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#1
08-21-2010, 07:11 AM
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Top 10 Reasons for Reincarnation
Do you believe in reincarnation? If you’re like most people, either you reject the idea outright or don’t know enough about it to make an informed decision. What is not generally known to the average westerner, however, is that reincarnation has a good deal of hard evidence to support it, and that this evidence is frequently more impressive than many people are aware. What are these evidences? Below are the ten best evidences in support of the idea for you to ponder. Of course, if you’re already convinced it’s nonsense or, at best, nothing more than a collection of anecdotal stories told by highly suggestible people, I’m afraid this list won’t have much to say to you. For those of you who lack that degree of certainty, however, and are open to considering the possibility that you might have lived before, these top ten evidences could be for you. 10. Conscious Past Life Memories in Children  Perhaps the strongest and best documented evidence in support of reincarnation comes from the work of the late Dr. Ian Stevenson (1918-2007), a Virginia psychiatrist of impeccable credentials, who began studying cases of conscious past life memories in children in the late fifties. Studying almost 3,000 cases of children—most of them between four and ten years of age—who were able to recall having lived past lives, he was impressed with their ability to remember not only their previous life names, but even the date they died and details about the villages in which they previously lived. Many were even able to accurately identify members of their “former” family and were often able to recount “pet names” and intricate details of their previous lives with uncanny accuracy. Additionally, many of the children Stevenson studied could remember how they had died in their previous life, providing details of their demise with a degree of certainty and knowledge inexplicable for a child. So strong were these impressions that in a few cases, the children identified so completely with their past life that they insisted on being called by their former name and even felt alienated from their present family, preferring—and, in some instances, becoming clearly upset—when not permitted to spend more time with their “previous” family. What’s most impressive about these memories is that these children had not been hypnotized or otherwise ‘regressed’ into remembering previous lives, but had exhibited conscious memories of past lives spontaneously from a very early age. (In fact, Dr. Stevenson specifically made it a point to ignore past life memories acquired through hypnosis precisely because he considered them unreliable and fantasy prone.) While these memories and inclinations tended to fade after a few years and disappear almost completely by adolescence, they remain among the best evidence for reincarnation to date. 
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#2
08-21-2010, 07:12 AM
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9. Corresponding Birthmarks
One of the more interesting and, potentially, solid evidences suggestive of reincarnation, also came from Dr. Stevenson’s research. During the course of his travels he noticed that occasionally some of the children he studied revealed marks on their bodies that precisely corresponded with the fatal wounds they claim their previous personality had suffered at the time of their death. For instance, one of Dr. Stevenson’s subjects, an eleven year old Turkish boy, recounted having been accidentally shot in the head with a shotgun by a neighbor in a previous incarnation. Remarkably, the boy was born with a badly deformed right ear that closely mimicked the wounds the deceased man had received, a fact later confirmed by medical records and photographs Dr. Stevenson was able to obtain from local authorities during his investigation. And this was by no means an unusual case; Dr. Stevenson recounted scores of similar examples, some in which toes and fingers—and in a few cases, even entire limbs—that had been lost in a previous incarnation were missing in the current incarnation, as well as even more startling instances in which there were multiple birthmarks that closely resembled the precise wounds received by the past life subject. In one case, he found matching entrance and exit wounds in a subject that closely corresponded to those of the previous personality, who had died from a gunshot wound to the head. Of course, the chances of such perfectly matching marks occurring naturally even once are astronomical, and Dr. Stevenson had a number of such cases on record.
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#3
08-21-2010, 07:12 AM
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8. Doctor Helen Wambach’s Demographic Studies
In the late 1960′s psychologist, Dr. Helen Wambach (1932-1985) began a series of experiments that dealt with the demographic consistency of past-life memories. Intrigued by several personal experiences she had encountered in dealing with patients who had described previous lives while under hypnosis and curious to know if there was more to it than simple imagination, she decided to compare the specific details of their “past life” with anthropological, sociological, and archeological studies made of the cultures they mentioned to see if there were any demographic consistency in their recounted memories. Her reasoning was that if gender and social class ratios proved to be consistent with what anthropologists and sociologists had already estimated them to have been, that would demonstrate her subjects “fantasies” correlated with the known demographic data, which would bring significant weight to the idea that human beings continue to live on through the mechanism of multiple rebirths. Interviewing just over 1,000 subjects over a ten year period, she asked each person about their gender, race, economic status and other often mundane specifics of their daily past lives as they recalled them in 500 B.C, the 1st century A.D., 500 A.D. and 1500 A.D. What Dr. Wambach’s data found was that the information she obtained proved to be remarkably consistent with what demographers know of the ancient past. For instance, as the majority of Dr. Wambach’s subjects were women (by about a 3-to-1 ratio) and working from the premise that most people would be unlikely to imagine themselves to have been a member of the opposite ***, there should have been a disproportionately higher number of individuals remembering themselves to have been females rather than males in a past life. Instead, she was surprised to find a large number of women remembering past lives as a man (along with a smaller number of men remembering past lives as women) that when tallied resulted in a biologically accurate 50/50 ratio of men to women throughout every time period recorded. If these ‘memories’ were based upon pure imagination, such a consistent male/female ratio should be impossible to achieve, suggesting a high number of authentic past life memories existed within her sampling. Additionally, social classes proved to be in line with demographic studies as well: Dr. Wambach had her subjects recount whether they were poor, middle class, or upper class in a previous life, presuming that a disproportionate number of subjects would opt for more interesting or affluent lives, which would strongly suggest the “memories” were manufactured. To her surprise, however, most subjects recalled having lived rather ordinary and even drab lives, often in desperate poverty. In fact, fewer than 10 percent of her subjects recalled living an upper class lifestyle, and about a quarter to a third recalled being artisans or merchants (middle class) in a previous incarnation, which corresponded very closely to sociological studies from the various periods in history she covered. Her data, then, on top of demonstrating an inexplicable consistency when compared to accepted scientific expectations, also destroyed the commonly held notion that most people recall living past lives as famous or wealthy people (the Napoleon syndrome). Other details proved to be accurate as well. Subjects frequently described architecture, clothing styles and even the coinage in use that was consistent with what archeologists know of the past. Even mundane details such as types of footwear used, eating utensils, primary diet and the methods used to cook their food—details a would-be hoaxer would be unlikely to consider—were also consistent with the known historical record, forcing her conclude that either one of the most wide-spread and carefully maintained hoaxes was afoot, or that just maybe people really do live more than one life.
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#4
08-21-2010, 07:13 AM
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7. Hypnotic Regression
Probably the best known type of evidence for reincarnation and the type most people think of when considering the subject is that which comes from hypnotic regression. In this controversial technique, subjects are hypnotized and led back through their present life to childhood before being asked to go to a “time before” their present life and describe what they see and experience. Often, subjects are able to recall extremely specific and precise personal details of their past lives such as full names, place of residence, occupations, names of spouses and family members, and other pertinent details of an alleged past life (sometimes even to the precise street address at which they previously resided) many of which frequently prove to be historically, culturally or geographically accurate. (The celebrated Bridey Murphy case of the 1950’s is perhaps the best known example of this, though it was later roundly debunked by the scientific community.) Unfortunately, while most of these cases prove to be imbued with enough detail to make them plausible as past life memories, none has proven to be irrefutable proof of reincarnation as there are almost always a few erroneous details thrown in among the verifiable facts to cast doubt on their authenticity. Additionally, there is a proven phenomena known as cryptomnesia—which is the tendency to read a book or watch a movie and then forget having done so, only to have the fictional but forgotten story recounted later as a “past life” memory—to take into account, so while hypnotism is the most prevalent type of evidence for multiple rebirths available, it if far from the best evidence available.
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#5
08-21-2010, 07:14 AM
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6. Xenoglossia
One of the more fascinating though rare evidences for reincarnation remains those handful of well documented cases in which hypnotized people reliving a past-life suddenly begin speaking in a language they do not know—either a few foreign words or phrases—or in some instances, an entire fluent conversation in a language the subject is not even aware exists. In some of the most credible and compelling cases of xenoglossia on record, the subject may not only speak in a foreign language, but may even use an archaic version of it that has not been in regular usage for centuries, making it extremely unlikely to be a fantasy, a hoax, or a case of cryptomnesia (forgotten memories). Perhaps one of the best known examples of xenoglossia came from the late actor Glenn Ford, who while under hypnosis during the 1960s recalled a past life as a French cavalryman under King Louis XIV. The astonishing part was that though Ford said he knew only a few basic phrases in French, under hypnosis he spoke French with ease while describing this life. Further, when recordings of his regression were sent to UCLA for analysis, they discovered that not only was Ford speaking fluent French, but he was speaking the Parisian dialect from the 17th century not heard in over three centuries. As such, a good case of xenoglossia remains one of the more compelling evidences for reincarnation, but as they are so rare, they have yet to generate enough hard data to allow researchers to come to any conclusions.
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