The Book 4th Edition

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24. Reincarnation

'The greater the ignorance, the greater the dogmatism. '
Sir William Ostler MD

The modern evidence for reincarnation comes from past life regression, spontaneous recall of past lives, transmission of information from the afterlife, Theosophy, Edgar Cayce, and recent translation of Sanskrit texts. However in keeping with the scientific emphasis of this book concentration will be made on past-life regression, and spontaneous recall of past lives.

Some who do not accept re-incarnation argue that the evidence can be explained by possession or spirit influence. That may be so.

It is not the purpose of this book to argue either for or against reincarnation—simply to present some fascinating evidence. But whether you take the reincarnation view or the spirit possession view, the evidence builds more strongly the case for life after death.

Past life regressions

Past life regression simply involves placing a person under hypnosis and asking them to go back through their childhood to a time before they were born. In many cases the person begins talking about his or her life or lives before the present lifetime, about their previous death and about the time between lives including the planning of the present lifetime.

The main reason why at least some of these claims must be considered as evidence are:

• the regression frequently leads to a cure of a physical illness
• in some cases the person regressed begins to speak an unlearned foreign language
• in some cases the person being regressed remembers details of astonishing accuracy which when checked out are verified by the top historians
• the emotional intensity of the experience is such that it convinces many formerly skeptical psychiatrists who are used to dealing with fantasy and imagined regressions
• in some cases the alleged cause of death in an immediate past life is reflected by a birthmark in the present life.

By 1950 past life regression was being accepted by doctors who had previously been total skeptics because it worked. As Dr Alexander Cannon wrote:

For years the theory of reincarnation was a nightmare to me and I did my best to disprove it... Yet as the years went by one subject after another told me the same story in spite of different and varied conscious beliefs. Now well over a thousand cases have been investigated and I have to admit that there is such a thing as reincarnation ' (cited Fisher 1986: 65).

Psychiatrists all over the world have found that regression works.
Dr Gerald Edelstein, psychologist:

These experiences (past life regressions), for reasons I cannot explain, almost always lead to rapid improvements in the patient (cited Fisher 1986: 65).

The very well known clinical psychologist, Dr Edith Fiore of the United States, says:

If someone's phobia is eliminated instantly and permanently by his remembrance of an event from the past (life), it makes logical sense that the event must have happened (cited Fisher 1986: 65).

Dr Gerald Netherton, who was raised as a fundamentalist Methodist, has successfully used the method on 8,000 patients. He was initially skeptical but as a result of his experience is now convinced of the effectiveness of past life regression. His patients, who included both priests and physicists, are almost always skeptical at first but this had no effect on the effectiveness of the treatment. He says:

Many people go away believing in reincarnation as a result of their experience ...What is the logical answer? That it actually is happened! (cited Fisher 1986: 65).

Dr Arthur Guirdham, English psychiatrist, maintains that he has been a skeptic ever since he was nicknamed 'Doubting Thomas' as a boy. But after his experience of 44 years doing hypnotic regressions he claims:

If I didn't believe in reincarnation on the evidence I'd received I'd be mentally defective' (cited Fisher 1986: 65).

Dr Helen Wambach was a skeptic who in 1975 undertook a major study of past life regressions in order to find out once and for all if there was any truth to reincarnation. By doing a scientific analysis on the past lives reported by her 10,000 plus volunteers she came up with some startling evidence in favor of reincarnation:

• 50.6 % of the past lives reported were male and 49.4 % were female—this is exactly in accordance with biological fact
• the number of people reporting upper class or comfortable lives was in exactly the same proportion to the estimates of historians of the class distribution of the period
• the recall by subjects of clothing, footwear, type of food and utensils used was better than that in popular history books. She found over and over again that her subjects knew better than most historians—when she went to obscure experts her subjects were invariably correct.

Her conclusion was: ‘I don't believe in reincarnation—I know it!’(Wambach 1978).

It may surprise the reader that Russian psychiatrists are also using past life regression. Dr Varvara Ivanova, held in high esteem by Russian scientists and writers, is only one of a number of psychiatrists who are successfully using past life regression for therapy (Whitton and Fisher 1987).

Peter Ramster

Of the research I have done over the years, the most impressive hypnotherapist I have come across in showing how past life regression is linked with reincarnation is psychologist and former skeptic Peter Ramster from Sydney, Australia.

The following information is taken from Peter Ramster's very important book, In Search of Lives Past (1990) and from a speech he gave to the Australian Hypnotherapists ninth National Convention at the Sydney Sheraton Wentworth Hotel on the 27th March, 1994 and from the films he made on reincarnation.

In 1983 he produced a stunning television documentary in which four women from Sydney, who had never been out of Australia, gave details under hypnosis of their past lives. Then, accompanied by television cameras and independent witnesses, they were taken to the other side of the world.

One of the subjects involved was Gwen MacDonald, a staunch skeptic before her regression. She remembered a life in Somerset between 1765-82. Many facts about her life in Somerset which would be impossible to get out of a book were confirmed in front of witnesses when she was taken there:

• when taken blindfolded to the area in Somerset she knew her way around perfectly although she had never been out of Australia
• she was able to correctly point out in three directions the location of villages she had known
• she was able to direct the film crew as to the best ways to go far better than the maps
• she knew the location of a waterfall and the place where stepping stones had been. The locals confirmed that the stepping stones had been removed about 40 years before
• she pointed out an intersection where she claimed that there had been five houses. Enquiries proved that this was correct and that the houses had been torn down 30 years before and that one of the houses had been a 'cider house' as she claimed
• she knew correctly names of villages as they were 200 years ago even though on modern maps they do not exist or their names have been changed
• the people she claimed that she knew were found to have existed?one was listed in the records of the regiment she claimed he belonged to
• she knew in detail of local legends which were confirmed by Somerset historians
• she used correctly obscure obsolete west country words no longer in use, no longer even in dictionaries, words like 'tallet' meaning a loft
• she knew that the local people called Glastonbury Abbey 'St Michaels'—a fact that was only proved by reading an obscure 200 year old history book not available in Australia
• she was able to correctly describe the way a group of Druids filed up Glastonbury Hill in a spiral for their spring ritual, a fact unknown to most university historians
• she knew that there were two pyramids in the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey which have long since disappeared
• she correctly described in Sydney carvings that were found in an obscure old house 20 feet from a stream, in the middle of five houses about one and a half miles from Glastonbury Abbey
• she had been able to draw in detail in Sydney the interior of her Glastonbury house which was found to be totally correct
• she described an inn that was on the way to the house. It was found to be there
• she was able to lead the team direct to the house which is now a chicken shed. No-one knew what was on the floor until it was cleaned. However on the floor they found the stone that she had drawn in Sydney
• the locals would come in every night to quiz her on local history?she knew the answers to all the questions they were asking such as the local problem which was a big bog—cattle were being lost there.

Cynthia Henderson, another subject of Peter Ramster, remembered a life during the French Revolution. When under trance she:

• spoke in French without any trace of an accent
• understood and answered questions put to her in French
• used dialect of the time
• knew the names of streets which had changed and were only discoverable on old maps.

Peter Ramster has many other documented cases of past life regression which in very clear terms constitute technical evidence for the existence of the afterlife.

Spontaneous Past Life Recall

The internationally acclaimed Shanti Devi case is one of the most spectacular cases in the history of spontaneous past life recall. This was a case in India that began in 1930, long before Dr Stevenson began doing his own research. However, he did review the case from the available extensive documented information and stated that Shanti Devi made at least 24 accurate statements of her memories which matched confirmed facts (Reincarnation International, Jan. 1994 No 1 Lon).

At the age of four in 1930 in Delhi, India, Shanti Devi began to mention certain details about clothes, food, people, incidents, places which surprised her parents. Briefly, Shanti mentioned the following which were later verified to be true. She:

• identified herself as Lugdi who used to live in Muttra, 128 kilometres away
• spoke the dialect of that area without having learned it
• claimed to have given birth to a son and died ten days later, events which it was later found did happen to Lugdi
• when taken to Muttra recognized her husband of her former life, Kedar Nath, and spoke of many things they did together
• was able to identify with accuracy a number of landmarks where she used in live in the previous life in Muttra
• was able to correctly state how the furniture was placed when she used to live there in her home
• knew that in her former life where she had hidden 150 rupees in an underground corner of a room for safe keeping in the house. The husband of the previous life, Kedar Nath, confirmed that although the money was not there he was responsible for taking it himself
• correctly identified Lugdi's former parents from a large crowd.

This case was so impressive to the authorities that a committee of prominent persons, which included a prominent politician, a lawyer and a managing director of a newspaper, was formally organized to investigate it. The committee was more than satisfied that Shanti knew things that she could not have obtained knowledge about by cheating, fraud or in any illegitimate way. None of the members of the committee knew Shanti or had any connection with her in any way whatsoever. Their definitive verdict was in very clear terms that all the evidence was conclusive proof of reincarnation.

The case became internationally known and attracted the attention of many, many sociologists and writers. For example, in the 1950s a Swedish writer, Sture Lonnerstrand, traveled to India to meet Shanti Devi and to continue to investigate for himself the documented facts. He too came to an irreversible conclusion that the Shanti Devi case is a foolproof case for reincarnation (Reincarnation International, Jan. 1994 No 1 Lon).

Arthur Guirdham and Mrs. Smith

An English case that convinced many experts including the psychiatrist Dr Arthur Guirdham, was that of Mrs. Smith, a perfectly sane ordinary English housewife who for years had been suffering from terrible nightmares of being burned at the stake (Guirdham 1970).

She gave Dr Guirdham copies of drawings and verses of songs she had written as a schoolgirl. Experts in Medieval French confirmed that she was writing in langue doc, the language of Southern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

She went on to astonish experts with her knowledge of the Cathars in Touluse who had been persecuted by the forces of the Inquisition. She reproduced word for word in 1944 songs which were only discovered in archives in 1967; she knew historical details which only came to light later upon the most painstaking investigation such as:

• correct drawings of old French coins, jewelry and the layout of buildings
• correct details of the family and social relationships of people who do not appear in text-books but who were ultimately traced though the records of the Inquisition
• that the crypt of a certain church was used to hold religious prisoners
• details of rituals and religious dress.

So impressed was Professor Nellie, the greatest living authority on the period, that he advised Guirdham that in future when there was conflict between the accepted historical view and the memories of his patient, he should 'go by the patient.'

Guirdham later went on to discover several other people close to him who all shared the same memories that he documented in his book The Cathars and Reincarnation. He went from being a total skeptic nicknamed 'doubting Thomas' to putting his considerable professional reputation on the line to lecture his colleagues in the British medical profession about 'Reincarnation and the Practice of Medicine' (Guirdham 1969).

Dr Ian Stevenson

The scientific research into reincarnation by Dr Ian Stevenson, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia Medical School, is most brilliant. Specifically, he has investigated what is known as 'spontaneous past life recall'.

Over a number of years Dr Stevenson interviewed over four thousand children from the United States, England, Thailand, Burma, Turkey, Lebanon, Canada, India and other places, who claimed that they could remember a number of incidents from a past life. Procedural scientific investigation included the checking and analysis (where relevant) of documents, letters, autopsy records, birth and death certificates, hospital records, photographs, newspaper reports and the like.

Medical records are important especially when a child claims to have been murdered in a past lifetime, as Stevenson found that in cases of violent death the child may show a birthmark where he was knifed, shot or whatever caused his death.

An example of one of Dr Stevenson's birthmark cases is that of Ravi Shankar. He recalled being horrifically decapitated as a child by a relative who was hoping that he would inherit the child's father's wealth. The reborn child was found to have a birthmark encircling his neck. When his claim was investigated it was found that the person he claimed to have been, did in fact die by decapitation.

A second case involves a child in Turkey who recalled being a robber who when about to be captured by the police had committed suicide, shooting himself with a rifle by placing the muzzle against his right underside of the chin. The child who claimed to remember his life was born with a very distinct mark under his chin. On further investigation, he was found to have another birthmark on top of his head exactly where the bullet would have exited. When Dr Stevenson was investigating this particular case in Turkey, an old man informed Stevenson that he remembered the incident and testified as to the condition of the shot body.

What is to be kept in mind is that Dr Stevenson put his considerable reputation on the line when he introduced his scientific work to the world through most prestigious psychiatric journals like The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (September 1977) and The American Journal of Psychiatry (December 1979). He published several volumes about past life recall and each time a volume was published, greater detailed confirmation was accumulating for his evidence for reincarnation.

Stevenson's scientific research shook the academic world out of its usual skeptical complacency. It was one of the first times that a scientist with an established reputation in the physical sciences produced clear evidence for reincarnation and inevitably for the afterlife.

Of course, there were those who tried to criticize Dr Stevenson's research, but the critics were NOT scientists, nor did they have the necessary technical substance to deal with the scientific method used by Dr Stevenson. Many of these minor critics hold a particular belief system which is intrinsically hostile to reincarnation.

There were others who repeated the criticism leveled at Stevenson without first examining for themselves Stevenson's scientific work. For example, in Paul Tabori and Phyllis Raphael's book, Beyond the Senses?a report on psychical research in the sixties (1971) a former 'prominent' member of the Society for Psychical Research, George Medhurst, admits in answer to a question put to him that he knew very little about Dr Stevenson's work, but he says, and notice very carefully the blatant unfounded hostility against Stevenson's works:

I know only a little about these (Stevenson's) researches. I know that there have been some criticism about the results reported.... it has been said... that Stevenson would not have the right sort of contact with the people with whom he was dealing (1971:216).

First, George Medhurst admits technical ignorance of Stevenson's scientific research. Secondly, he is relying on somebody else to criticize Stevenson. Thirdly, Medhurst does not identify this somebody else, if there was somebody else. Medhurst accepts the criticism as valid, otherwise he would not have repeated it. This kind of intellectual dishonesty and cheating by Medhurst is an indication of the extent some of these closed-minded skeptics will go to in order to denigrate great scientific work.

By contrast there were objective scientists with national reputations who attested to the professionalism and high credibility of Dr Stevenson's strict adherence to scientific method. These include Professor Dr. Albert J. Stunkard, Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. Among other most positive statements, he says:

Dr. Stevenson is the most critical man I know of working in that sphere, and perhaps the most thoughtful, with a knack for building research appropriate investigative controls.

Professor Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler, of the City College at the City University of New York says among other things:

Stevenson is a most careful and conscientious person of great intellectual ability and high professional standards. He has a most painstaking approach to collection and analysis of raw data.

Professor Dr Herbert S Ripley, Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Washington in Seattle, says:

I think very highly of Stevenson. I regard him as thorough and honest. We are lucky, I feel, to have someone of his ability and high integrity investigating this controversial area.

Dr Harold Lief in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (September, 1977) says among other things:

Either he is making a colossal mistake... or he will be known as the Galileo of the 20th century.

Dr Stevenson became interested in spontaneous past life recall when, at the pinnacle of his profession as a psychiatrist, he found that traditional remedies in psychiatry were too restricted and did not deal effectively with the problems of the patients. He found many cases that could not be satisfactorily explained by genetics, environmental influences or a combination of these.

Marta Lorenz

One very convincing case investigated by Dr Stevenson was the Brazilian case of Marta Lorenz, who at the age of one year recognized a friend of her parents with the words 'Hello, Papa.' At around two she began talking about details of a previous life as her mother's best friend, the daughter of the family friend she had recognized. Many of these details were not known to the child's mother but were later confirmed by several different people.

She remembered one hundred and twenty separate and unrelated details about her previous life as Maria de Olivero, including details of what Maria had told her best friend (Marta’s mother) immediately before she died—that she would try to be reborn as her best friend's daughter and that as soon as she was old enough would relate many details of her former life (Stevenson 1974).

Imad Elawar

In Lebanon, Stevenson went unannounced into a Druse village and asked the villagers if they knew of any cases where children talked of past lives. He was referred—again without any prior warning—to the home of five-year-old Imad Elawar. Since the age of one Imad had reportedly been talking incessantly about a former life in a village twenty-five miles away.

At age one his first words had been the names 'Jamileh' and 'Mahmoud'; at the age of two he had stopped a stranger in the street identified him as a former neighbor.

Stevenson interviewed the child and the parents and recorded over fifty-seven separate claims about his former life. When Stevenson went with the boy and his father to the other village to investigate the boy's claims it took them several days to locate the boy's former house. No prior contact with the relatives had been made. However:

• Imad was able to make thirteen correct statements and identifications about his former life including photographs of himself and his brother
• he recognized photographs of his former uncle, Mahmoud, and his former mistress, a prostitute named Jamileh
• he was able to point out details of where he had kept his rifle—a secret known only to his mother—and of how his bed had been arranged during his last illness
• he stopped a stranger and had a long talk with him about their experiences together in their army service.

In all Stevenson calculates that of the fifty-seven claims Imad had made about his former life, fifty-one could be verified (Stevenson 1978).

Alternative explanations

When critics are confronted with this most convincing evidence for reincarnation, they try to explain the results away. They claim it was caused by extrasensory perception, by telepathy or clairvoyance—'the child was able to tune in to the people around him and lifted from them all the information they had about the circumstances'. In the alternative, skeptics have argued, the whole thing could be fraud, cryptomnesia, spirit possession, fantasy, paramnesia, inherited memory/collective unconscious. Let us examine, as Ian Stevenson did, each of these arguments in turn (Stevenson 1977).

Extrasensory perception?

Initially, anyone who suggests that these children are tapping into the memories of living people would have to concede the existence of extrasensory perception, also known as telepathy or thought transference. This concession alone greatly weakens the position of the skeptic because for decades skeptics have been arguing, and still argue, that ESP and telepathy do not exist! Either ESP exists or it does not exist.

Further, Dr Stevenson claims, if children do have extrasensory powers they either do possess them generally or they don't. It is simply not logically consistent for the skeptic to say that a person has ESP for some things and not for others, that the children can have ESP in relation to their alleged past lives but not in relation to anything else.

Stevenson continues to explain that in context of what is known about ESP where mediums and sensitives are concerned, these children would have to have 'super ESP'. This is because in some cases, the children give significant amounts of information, extending the existing boundaries of all presently known cases of ESP.

In most cases the children would have to tap the memories of not just the one person, but of many people because the information is not stored with just one person. This would entail being able to read the minds of different people who would each have some of the information. Stevenson says that 'all the known information did not reside in a single living mind'.

No amount of ESP can explain the behavioral change of these children. In many instances the children take on the personalities they claim to have been. This is something that cannot be obtained by using ESP. Stevenson explains that it is difficult for any critic not acquainted with these cases to understand the 'magnitude of these features of behavior and personation'.

Another particular difficulty for the critic claiming ESP is the fact that many times children often reveal how things were when they were alive not how they are now. You have read above about the very famous case of Shanti Devi, who claimed that when she was alive in a previous life she had hidden 150 rupees in the corner of the room in the house where she used to live. While investigators dug in the place and no money was to be found, her former husband shamefully admitted that he was responsible for removing the money. If she had been 'tapping into his mind' she would have known this fact.

Birthmarks and deformities in the children are clearly beyond any scope of ESP explanation. These children, according to Dr Stevenson, often point to a mark or marks on their body and explain that is where they were shot or mutilated. Parents attest that these marks were present from infancy. Other children born with deformities or missing limbs or missing fingers claim that these deformities indicate what caused their previous deaths.

In a number of cases Stevenson was able to have had access to hospital records to confirm these claims. Accordingly, Stevenson was able to make a link between the birthmarks and the hospital / autopsy records revealing the cause of death.

Fraud ?

Initially one has to take into consideration the qualifications, the professionalism, the caliber and the integrity of one of America's foremost scientific investigators. Dr Stevenson has a long track record as a highly professional scientific investigator, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. In addition, years of interviewing thousands of witnesses gave him enormous practical experience in detecting fraud. He himself wrote textbooks on psychiatric examination and diagnostic interviewing.

He says that his interviews and cross-examinations of so many children and witnesses clearly reveal that it would be a gigantic, a Herculean task for anyone to try to organize the situation, the coaching of the parents, relatives, friends, witnesses—sometimes the number involved is over fifty people and even more.

Then there would have to be the staging of the emotions when there is a reunion of the child with the loved ones of his former life. The staging of the intense emotions of these situations is outside the human capacity to structure 'on site'. Having interviewed thousands of 'reborn' children, Dr Stevenson adds that, 'small children are not easy to coach for the assumptions of the roles that do not seem natural to them'.

Stevenson publicly stated that he does not give money to any of the people involved and consistently applies his policy that no payment is to be made for any testimony. Nor is publicity given as some incentive to co-operate.

Dr Stevenson has always been fully aware that the scientific investigations he conducted would be scrutinized in the minutest detail by other scientists, by outsiders and by those with vested interests who would not want him to succeed and who would try to denigrate and undermine his scientific investigations into the afterlife and reincarnation.

Cryptomnesia?

This simply means that the reborn child had learnt in this lifetime what he is saying about some previous life. The claim is that, consciously or unconsciously, the reborn child must have read the information, or heard about it, or been told about it, but forgotten it.

Dr Stevenson explains that some of the original information from some of the reborn children, especially from those who were as young as two years, was not known to those around the reborn child. From Stevenson's own observation, the child on learning to say a few words would start to talk about his or her previous life. This greatly reduces the other possibilities where the information could have come from.

Inherited Memory/Collective Unconscious?

One of the most arguments most frequently expressed by the critics of spontaneous past life recall is that the allegedly reborn child has actually 'inherited memories'. This means that instead of the child having been re-born, the child is in fact remembering the life of one of his ancestors. It is claimed that somehow that ancestor's memories of different things the child is recalling have been genetically transmitted. Alternatively, the critics say that the child is getting his information through the 'collective unconscious'.

Stevenson very convincingly rebuts these arguments by explaining that what is so far recorded about any information coming from the 'collective unconscious' is very general. For example, someone might remember a great flood in some very distant land. Stevenson points out that although there are some isolated cases of the 'collective unconscious' these lack specific and minute details of the re-born child.

The genetic, the 'inherited memory' argument, has fundamental flaws. If a person was remembering the life of one of his or her ancestors there would have to be both a racial and geographic link between the remembered life and the life of the person's ancestors. However many people remember past lives as members of totally different races.

For the majority of cases, certainly in most of the Asian ones, Stevenson found that children remembered lives which ended only a few years before they were born, but in a different family and village to those of their parents and grandparents.

Secondly, as Stevenson says a parent could only transmit genetically to his or her offspring memories of events that had happened to the parent before that child's conception. It follows, therefore that the memory of a parent's mode of death could never be inherited.

Possession?

Some critics of reincarnation have argued that when a child claims that he or she remembers a past life, what is really happening is that a discarnate entity, a spirit, is taking control of the child's mind and the information is really coming from the spirit and not from the allegedly re-born child.

Dr Stevenson negates this argument by explaining that possession of young children, especially from two years on is extremely rare, if it ever occurs. In most of the cases, the children make certain 'past life' statements quite spontaneously, fully conscious and definitely not in a trance or in any altered state of consciousness. Anybody familiar with a medium in a trance state will notice a change of consciousness in the medium where the particular personality of the medium dramatically changes. This does not happen in these cases.

Another reason why the possession argument fails, says Stevenson, is that it doesn’t explain birthmarks. It is not credible to imagine a spirit imprinting some birthmark while the child is in the womb or finding an actual person who died tragically with the same marks as the child in order to tell the child about that particular life.

And further still, why is it that the re-born child shows amazement at how some relative he used to know is now much older, has wrinkles or has no teeth? If there is a spirit with the child, why doesn’t it recognize its relatives? And why does the child's knowledge about the relatives and the buildings around former environment cease exactly with the time of death of the former life?

Dr Stevenson states that the number of those who remember a past life is so great that certain specific features can be discerned. These features transcend national boundaries and are similar in different parts of the world. As stated earlier in this argument, the world conspiracy theory—that all these people got together to concoct similar stories—is too ridiculous to take seriously.

The following are features in the cases of spontaneous past life recall that Stevenson investigated. A very good summary of these is in Cranston and Williams' book Reincarnation—a New Horizon in Science, Religion and Society (1984):

• age when the memories appear—usually between two and four
• age when memory fades—almost universally between five and eight
• behavior more characteristic of an adult than a child
• claims of strangeness of new body
• typical vivid events remembered
• incidents of violent death in a large percentage of the cases
• phobia for objects or circumstances causing deaths in previous life
• changes in people and surroundings detected by children
• dreams remembered by the mother or someone close in the family announcing that the coming child was a reincarnation
• the mothers reporting abnormal appetites or strange food likes and dislikes during their pregnancy which corresponded to the likes and dislikes of the person in the former incarnation
• the child possessing skills not taught or learned
• birthmarks or deformities.

On the Internet

Dr. Ian Stevenson http://www.childpastlives.org/stevenson_books.htm
contains an annotated list of his major works

Dr Ian Stevenson Articles and Cases http://www.childpastlives.org/stevenson_articles.htm
contains easy to read interviews with him about his work.

University of Virginia Children’s Past Lives Research Centre http://www.childpastlives.org/stevenson.htm

For Books and Papers on Reincarnation go to University of Virginia Health Science Centre Division of Personality Studies
http://www.med.virginia.edu/medicine/inter-dis/personality_studies/publications.html