Demystifying Reincarnation 07 – Past life memories – Fraud by investigators?

Hare Krishna. Welcome back to the demystifying reincarnation series.
We have been discussing past life memories and whether they can be explained by any normal means. And today we will discuss about whether these memories might be frauds, frauds done by the investigators themselves. In the past session, we discussed whether these might be frauds done by children, by the parents of the children.
And Tom Schroder was the journalist and editor of Washington Post who accompanied Ian Stevenson on his field studies when he interviewed the many children who claimed to have past lives. And he observed the method or rigorous documentation of what Ian Stevenson did. And he spoke that the fraud, a fundamental problem with this fraud hypothesis.
So, he said that the children are so young, some of them are 2, 3, 4 years old. And because of that, Schroder says, that extraordinarily young age makes the idea of some form of fraud almost unthinkable. Believing that a child could learn and repeat complex accurate biographies at an age when his peers are struggling to learn the names of colors is almost an absurdity.
So, children here are speaking, not only identifying I was this person, I went here, I went there, they are describing in detail. And this is way beyond the cognitive capacity of most children at that time and how could they speak such elaborate things when otherwise they would not even be able to speak normal things. So, whatever the sheer small age of the children makes it unlikely.
But Schroder also pointed out the rigorous methodology which Stevenson employed. Let us see, Ian Stevenson is the pioneer of past life research or research into past life memory. So, let us try to understand how he got into this research and what methodology he brought about in this research.
So, Stevenson was a brilliant researcher. He graduated in 1943 from McGill University in Montreal. He is at the top of his class and he by 1957, just 14 years after graduation, he was made the head of the Department of Psychiatry, University of Virginia School of Medicine when he was just 39.
And as a part of his work as HOD, he would read extensively and often publish papers on a wide variety of issues. So, once he read some multiple books about past life memories and he published a paper of 44 cases of past life memories. In 1960, he published this.
And then that elicited a lot of interest from other readers as well as within him. And he resigned as the head of the Department of Psychiatry and focused exclusively on past life memory research. And he continued on and eventually he had established a Department of Personality Studies where he became the pioneer of this research.
And he was not at all sensationalist. He would never try to grab media attention by making jaw dropping claims about what something implied. And his rigorous research standards were appreciated by some of the most important and most respected magazines and journals in academic study.
So, his work was featured in the American Journal of Psychiatry and the International Journal of Comparative Sociology. And even JAMA, which is among the most respected and the most traditional among scientific journals, that is Journal of American Medical Association. It is preeminent in terms of size, influence and tradition.
And it stated about Stevenson that he had painstakingly and unemotionally collected a detailed series of cases in which the evidence for reincarnation is difficult to understand on any other grounds. He has placed on record a large amount of data that cannot be ignored. So, the December 1, 1975 issue.
And similarly, in Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, it is devoted actually one full issue, the September 1, 1977 issue to Stevenson’s work. And there, psychiatrist Harold Leaf lauded Stevenson as a methodical investigator and stated, either he is making a colossal mistake or he will be known. I have said as much to him as the Galileo of the 20th century.
So, here the important thing is that the topmost journals, which are known for rigorous standards, they have featured his study and none of them have accused him of bias or fraud. So, the bias or fraud hypothesis just does not work, both from the point of view of the inability of small children to execute a fraud, to implement a fraud, even if they are told to do so. And the integrity of the researcher who has pioneered the study, therefore, the fraud hypothesis is not sustainable.
And further, we had discussed about how vindication of research standards by third party. So, Stevenson documented carefully what all was happening. He meticulously recorded the interviews and he had reams and reams and reams of interviews, which is stocked in his archives, which are there for everyone to see.
So, when Stevenson passed away in 2007, the Journal of Scientific Exploration, they did not get a full issue to his memory. And again, there Schroder wrote that neither self-delusion, intentional fraud, peer pressure, nor coincidence could explain how the children Ian investigated could have known all that they knew about strangers who had died before they were born. So, the point is it eludes all normal explanations.
Another point is that not only Stevenson, Stevenson was the pioneer, but after him, there have been scores of researchers all over the world who have started investigating this field. And they have found consistently similar findings all over the world. If it is a fraud to imagine that there could be a network of people in various parts of the world who do not even know each other, they would all come up with same kind of findings.
It is stretching credibility to a breaking point. So, there are researchers like Jim Tucker, Carol Bowman, Jiren Keel, Emily Williams Cook, Godwin Samarathne, Satwan Pasricha, Saibo Chauten, Yumin Mong, Antonia Mills, and Arlinda Haralson, to name a few. So, even if you assume that some of these cases may be questionable, but to dismiss all of those cases as fraud in advance, it is not skepticism.
It is actually a bias of its own kind. So, then if investigative fraud is not an explanation, what is an explanation? Actually, we have discussed from the beginning, let us do a review of the cases. And then we will move forward and try to understand what the implication of this is.
We discussed how these past life case memories have four features to them. There is recollections, recognitions, emotions, and behaviors, and then birthmarks and birth defects. And can these be explained by any other method or normal means? So, for example, information by normal means, we discussed that this does not work.
So, here in a tabular form, we will discuss about the cases which we have discussed till now in review about how they support the argument that the past life memories have no explanation except the explanation of being authentic memories from a past life. So, could there be information by normal means? For that, we discussed two cases. One is information too detailed to be known.
That was the case of two, that was the case of Naseewal Dhanath, who actually, there is a case of James Leininger. So, we discussed about, firstly, we started with past life memories in which we discussed about the spontaneous life, past life memories, and before that about hypnotically induced past life memories. And even hypnotically induced past life memories, we discussed about how the memory could not have come from the suggestion of the hypnotizer, because even the hypnotizer did not know the language in which the subject was writing.
We discussed the case of Harald, who wrote in two ancient languages, which are practically extinct right now. And the language of the Vikings, Vikings and the language, ancient Persian language, Sassanid Pahlavi. So, this cannot be known by normal means, because practically nobody knows it, only a handful of research specialists linguists know it in the whole world today.
Then when it comes to spontaneous past life memories, the children could not have known it by normal means, because sometimes the information was too specific for the children to know. James Leininger, he knew such details about corsairs in general, and about the life of James Houston, who had died in the Second World War, that this was just not known easily. And his father also had to research to get to know it.
Another case we discussed, which problematizes the idea of information by normal means is the case of Shantidevi, where she knew in detail the way in which when she was sick and paralyzed and could not move, how Pandit Chaubey had intercourse with his wife in his previous life, and that is how she became pregnant. This was not known to anyone except the husband and wife. How could some other girl born somewhere else, who has never known this family before, how could she have known this? There is no normal way to know this.
So, the idea of information by normal means does not work. Then could it be guesswork? We discussed that, the case of Nazial Danaf, in which he gave so many specific details. For example, he said that he lived in a house that was built by a member of a particular family, nearby there was a cave, that he had a mute friend, and that he had been given a checky gun.
All those things are so specific that the idea of all this coming by guesswork is untenable. Then could it just be exaggeration, that the children or their relatives or the previous personality family, they are all exaggerating things? That could be possible, but we discussed how there are objective, the documentation of things. So, there was precise recognition under multiple, there was written record of the memories, that we discussed the case of Ajendra Singh Chauhan, where Ajendra, actually whatever he spoke was recorded by researchers before he went and met the previous personality.
So, the possibility of exaggeration is not there, if the written record and the time and the location of that record is already available. And then again, we discussed also if this possibility of exaggeration can be countered, if the researcher is present at the time of the critical meeting between the child and his family, his or her family and the previous personality’s family. And that has also happened in a few occasions, many significant occasions.
I will discuss the case of Gyanti Lekha and how her meeting with her Talavikal family, Tilak Ratne s family that was done under multiple supervision and she recognized her mother, her father, her sisters, her brother, her teacher and her friend. So, when the neutral third party is there and there is nobody giving cues, then the possibility of exaggeration is almost is eliminated. And then, of course, the exaggeration can never explain the presence of birthmarks and birth defects.
And these birthmarks and birth defects have no explanation in normal medical terms. There is no genetic reason, there is no infection during pregnancy, nor was there any ingestion of any detergents, which might cause damage to the, which might cause the birthmarks or birth defects. We discussed three cases of progressively increasing strength.
The case of Titu Singh, who had birthmarks, twin birthmarks on his head, temple, left and right side, at the exact locations where Suresh Verma had been shot in his previous life. And these cases of birthmark and birth memory, birth defects are also accompanied by other cases, by other factors recollections, the recognitions and their emotions and behaviors are described. Then I discussed about the another case where there is a rare birthmark, which absolutely has no biological cause, that is Indica ischium nasal polyp.
And that was actually at the same location where Dharashan, who had died because of encephalitis, he had been given a nasal oxygen and nasal food pipe and he had experienced irritation in the nose. So, this is a nasal polyp is extremely rare and Indica’s identical twin did not have it. So, it cannot have any genetic cause.
And thirdly, we discussed not just one or two, Stevenson pointed out that the possibility of one birthmark correlating is 1 by 160, because the body can be divided into 160 parts. But if there are 7 birthmarks they are correlating, then the probability becomes 1 by 160 raised to the power of 7. It is an extremely low probability. And that was the case in the case of Nesip, Nesip Unlatskiran, who was in his earlier life Nesip Budak and who had been stabbed to death while he was drunk and had gotten into a drunken brawl.
And 7 wounds had caused his death and Nesip, young boy in his next life by the same name, he had 7 birthmarks at the same locations where Nesip Budak had the birthmarks, had the fatal wounds. So, therefore, the exaggeration hypothesis does not work when there are tangible, recordable, visible birthmarks. So, it is not just memory, but it is also biology over here.
Then what explanation remains? Could all these be frauds? For the fraud hypothesis we discussed, what could be the motives of the parents if the parents did the fraud? Three motives. Could they be wanting validation of their personal beliefs? In the cases that are there in Europe or America where most parents do not believe in reincarnation and they oppose that idea because of their religious or cultural upbringing, then there is no validation. In fact, there is refutation of their personal beliefs.
And it is only because of strong evidence that they eventually acknowledge it. And in India, where reincarnation is widely accepted, because the belief is not challenged in their society, Indians do not really care for the validation of their belief. In fact, many Indians in rural India have that fear, superstition that if the children speak about a past life, then they will die young.
And that is why they actively suppress, discourage the children from speaking and try to suppress the memories of the children. So, parents not only do not have any incentive of validating their personal beliefs, but they have disincentive because either they do not believe in it or they fear that the child will die if they speak about it. And could there be monetary benefits? Actually, the researchers give no money to the subjects whom they are interviewing.
Even if the children of a poor, the parents of a poorer child have a child who claims to be born in a wealthier family in the previous life, the parents hardly ever, parents never ask money from that family, nor are they given the money. And in fact, to undergo the interviews, the rigorous drilling by the researchers is a demand, is a financial disincentive for many families because they often have to work all day to make ends meet. And when they have to spend hours and hours giving interviews, sometimes again and again because multiple researchers interview, then it means that they are losing the time which they could have used for earning money.
There is disincentive again, not incentive. And lastly, the parents, would they be seeking fame or prestige? No, because most parents, they do not publicize the case at all. It is only when the child insists on being taken to that place or the previous personality or insists that I will go there if you do not take me, then that the parents start inquiring.
They are not interested in publicizing. And in many cases, the parents are not proud of the child’s past life memories. Often the child behaves because of his past life memories in a way that is embarrassing to the parents or discomforting for them.
In that case, we discussed various cases, especially three cases. We discussed the case of firstly, Mushir Ali Shah, who was actually, who had died in a previous life and was born as Naresh. So, because this was a Muslim being born as a Hindu, there is a religious tension involved and neither family wanted to accept it.
And because Naresh was performing Namaz, when alone and Naresh wanted to eat eggs, which his family did not eat, which Mushir used to live, all this was embarrassing for his parents. And they did not want any reincarnational connection to be established. We also discussed the case of Moti Nangmi, where she claimed, while living in Burma, claimed to be a Japanese soldier.
The Japanese were looked at very unfavorably because of the atrocities they had performed while they had occupied Japan after the Second World War. And also, for her, living in a conservative society, to claim to be a man that caused profound discomfort and misery to her mother and her other relatives, who tried to make her act like a normal girl, and she refused. So, why would parents orchestrate a fraud in which they had to undergo embarrassment in the eyes of society? And similarly, we discussed the case of Jasbir Singh, who was born in a low-caste Hindu family and who claimed to be a Brahmin boy.
And he refused to eat the food that was cooked in his own home because he said, I eat food only cooked by Brahmins. And for several years in his life, since he started speaking, his father actually had to ask a Brahmin to cook food and get that food to his house. So, this does not make any sense that a father or a parent would grill their child to refuse to eat food in their own house and would grill their child to starve, make the child threaten, I will starve, but I will not eat this food.
So, when the children’s behavior is embarrassing to the parents, there is no question of prestige or fame. And then we discussed what is about, could it be investigator fraud? Now, we discussed how Stevenson was impeccable researcher and even journals like JAMA had appreciated his methodology and standards. And then consistent findings have been found by researchers all over the world.
And therefore, to dismiss it all as a fraud is actually a sign of bias. So, then the past life memories cannot be explained by any normal means. What do they imply? As Schroeder, who did the research, who followed Stevenson and observed the research he said that no normal explanation works.
So, what does it mean? Could it mean that we are bigger than what we have been taught to believe, that death is not the end of our life, that we continue to live in another place in another time? And as German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said that the discovery of truth is prevented more effectively not by false appearance of things present and which mislead into error, not directly by the weakness of reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice. So, if we are prejudiced thinking that this past life memories are a hoax, then we cannot actually discover the truth about them. So, after objectively we observe, objectively we evaluate, then we will realize how they are actually authentic.
Similarly, Francis Bacon, he wrote that the world is not to be narrowed till it will go into the understanding, but the understanding is to be expanded and opened till it can take in the image of the world as it is in fact. So, if you are bold enough and big enough, open enough to investigate reality for what it is, you know, great intellectual and spiritual adventure awaits us. And that higher understanding of life’s spiritual side is what we will uncover as we move on in future sessions of our demystifying reincarnation series.
So, we discussed about past life memories. In our future session, we will discuss another line of evidence of scientific research that points to the fact that we are different from our body, that our existence can continue on separate from our body. That field is the near-death experiences.
Join us in our next session for unraveling the mystery of near-death experiences and how they point to the possibility and indeed the reality of reincarnation.