Signs of Reincarnation: Exploring Beliefs, Cases, and Theory

by James G Matlock

reincarnation. It is interesting to note, for example, that over half of the time when children report memories of previous lives, those memories entail a violent death.

young child, Rylann O’Bannion, born in 2008, who appears to have hazy yet uncanny memories concerning the tragic death of eleven-year-old Jennifer Schultz, who was sitting on a swing in the carport of her family’s home in Kenner, Louisiana, just outside of New Orleans, speaking on the phone, when Pan Am Flight 759 faltered upon takeoff and crashed into the house.

When Cindy entered the bathroom, Rylann was staring at the vanity. She looked at Cindy and said, “I know this. I’ve been here before.” When they emerged, Cindy told Evelyn about Rylann’s reaction to the vanity, and Evelyn explained that Jennifer had had the habit of pulling drawers out of it. She never removed anything from the drawers; she only looked at what was inside, then closed them again. Cindy laughed and said that Rylann had been doing the same thing in their home since she was a young child.

Nothing in Rylann’s early life can account for these signs of trauma, which began to appear when she was around twenty-four months old. They would, however, be appropriate for a person who had suffered a sudden physical blow, such as an electrocution. B7, starts to say that her hair touching her back hurt her back, and B8, complains that clothing hurt her neck and wanted tags cut out, sound as if they could be related to a subliminal memory of being electrocuted. This impression becomes stronger when Rylann begins to say it feels as if her skin is burning.

Rylann recalled many things about the life and death of Jennifer Schultz while in the waking state, not under hypnosis. She identified with Jennifer and recounted her memories from Jennifer’s point of view. She displayed reactions that might be expected from someone who experienced what Jennifer must have experienced.

The essential idea of reincarnation cross-culturally is of a life force that animates a living entity and survives death, returning to animate another entity when it is reborn.

Now, concerning karma, the great moral law of cause and effect of Hinduism and Buddhism (and of Jainism and Sikhism): Karma is considered moral because it is thought to derive from one’s own actions. Good deeds produce positive karma; bad deeds result in negative karma.

karma is thought of as an external force that determines not only where and to whom one is reborn but much of what befalls one in life.

Because it avoids the moral dimension and situates responsibility with the thoughts and actions of an individual, this version of karma is not karma in the classic sense and deserves a different name. I call it processual karma, in contrast to juridical karma. Processual karma entails the carrying over from life to life of memory, emotions, behavioral dispositions, and other attributes that inform personality. Processual karma may involve self-judgment, but it derives from a force internal rather than external to the actor.

Conceptualizing what reincarnates as a duplex stream of consciousness that carries forward memories, behavioral dispositions, and other aspects of personality through death to the union with a new body is an improvement over the nebulous “soul.” The

There is reason to take parental shaping of children’s behavior (parental guidance) seriously. Experimental work has shown that false memories may be implanted by suggestion and young children are especially susceptible to this possibility (Bruck & Ceci, 1999). Social construction enters to some extent into the development and reporting of all reincarnation cases, and some claimed identifications have proven to be self-delusions or fabrications (Stevenson, Pasricha, & Samararatne, 1988). In

Tibetan adepts often declare where they will be reborn, though they are thought to have overcome their karmic ties and to be returning to the world of their own volition. These masters rarely state exactly to whom they will be reborn, but only give general guidance on where to look for them (Gamble, 2018; Mackenzie, 1996; Wangdu, Gould, & Richardson, 2000). The animist, on the other hand, states precisely where he intends to go.

These are the solutions to the selection problem that have been proposed by different traditions. According to the karmic solution, the parents (and circumstances) of one’s next incarnation are determined by one’s karma. According to the theistic solution, God mediates karma, makes the decision outright, or at a minimum, establishes the conditions under which the decision is made. The elective solution places the decision in the hands of the individual.

Fortunately, two of the most significant cases—those of James Leininger and Jenny Cockell—have been followed up by the research community. James Leininger recalled being a U.S. Navy fighter pilot downed near Iwo Jima during World War II. His case was solved and reported by his parents (Leininger & Leininger, with Gross, 2009), then investigated and documented by Jim Tucker (2013, 2016). Jenny Cockell (1994) wrote about her successful efforts to verify her memories of having been Mary Sutton, an Irish woman who died of an illness, leaving several young children behind. Mary Rose Barrington (2002) went back over Cockell’s research and found it to be correctly reported.

The demonstration by Henry Stapp (2009) that personal survival is compatible with quantum theory and his statement (2015, p. 181) that reincarnation requires only minor revision of the mathematical formalisms of quantum mechanics suggest that quantum biology may have an easier time with the data than conventional biology does, but we are still in need of a sound theory.

Taking my lead from Stapp (2009, 2015), and consistent with the propositions I introduced in Chapter 1, I suggest that consciousness is what survives bodily death and reincarnates.

Just as the memory of past events in our present lives may be jogged by association with things we see and hear, so too are memories of previous lives.

Not infrequently, chance encounters with people or places connected to past lives trigger memories of those lives. The stimuli may be auditory or olfactory as well as visual.

Sometimes the trigger appears to be the contrast between the past and present lives, as when a child tells his mother that his “other mother” or his “wife” is prettier than she is or invidiously compares his family’s economic circumstances with those of his previous life.

Stevenson noted that children vary in the extent of their identification with the previous person and immersion in the previous life. Many children separate the two lives, signaling their distance from the past with such phrases as, “When I was big . . .” Others use the present tense, saying things like, “I have a wife and two sons,” and seem to imagine the other life as running concurrently with their own. Children may demand to be called by the name of the previous person, even to the point of refusing to respond to their own name.

The only type of declarative memory seemingly absent from past-life memory is what Conway (2005) termed autobiographical knowledge. Autobiographical knowledge supplies the “big picture” context for understanding episodic memories. Its lack is only partially compensated by what I call autobiographical impression, an intuitive awareness of events surrounding an episodic memory.

The absence of autobiographical knowledge in past-life memory contributes substantially to the difficulty of identifying the persons case subjects believe themselves to have been and means that past-life memory should be regarded as a restricted form of autobiographical memory.

Materialist neuroscientists assume that memory traces are stored in the brain, although they have never been able to explain how this is accomplished (Braude, 2006; Gauld, 2007). Recently Takashi Kitamura et al. (2017) claimed to find evidence that long-term memories are consolidated in the neocortex, but this would not allow for learning by more primitive organisms. Tal Shomrat and Michael Levin (2013) trained planarian flatworms to find a food

Stevenson (1974c) distinguished between recitative xenoglossy and responsive xenoglossy. Recitative xenoglossy is the use of unlearned language in a rote, uncomprehending fashion. Responsive xenoglossy is the ability to understand and converse intelligibly in an unlearned language. Spontaneous cases of past-life memory supply examples of both recitative and responsive xenoglossy. In addition, spontaneous cases furnish examples of a variety of unconscious influences on speech production that I have termed passive xenoglossy (Haraldsson

Behavioral memories may be evoked when a child meets the previous person’s family and friends (Stevenson, 2001, p. 115). The child may act as a parent toward the previous person’s children and a spouse toward the previous person’s spouse, displaying either affection or distance, as appropriate. Gopal Gupta was friendly toward the previous person’s sister but cool and indifferent toward his wife, with whom the previous person had not been on good terms

memories originate in the subconscious like other sorts of memories, but with the added step that the reincarnating mind impresses them on the new brain. The reincarnating mind could accomplish this feat through psi (PK) (Haraldsson & Matlock, 2016, p. 272). The psychokinesis I am proposing is in no manner super-psi; it need be no more extensive or complex than that involved in what parapsychologists call “direct mental action on living systems” (DMILS), which includes what is known popularly as psychic healing (Braud, 2003; Schlitz & Braud, 1997), or that suggested by many cases of mind/brain interaction, such as the placebo effect and psychosomatic illness (E. W. Kelly, 2007b).

When they meet certain people and recognize them, case subjects recall how to behave with them and act appropriately, as did the boy who responded to his previous person’s employees as a boss (Keil, 1991). Places may evoke a similar set of responses. When he was twenty-one, Ashok Kumar Shakya told Antonia Mills that his memories had not faded but that he avoided going to the previous village because when he went there he “became” the previous person (Mills, 2006, p. 146). Apparently all types of past-life memory are linked in the subconscious mind, so that they may be retrieved together. Paul Reber (2013, pp. 2038‒39) reached a similar conclusion regarding different types of present-life memory.

I wonder if emotional memories play a mediating role here. If I am right that the reproduction of procedural memories is the mind’s doing, then what the mind chooses (perhaps unconsciously) to reproduce may be those things to which it feels the greatest emotional attachment. This is consistent with my theory that memory is stored in the subconscious and would mean that all memories are implicit at their core, the difference being that declarative memories present themselves to conscious awareness, whereas the implicit may remain unconscious even when they are expressed behaviorally or somatically.

A considerable number of rebirth syndrome accounts and reincarnation cases have physical signs. Stevenson found birthmarks or birth defects in 309 (35%) of 895 solved cases from the nine societies that contributed the majority of cases to his collection

reincarnation cases show the opposite of what retributive karma predicts. Rather than a killer being cursed with the deformities he has inflicted on his victim (Blavatsky, 1888a), it is his victim who bears the scars.

Episodic memories with their related statements and recognitions, behavioral identifications, and congenital physical abnormalities are the three major classes of signs suggestive of reincarnation, but they are not the only signs. Many cases include announcing dreams and a subject’s memories of the intermission period, which suggest a discarnate agency operating between lives. Another important class of sign is patterns across the entire dataset of cases. It is hard to understand how either psychosocial propositions or psi could produce these patterns, which show up cross-culturally as well within cultures over time. Finally, there are signs such as phobias and other post-traumatic reactions of case subjects. These emotional responses are consistent with past-life memory, but it is unclear how they would be shaped by parental guidance or acquired by psi.

Geographical and psychological factors provide indirect support for elective reincarnation and for the elective solution to the selection problem. Rebirth announcements through dreams, as waking apparitions, in poltergeist activity, and in mediumistic messages likewise depict the spirit in control. If this indirect evidence is considered along with instances of reincarnation planned before death and memories of choosing parents during the intermission, elective reincarnation is easily the most commonly attested manner of selecting the rebirth parents. Elective reincarnation provides strong evidence of discarnate agency, consistent with my model of the reincarnation process.

Children everywhere are likely to recall how the previous person died, especially when the death was violent, and there are a disproportionate number of violent deaths in the cases of all cultures (Matlock, 1990b; Stevenson, 2001). Violent deaths—by accident, murder, suicide, during war, and so on—figured in 51% of solved cases and were claimed in 61% of unsolved cases in 1983 (Cook et al., 1983, p. 121).

People are apt to adopt opinions and precepts prevailing in their cultures and religions, and if their minds survive the demise of their bodies, it should not be surprising that those opinions and precepts persist and help to determine what is experienced in the postmortem state. This may be why there are such strong cultural influences on descriptions of discarnate existence

Why do only a few people remember previous lives? I believe we have built-in defenses against consciously remembering who we were or exactly what happened to us before. Our psyches block knowledge of the past so that we may get on with living in the present

Stevenson (2001, p. 212) noted that in the majority of his cases, there were indications of ongoing or unfinished business carried over from the previous life. A premature death from murder, accident, or illness might produce a sense of incompleteness, but many cases have more specific types of unfinished business, such as a desire to tell widows where valuables are hidden, a wish to collect or repay debts, or a yearning to return to children left behind. The emotional quality of these more specific types of unfinished business is clear. A. C. Holland and E. A. Kensinger (2010) stressed the importance of emotional factors in present-life memory formation and retrieval. Once again, memory of past lives seems not to be very different from the memory of present lives.

Iris Giesler searched the published record for cases of death by natural processes in old age. She found ten cases in which natural deaths (deaths other than by accident or murder) came at age sixty or later and noted that in six of these ten cases, the previous persons were devout or pious Buddhists. This accords with Stevenson’s observation (2001, p. 214) that the previous persons in several of the natural-death cases in his collection were unusually spiritual. Many of the previous persons in Giesler’s sample were practiced in meditation (which in Asian cultures, from which the majority of the cases came, typically accompanies spiritual practices).

In many adult cases, the identity of the previous person appears to be blocked. Edward Ryall had memories of a past life from childhood but was in his seventies when he wrote them down (Ryall, 1974). His story includes semantic memories of time and place that give it a superficial plausibility, yet none of the named persons appear in historical records (Stevenson, 2003). Mrs. Smith (Guirdham, 1970) experienced richly veridical dreams of the Cathars, but the central figures of her story could not be identified.

In contrast to those who experience past-life memories in the waking state or dreams, subjects under hypnosis commonly name the persons they used to be and may say precisely when they lived (e.g., 1863 BC: B. L. Weiss, 1988, p. 27). These facts ought to make their cases easier to solve, but they seldom do. When regression cases are solved, moreover, key elements sometimes turn out to be wrong. In the celebrated case of Indianapolis police detective Robert Snow (Snow, 1999), who was able to solve his own case by identifying a painting he saw himself working on, the names he gave under hypnosis for his previous person and his wife were incorrect.

For most people with past-life memories, their minds may not preserve memories of more than one or two lives in enough detail for their past identities to be confirmed, although they might retain fragmentary memories of traumatic or otherwise emotionally salient events. Present-life memory is pruned in this way, and why should past-life memory be different? For Brazilian Spiritism, past-life personalities resemble MPD/DID alters in the subconscious mind (Krippner, 1991). From this perspective, past personalities lie within all of us, affecting us with their unresolved conflicts, but as their concerns are dealt with, they recede and become integrated with our present personalities.

Nahm (2012) and Nahm, Greyson, E. W. Kelly, and Haraldsson (2012) collected examples of terminal lucidity in connection with brain abscesses, tumors, strokes, meningitis, and affective disorders. Autopsies revealed damage to the brain extensive enough to have made it impossible for consciousness to manifest according to the brain-production theory, and materialists do not have a good explanation for what happens in these cases.

For me, the assumption that reincarnation is a routine affair makes better sense of the data (and is philosophically sounder) than does the assumption that it is not. I explain the absence of past-life memories as due to unconscious blocks against remembering what happened before. The memories are preserved in the subconscious but do not make their way into conscious awareness (Haraldsson & Matlock, 2016, pp. 262‒63).

While in the womb, the mind has the opportunity to customize its body. It is at this stage that birthmarks and other physical signs are impressed on the body, and neural pathways that convey practiced behaviors and skill sets are laid down in the brain.

Stevenson (2001, p. 109, and elsewhere) noted that past-life memories seem to become buried under memories of the present life as children age. Past-life personalities become more difficult to access over time. One interpretation of this finding is that past-life memories become walled off from the present-life personality, as in MPD/DID. This

The stream of consciousness that animates a body during life continues into death, and persists through death, until it becomes associated with (possesses) another body, generally one not yet born. The consciousness stream is composed of both subliminal and supraliminal strata, the former bearing memories and various traits we may subsume under the heading of personality, the latter representing conscious awareness. Once in possession of its new body, the reincarnating mind customizes it by adding behavioral and physical effects through psychokinetic operations on its genome, brain, and underlying physiology. At the level of conscious awareness, there is a reset, as the mind begins to interact with its new body and brain. Amnesia sets in, the subconscious blocking conscious memory of the past in what it considers to be its own best interests. The influence of the past is expressed behaviorally, however, and at times the subconscious permits memories to erupt into conscious awareness. This, in brief, is my processual soul theory.

If the consciousness stream continues into death more or less unimpaired, as it must if it is to have the hypothesized effects on its new body, we would expect to see evidence of other postmortem activities, and we do, in the form of announcing dreams, apparitions, and mediumistic communications during the intermission period (Matlock, 2018, January). Also, inasmuch as psi is a capability of embodied minds, we would expect to see it exercised by disembodied minds, and we do. Not only is psi implicated in announcing dreams, apparitions, and mediumistic communications, case subjects with intermission memories frequently describe veridical perceptions of the material world and sometimes recall performing actions that were witnessed by embodied persons (Matlock, 2017, May).

Perhaps transplant cases can be explained in terms of holography, in which a part contains a representation of the whole. Holography would be a natural way to conceptualize transplant phenomena, and it may not be beyond reason. Neurosurgeon Karl Pribram (1991, 2004, 2013) has argued for years that memory is best explained holonomically (his preferred term), which allows him to adhere to a brain-production theory of mind while acknowledging that memory is not contained in the brain. There is no evident reason that the subconscious mind could not be organized like a hologram, even if it were not generated by the brain. If memory is registered in the subconscious holographically and a mind is distributed over a body rather than being confined to a brain, then when an organ is transplanted it would carry with it all of the donor’s memories, personality traits, and behavior patterns.

Reincarnation as defined by the processual soul theory has considerable explanatory power, potentially clarifying a variety of matters, including otherwise inexplicable post-traumatic symptoms and gender dysphoria (Stevenson, 1977c, 2000a) and the etiology of many unusual birthmarks and birth defects (Stevenson, 1993, 1997a, 1997b). Reincarnation also brings new perspectives to issues of personality formation and memory. In the social sphere, it could help to explain the persistence of cultural traits in a given population or region over time. Among peoples like the Druze who have long recognized the reality of reincarnation, it is fundamental not only to social cohesion, but to group identity (Bennett, 2006; Halabi & Horenzyk, 2019).

The need for an enhanced biological perspective is called for also by psi phenomena like telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis. They do not fit into current models of neo-Darwinian biology or any other strictly physicalist world view, yet, in my opinion, parapsychological research of the last two hundred years has shown convincingly that these phenomena (including those related to possible reincarnation and possession) exist and consequently an appropriate comprehension of the foundations of nature and life must build on a model of reality that can account for them. As a general frame, such a model of reality suggests that our environment, or rather, our perception of our environment, is only part of a larger structure of reality—many facets of which are usually hidden from direct experience and are not readily accessible with biological senses (Nahm, 2007). As shown earlier, this appraisal matches perfectly the concept of reality suggested by modern physics.

Advancing speculations along these lines further led authors to surmise that ultimately, all perception might effectively be a psychic act. The interposition of biological sense organs into the process of cognition might be a complicating detour (Driesch, 1938; Mattiesen, 1936–1939; compare also J. C. Carpenter, 2012; Griffin, 1997) that functions as a means to construct a reliable environment in the context of the various “filter” or “transmission” models of the mind (Grosso, 2015; E. F. Kelly & Presti, 2015).