While cases like the above are interesting, there is general agreement that the strongest evidence supportive of reincarnation comes from the spontaneous memories of young children. It seems that they would be much less likely than adults to have acquired the information they report from ordinary means. The only way a child could have obtained verifiable accurate information regarding a deceased person who had been unknown to him or her would be to have been told this by someone older. Some children have related a considerable amount of specific details about the individual they claim to have been in a previous life and have also exhibited behaviors and interests specific to that individual. To be able to deliberately prep a child to exhibit such a performance for an outside investigator seems highly unlikely.
The study of reincarnation through spontaneous past life recollections of children was pioneered by Ian Stevenson (1918 – 2007). Stevenson was a Canadian biochemist and professor of psychiatry who, until his retirement in 2002, was head of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia. For 40 years he travelled extensively to investigate 3,000 childhood cases that suggested to him the possibility of past lives. Although accounts of children’s past life experiences seem to be more common in parts of the world where belief in reincarnation is widespread, such as Asia, west Africa, and Brazil, Stevenson also located and investigated a number of cases in the United States.
A typical case investigated by Stevenson containing strong evidence “suggestive of reincarnation,” using his careful terminology, is described in his book, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. The “Case of Parmod” involves a boy, Parmod Sharma, the second son of Professor Bankeybehary Lal Sharma who was born in Bisauli, Uttar Pradesh, India, on October 1, 1944. When he was about two and a half he began to tell his mother not to cook because he had a wife in Moradabad, another community, who could cook. Later, between the age of three and four, he began to refer to a large soda and biscuit shop which he said he had in Moradabad and asked to go there. He was, he said, one of the “Mohan Brothers.” He also mentioned that in his previous life he had become ill after eating too much curd, and he “had died in a bathtub.”
Around this time Parmod began to show in his play a strong interest in building models of shops. He would make biscuits of mud which he served others with water which represented tea. This fondness for biscuits and tea was quite unusual in his family. He then began giving additional items of information about the shop in Moradabad including what was sold there, his prosperity, and his activities such as his business trips to Delhi. Parmod became increasingly preoccupied with the life in Moradabad, begging his parents to take him there.
Although Parmod’s parents did not make an attempt to verify his statements, a family by the name of Mehra, living in another community some 80 miles away, heard about him and realized that the person he seemed to be describing sounded like a recently deceased member of their own family. The brothers in the family owned a soda and biscuit shop called Mohan Brothers in Moradabad and had a brother, Parmanand Mehra, who died on May 9, 1943 after gorging himself on curd. Parmanand Mehra had been an enterprising businessman who started the family’s biscuit and soda water manufacturing business which he managed for many years.
In the summer of 1949 when Parmod was four several members of the Mehra family went to Bisauli to see the boy, but he was not home. Soon thereafter Parnod was taken by his father and a cousin to Moradabad where he recognized several members of the Mehra family and various places in the town. On another visit to a different community, where the Mehra’s had businesses, he made further recognitions of people.
Comparison of Parmod’s statements and behavior with that of the deceased Parmanand revealed other striking similarities. Parnmod exhibited cravings, habits, and dislikes that corresponded with related traits or experiences of Parmanand. He had, for example, a strong aversion to eating curd which apparently led to of the death of Parmanand. He also showed a strong dislike of being submerged in water, also related to Parmanand’s death.
From early on Parmod appeared unusually devout which corresponded to a similar trait of religiousness in Parmanand. He used several English words and phrases which were appropriate for Parmanand but which, according to his father, he could not have heard in the family where English was not spoken.
In his discussion of the case Stevenson documents the considerable effort that he made to provide as careful and thorough an investigation as possible. His initial direct personal contact with those involved was in 1961, some 15 years after Parmod first began talking about a past life. However, he had access to an investigation of the case by Professor B. L. Atreya of Benares Hindu University that took place within a few weeks of the first visit by Parmod to Moradabad. This and other materials included written statements made soon after the main events had occurred and the two families had met. These reports Stevenson, tells us, he only used after he interviewed the witnesses who read and endorsed them as accurate.
Among those connected to Parmod that Stevenson personally interviewed were Parmod himself, his father and mother, two brothers, a cousin of his mother, and a friend of his father. Among those connected to the Mehra family, he interviewed two brothers of Parmanand, his widow, three children, and a nephew. In his discussion Stevenson lists 36 specific statements and recognitions made by Parmod that were verified by witnesses, several before he visited Moradabad, a number during his first visit there, and some during his visit to another community where the Mehra’s had business dealings.
In surveying the body of work on children’s past life memories. Peter Fenwick in his book “Past Lives” noted that while cases differ somewhat from one culture to the next, certain features recur with great regularity. Many of these were present in the case of Parmod just discussed.
Typically a child between the ages of 2 and 4 begins talking about a previous life and may behave in unusual ways characteristic of that life. In a few years, however, these behaviors diminish or disappear. In some cases where the previous life is not recognizable as that of a recently deceased family member, the child is able to provide enough details so that the family of the person he or she claims to have previously been has been is located.
When the families of the child and that of the prior personality live in communities widely separated geographically, socially, and sometimes temporally, it’s highly unlikely that the families had any contact before the child’s unusual behavior began. Yet, if introduced to family and friends of the previous personality or taken to visit his or her village or home or shown related photographs, these children are able to identify people, places, or objects they’ve never seen before, and often exhibit the kinds of emotions that would be expected of the previous personality. They may, for example, display great joy or weep bitterly when reunited with loved ones or display antipathy toward the previous personality’s enemies. When they first meet that personality’s spouse, relatives, or friends they often use nicknames or terms having special or intimate significance to that person.
Most often the children report that in their previous life they died a violent death, and they tend to offer details about the mode of that death that can later be checked. They also exhibit behaviors traits, and beliefs similar to those of the previous personality, but often unusual for the child’s age, family, or community. Often, for example, they exhibit phobias appropriate to the previous personality’s mode of death.
These children sometimes display interests or cravings such as for intoxicants, sex, or certain foods, that are characteristic of the previous personality. Some have asked for or surreptitiously tried to drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes. Some also tend to engage in play that corresponds to features in the life and death of the previous personality, such as his or her profession or vocation, but doesn’t seem to have any relationship to the child’s current life and environment. A sizable portion of Stevenson’s cases involve children whose previous life was as the opposite sex, and they behave accordingly by preferring play characteristic of that sex or by cross-dressing. Some of these children display a surprisingly mature degree of religiosity or piety, or, if the prior personality was a criminal, an interest in violence or stealing. If the prior personality was murdered, they often exhibit great hostility toward the alleged murderer and, if they actually see that person, in some cases have been observed to reach for a weapon.
Stevenson discovered that in about one-third of the cases children have birthmarks or deformities corresponding to birth defects, wounds, or other notable physical features that had been possessed by the previous personality. In 18 cases in which the previous personality was killed by a gun the child had two birthmarks corresponding to the wounds where the bullet entered and exited. (Fenwick)
Ian Stevenson conducted a study comparing the past life memories of 79 American children with Indian children. Reflective of American beliefs in general many of the parents of these children did not believe in reincarnation and were distinctly uncomfortable with the idea. In comparison with Indian children, the Americans made far fewer specific statements, for example, seldom mentioning names. American children overwhelmingly felt the life they had previously led was as a member of their own family such as a grandparent or a sibling who had died before the child was born. This, of course, makes it difficult to rule out the possibility that they may have created a fantasy about a past life based on what they had learned in a normal way about some family member.
Among Indian children, on the other hand, only 16 percent believed that they were a reincarnation of a relative. More Indian children mentioned the way they died (78 percent) than Americans (43 percent), but a higher percentage of American children (80 percent) than Indian children (56 percent) remembered dying violently. Remembering life as someone of the opposite sex occurred more often among American children (15 percent) than among Indians (3 percent).
Those cases of claimed past life memories, like that of Parnod, containing a great deal of detail which could be proved to be correct, and where Stevenson could prove that there was no way the present personality could have known it, he regarded as “solved.” Few of the American cases met these criteria. (Fenwick, pp. 54 – 58)
Some of the strongest evidence supportive of reincarnation of a child involves the exhibition of skills that he or she was not taught. Among Stevenson’s cases is that of Swarnlata who, like Parmod, early in life (around age three) began talking about a previous life and making a number of statements that were later verified. Also, in the next years Swarnlata frequently sang songs and performed complicated unusual dances that, as far as her parents knew, there had been no opportunity for her to learn. The songs, in fact, were in Bengali, a language she had not been taught. (Stevenson)