The Hard Science of Reincarnation

The Hard Science of Reincarnation

"All over the world, scholars studying reincarnation are making findings even skeptics have difficulty explaining."

Rebecca Nathanson

When Tucker first heard about Stevenson’s research on reincarnation, he was a child psychiatrist in private practice in Charlottesville, Virginia, where UVA is located. He didn’t believe in reincarnation, but his wife was open to ideas about reincarnation and psychics, so he gradually opened up to those concepts too. And his wife wasn’t alone: A 2018 Pew Research Center poll found that 33 percent of adults in the United States believe in reincarnation. After reading one of Stevenson’s books, he heard that DOPS was doing a project on near-death experiences—another field of research within parapsychology—and reached out. He began working there part-time in 1999.

He doesn't, however, question the necessity of the research itself. “There could only be two possibilities. One is that there is something genuinely paranormal happening, and if that is true, that would be amazing,” he told me. “Or, alternatively—which is more the line that I do favor—it tells us something very interesting about human psychology. So either way, it's worth taking seriously.”

Dr. Anita H. Clayton, chair of UVA’s psychiatry and neurobehavioral department, which houses DOPS, echoed that sentiment: “My question is, Where should DOPS be if it's not in the department of psychiatry? And where should it be if it's not in academics? Because I think what scientists do is dispassionately investigate phenomena that we don't yet understand.”

If memory serves, Vice had a skeptic-leaning bent at least in early 00s?

It really is amazing to see how things are shifting...

[Laird]

Nice to see this article in the mainstream media, with such fair treatment (the obligatory skeptic notwithstanding). The link is missing from your post though. This seems to be it: https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgqygg/h...past-lives

[Edit: Oh, I see you've posted in the meantime, as well as added the link to your OP.]

That whole line about so-called "false memories" is a bit of a side-alley, it doesn't address the meat of the topic which is, as I always say, about a state of being. That sounds hard to pin down, I realise. But it is day-to-day existence, just ordinary going about one's daily life, where one just is. There is something about the ordinary which is to me extraordinary. This is where the concept of reincarnation merges into something transcendent or mysterious.  Sticking a label such as "anomalistic psychology" on things is a way of de-valuing experience, by making the normal seem like some sort of problem. I don't know quite what I'm trying to say, but the angle taken by French in that article seems somehow superficial, a way of looking at the world and never actually seeing it.

The Hard Science of Reincarnation

"All over the world, scholars studying reincarnation are making findings even skeptics have difficulty explaining."

Rebecca Nathanson

I don't think much of French's dismissal mentioned in the article of reincarnation memories in young children as "false memories" implanted in small children through hearing information spoken by their parents - it's a desperate theory arising from a strong need to defend materialism in psychology, and complacently ignores all the research conducted by Stevenson which was designed to eliminate just such theories.

That whole line about so-called "false memories" is a bit of a side-alley, it doesn't address the meat of the topic which is, as I always say, about a state of being. That sounds hard to pin down, I realise. But it is day-to-day existence, just ordinary going about one's daily life, where one just is. There is something about the ordinary which is to me extraordinary. This is where the concept of reincarnation merges into something transcendent or mysterious.  Sticking a label such as "anomalistic psychology" on things is a way of de-valuing experience, by making the normal seem like some sort of problem. I don't know quite what I'm trying to say, but the angle taken by French in that article seems somehow superficial, a way of looking at the world and never actually seeing it.

I do think you are on to something here - every account relayed to me about past-life memories indicates a different core/center. Even if someone gets outside confirmation, it's that initial sense of self rooted in a vastly different context that seems to make it compelling.

I do think you are on to something here - every account relayed to me about past-life memories indicates a different core/center. Even if someone gets outside confirmation, it's that initial sense of self rooted in a vastly different context that seems to make it compelling.

Thanks. The practical difficulty of course is that there is no simple way to prove something so intangible.

Thanks. The practical difficulty of course is that there is no simple way to prove something so intangible.

This I think is a related topic, though not quite the same as the sense of self or of being.

Psychological Studies of Children Claiming Past-Life Memories

Do children with memories of past lives differ psychologically from children without such memories? Erlendur Haraldsson examined that possibility systematically, administering psychological tests to children and their mothers, and to teachers who knew them well, in Sri Lanka and Lebanon. Similar studies have been conducted in India and the United States. These studies have found that children with past-life memories do differ from their peers in several respects.