects the child may later recognize one of these figures, exclaiming, “Oh, I know you. You were my senior tutor!” There appear to be a number of safeguards built into this method that maximize the possibility that the true reincarnation will pass the test and all others will fail. The method may not be thoroughly scientific, but it’s close.

Scientific exploration designed to prove the possibility of reincarnation operates in a similar, though more rigorous and systematic, manner. The best of these explorations of reincarnation— based mainly on the memories of children—have been carried out over the past forty years at the University of Virginia Medical School’s School of Psychiatry. This research was initiated by Ian Stevenson, M.D. (1918-2007), formerly dean of the School of Psychiatry, who studied and documented the cases of about 2,600 children over a forty-year period. This work has been carried on by his protégé, Jim B. Tucker, M.D., who is medical director of the Child and Family Psychiatry Clinic, and Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the same institution. (Note, for the sake of providing credibility, the University of Virginia Medical School is consistently one of the highest-regarded medical schools in the U.S., and these researchers have held prestigious posts there.)

“Scientific proof” of a phenomena like reincarnation is not possible in the same way one proves an experiment in chemistry or physics. But anecdotal evidence—if handled scientifically, using a proven, systematic methodology—can lead one to “the most reasonable explanation” of a phenomenon. Stevenson and Tucker researched children who apparently had vivid memories of past lives. These memories are usually ignored by adults who think they are mere imagination, fantasy, story telling. The implications also run counter to most people’s beliefs—whether religious or coming form popularized science. But, says Tucker, “what if, in a number of instances, people listened to the children and then tried to find out if the events they described had actually happened? And what if, when those people went to the places the children had named, they found that what the children had said about the past events was indeed true? What then?”

The raw data that Stevenson and Tucker have studied consists of predictions of a future rebirth, birthmarks (often coinciding with a fatal wound received by the previous reincarnation), and dreams (usually by the mother prior to giving birth). Their methodology is to check out the stories, doing so in a way that eliminates the chance of fraud, leaked information or prompting, and suggestions that might elicit correct answers. If, for instance, a child said that he or she had lived in a certain family, at a distant location, and had died in a certain manner, the researcher would seek that location and interview the family, neighbors, acquaintances, the coroner, police, and so on. The central question is, how closely did the child’s story match the responses of interviewees?

In a significant number of cases, these responses—often regarding very detailed information— matched the children’s accounts very closely. Although each case varies, it is not unusual for a child to state that his or her previous name was such and such, s/he lived in a specific town at specific address (perhaps describing the neighborhood—the color of a neighbor’s house, a nearby park, etc.), had so many siblings, was married to so and so, and was killed or died in such and such a way. Often, when the supposed former family is located, family members and neighbors confirm that there was such a person in their family, having the same name, same possessions, personal habits, etc. as described by the “reincarnation,” and that that person died in the same manner as described. Sometimes police records are available, and autopsies have provided startlingly vivid photographic evidence of mortal wounds, that on the newborn child appear as birthmarks—some of them more resembling wounds (such as knife and gunshot wounds) than the normal slight discolorations of most birthmarks.

In many of these cases, the researchers could find only one plausible explanation: the child was remembering a previous life. (Another explanation from parapsychology might be offered— remote viewing. This form of extra-sensory perception is not limited by distance or by time. But such intimate detail as that reported by these children is not a common feature of ESP.)

Of course there have been many detractors of this research. As Tucker puts it, “The idea that research could actually support the concept of reincarnation is surprising to many people in the West, since reincarnation may seem foreign or even absurd.” But reports by Stevenson, Tucker, and others have been published in many peer-reviewed scientific journals, including some of the most prestigious. (Stevenson alone published 300 books and articles.) This comes from a review of one of Stevenson’s books, published in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association: “in regard to reincarnation [Stevenson] has painstakingly and unemotionally collected a detailed series of cases from India, cases in which the evidence is difficult to explain on any other grounds.”

If you wish to see the evidence for yourself, read the following:

Life Before Life—A Scientific Investigation of Children’s Memories of Previous Lives. (Tucker, Jim B., M.D., New York: St. Martins Press, 2008) [Recommendation by Kilung Rinpoche, given during a question and answer session at one of his retreats: “You should read this one!”]

Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect. (Stevenson, Ian, M.D., Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1997) (This book for the general public is based upon Stevenson’s Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects—a multi-volume work in the field of medical research.)