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WHERE REINCARNATION AND BIOLOGY INTERSECT by Ian Stevenson. Westport,
CT: Praeger, 1997. Pp. xviii + 203. $17.95, softcover, ISBN 0-275-95189-8.
(Appeared in Journal of Parapsychology Vol. 62, December 1998. pp. 363 – 371)
The night before the birth of Cemil Fahrici in Turkey, Cemil's father dreamed that a
distant relative, Cemil Hayik, entered the home. Hayik, a folk hero and bandit, had
committed suicide during a shoot-out with the police. He had placed the muzzle of his
gun to his chin and had set off the trigger with a toe. When the parents of the newborn
boy found a birthmark under his chin, which actually bled and required stitching, they
thought he was the reincarnation of Cemil Hayik and named him Cemil. Their impression
was reinforced when the boy began to speak and described events from the life of his
namesake. Ian Stevenson, who investigated the case, discovered that the fatal bullet
had exited at the top of the skull, lifting out part of the bone. He therefore asked Cemil
Fahrici if he had another birthmark. "Without hesitating," said Stevenson, "he pointed to
the top of his head, and we quickly discovered a linear area of hairlessness on the left
side of the top of his head" (p. 75).
The scientific study of reincarnation is almost entirely due to Ian Stevenson, a
psychiatrist who has established a parapsychology center at the University of Virginia,
Charlottesville. If it were not for his investigations, it would be impossible to evaluate the
claim that after death, human personality may be transferred to a new body. The present
volume not only adds to the mountain of data compiled by Stevenson, it also throws new
light on it.
The book is a condensation of a two-part monograph which amounts to no less than
3436 pages: Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and
Birth Defects (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997). Of the 225 cases in the monograph, 112
are summarized here; all but nine have been personally investigated by Stevenson.
Some cases are "unsolved," that is, no deceased person has been found to match the
birthmarks and memories of the subject. Without the unsolved cases and without
birthmark cases that Stevenson considers questionable, about 90 cases remain where
birthmarks or birth defects on a newborn child correspond to wounds or marks on an
identified deceased individual. In addition, the child often describes segments from the
life of the previous personality, usually including the manner of dying. In some instances,
the child has no memory of the person and the evidence mainly consists of the shared
physiological properties. There are also cases where the identifying characteristics
consist of pigmentation of skin and eyes, facial features, posture, or other traits that the
child shares with the departed. The book has 35 illustrations, mostly high quality
photographs of the birthmarks and birth defects.
Nearly everyone has birthmarks. Except for the few that are inherited, Stevenson notes,
it is not known why a person has a birthmark in one place on the body rather than
another. He believes that reincarnation may sometimes provide an answer. As for birth
defects, Stevenson is familiar with the genetic, viral, and chemical causes; but these
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account for less than half of the known cases. He suggests that reincarnation may
explain some of the remainder.
In a section on research methods, Stevenson notes that it is rarely possible to reach a
case before the two families have met and discussed the child's memories of the
deceased. It may take months and sometimes years before a personal investigation can
be made. When Stevenson (or an assistant) arrives, he first interviews the subject and
family, emphasizing persons who can provide firsthand testimony about the child's
statements and any unusual behavior he or she may have shown. He will examine,
sketch, and photograph the child's birthmarks or birth defects and seek written
documentation of significant dates. He then goes to the family of the previous personality
and interviews its members and others who have firsthand knowledge of this individual.
A particularly important part of the inquiry is concerned with any previous acquaintance
between the two families or the possibility that they had some mutual acquaintance to
exclude as well as we can the possibility that the child might have overheard other
persons talking about... the deceased person of who the child has been speaking. (p.
10).
In cases with birthmarks or birth defects, Stevenson seeks postmortem reports and
medical documents to establish the location and nature of the wounds or physical
features of the departed that are seen on the child. Such records are made before the
subject is born and are therefore immune to distortion to make them conform to the
birthmarks or birth defects.
Stevenson also considers alternative explanations for the cases. In one scenario, a
family erroneously identifies a deceased personality whose wounds coincide by chance
with birthmarks on their child. When the child learns to speak, the family encourages him
or her to share the family's belief that it is the reincarnation of the departed. Stevenson
refers to a case of this type, but finds it unlikely for the others; the nature and location of
the birthmarks or defects often match the wounds or marks on the body of the deceased
too exactly for chance to be the explanation. In addition, the incidents from the life of the
previous personality that the child describes are often unknown to its family and could
therefore not have been normally communicated to the child.
A variant of the coincidental birthmark theory suggests that a child may use ESP
information about a deceased person whose wounds happen to match the birthmarks.
Stevenson rejects this theory also because there is no evidence that his subjects
possessed any psychic sensitivity beyond that related to the person whose life they
seemed to recall.
The rebirth of a person is sometimes expected. This is most often due to an "announcing
dream" in which a deceased individual appears to someone, most commonly the
pregnant mother, and indicates that the person will be reborn as the woman's child. More
rarely, someone living will express a desire to be reborn in a certain family and is
subsequently recognized by the birthmarks and memories of the child.
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Sometimes marks and wounds made accidentally or deliberately on the body of the
deceased after death turn up as birthmarks or birth defects. These include "experimental
birthmarks," which are evidently due to marks made on the corpse by family or friends
(e.g., with charcoal or lipstick) in the hope that they will turn up as birthmarks on a future
child, thereby announcing the return of the person. In some West African tribes, a very
different practice is also based on the premise that blemishes on the corpse can carry
over from one body to the next. To discourage a sickly child from coming back again to
fall ill and die, the parents may mutilate its corpse. The procedure does not always work,
with the result that the newborn has birth defects that mirror the mutilations.
To understand how the wounds or marks on the body of the deceased may take the form
of birthmarks on a newborn child, Stevenson has looked into three related phenomena:
stigmata, telepathic impressions, and maternal impressions. Stigmata are evidence that
concentration on a certain part of the body combined with a mental image can cause
lesions of the skin. Stevenson mentions a woman who had a Y-shaped lesion on her
chest that matched an unusual Y-shaped crucifix in the church where she worshipped.
The phenomenon can be hypnotically induced and also appears in everyday life as
sympathetic pains and wounds. Stevenson tells of a mother who watched a heavy
window sash crush three of the fingers of her little son. Not only did the woman
experiene intense pain in her own fingers, but the fingers became swollen and infected
as well. Stevenson has found that three factors are conducive to this type of
psychosomatic effect: perception of violence or physical injury, a high degree of
impressionability (absorption), and sensitivity of the skin. The latter varies with the
individual; if the skin of a person is firmly stroked with a blunt instrument, 70% of those
people will have no reaction, 25% will develop a definite flare, and 5% will produce a
weal.
Stevenson draws on his work, "Telepathic impressions: A review and report of thirty-five
new cases" (Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research, 29, 1970) for
examples of physiological changes induced in a person by another in the absence of
known connections. For instance, a woman who was visiting Italy developed severe pain
in her chest and upper abdomen. There was nothing wrong with her, but her twin sister
in Pennsylvania had a blood clot in the lung that was causing severe pain and shortness
of breath.
The term "maternal impression" refers to a birth defect that is due to an event that
startles the mother during pregnancy and that mirrors the event. The phenomenon was
explored in the latter part of the 19th century but was then ignored because it could not
be understood in terms of accepted physiological processes. It is interesting that in 1890
a predecessor of Stevenson at the University of Virginia made a survey of maternal
impressions. Stevenson himself analyzed 50 cases ("A new look at maternal
impressions: An analysis of 50 published cases and reports of two recent examples,"
Journal of Scientific Exploration, 6, 1992, 353-373). The most unusual involved a man
whose penis had been surgically removed because of cancer. The man's sister, who
was pregnant, took a look at the site of the amputation and afterwards gave birth to a
male baby without a penis. The relationship between the woman's viewing of her brother
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and her son's disfigurement could hardly have been accidental: the congenital absence
of the penis, Stevenson states, occurs only in one of 30 million births.
Stevenson has found that the duration of the critical event does not seem to matter, nor
does the woman's belief regarding its effect on her child. The important factor is the
timing of the event in relation to the pregnancy. Traumatic experiences followed by birth
defects occur significantly more often in the first trimester than in the second or third. He
notes that the first trimester is also when the embryo is most sensitive to noxious drugs,
such as thalidomide, and to viral infections like German measles. He has investigated
seven cases of maternal impression, and reports two in the book. A boy in Sri Lanka was
born without arms and with severely deformed legs (pp. 26f). It turned out that the father,
whom Stevenson interviewed, had cut off the arms and legs of a local hoodlum with a
sword, killing him. The man's mother was enraged and cursed the perpetrator and his
family, saying they would be punished by having a defective child. They had a normal
female girl and then the malformed boy.
Assuming that the phenomenon is real, as it appears to be, can maternal impression
account for cases of the reincarnation type? Stevenson believes that many apparent
rebirth cases are actually examples of maternal impression. In only 25 of his cases was
the mother ignorant of the wounds or other identifying characteristics of the deceased
and therefore could not have caused them to be imprinted on her child.
Stevenson points out that maternal impressions are paranormal, insofar as current
scientific concepts do not allow for transmission of a mother's mental images to her
embryo or fetus. In this regard, maternal impressions are similar to some of the
telepathic impressions described in Stevenson's book by that name (except for the
greater spatial distance between agent and recipient in telepathy). This raises the
question of whether ESP could be the source of maternal impressions. If so, the critical
event would not have been observed by the mother, but by someone to whom she was
emotionally connected. Alternatively, it may be supposed that the distant person directly
affected the unborn child.
Stevenson does not offer the hypothesis of telepathically derived maternal impressions
as an alternative to the rebirth hypothesis, but it seems to me that an argument can be
made for this position. If the features seen in telepathic impressions also occur in rebirth
reports, this may suggest that these are actually examples of telepathy. On the other
hand, if the cases show different characteristics, the underlying processes are probably
different as well.
Stevenson has found four features that are nearly always seen in rebirth cases: (1) the
early age of speaking about the previous life (usually age 2 to 4), (2) the age of ceasing
to speak about this life (usually 5 to 8), (3) a high incidence of violent death in the
previous life, and (4) frequent mention of the mode of death (p. 9). The overall
percentage of violent death in rebirth cases is 51%, with a low of 29% for the Haida tribe
of British Columbia and a high of 74% for Turkish cases. These figures far exceed the
incidence of violent death in the general populations.
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Similar features are seen in telepathic impressions:
1) Louisa Rhine and others have found that evidence for ESP may be common in
children who have just learned to speak.
2) The evidence wanes at school age. The ability is not general, but is usually focused
on the child's mother. The rebirth cases differ only insofar as the child's supposed ESP
does not relate to the mother, but to the person whose defects absorbed the mother's
attention and are now imprinted on the child as birthmarks or birth defects.
3) The high number of violent deaths observed in rebirth cases is seen also in telepathic
impressions. In his book on the topic, Stevenson found that 23% were cases of violent
deaths and 42% contained serious but nonfatal incidents. The database was 160 highevidence cases drawn from the scientific literature, The rebirth cases seem to differ only
because the sample concerned deceased individuals.
4) The mode of death in telepathic impressions was often conveyed to the percipient,
especially if the death was violent. The rebirth cases differ insofar as the child
experienced the perceived events as its own. Confusion of internal with external reality is
not unusual in young children. In rebirth, subjects' identification with the deceased may
have been reinforced by maternal impressions relating to this person.
5) Cases of rebirth and telepathic impressions often involve people who are emotionally
bonded. Two rebirth cases from the book illustrate this point. The first was within the
family, the second within its circle of acquaintances. During and following a visit to a
neighboring village, a young girl in Uttar Pradesh, India (pp. 45f), Sunita Singh, recalled
a previous life when she lived in this village and had been stubbed to death there, an
event reflected by birthmarks on her neck and chest. A deceased woman was identified
whose life and death matched the memories of Sunita, and the postmortem report
showed that the wounds on the deceased corresponded to the birthmarks. Sunita's
mother was from another village and said she knew nothing about the deceased, but
Sunita's father was aware of the murder and the incidents his daughter related. It seems
possible that he was the agent of telepathic impressions and that his wife or unborn child
was the recipient.
A fascinating example of experimental birthmarks from Burma is also suggestive of
telepathic impressions, this time from friends of the family. After Ma Lai Lai Way died
during heart surgery, three of her schoolmates prepared the body for burial (pp.79f).
Without telling the family, they marked the back of their friend's neck with lipstick to see if
this would show up as a birthmark on a new baby. About 13 months later, Ma Lai Lai
Way's sister gave birth to a girl, Ma Choe Hnin Htet, who had a prominent red birthmark
on the back of the neck at the site where Ma Lai Lai Way had been marked by her
friends. Stevenson interviewed all three and regards their testimony as among his best.
The new child also had a birthmark in the form of a thin line of diminished pigmentation
from her lower chest to upper abdomen that corresponded to the surgical incision on Ma
Lai Lai Way. In addition, Ma Choe Hnin Htet recalled events from the life of the deceased
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and in other ways identified with her. Since the three girls must have seen the scar from
the surgery when they prepared their friend's body for burial, it seems possible that they
were the source of the birthmarks and memories either directly on the unborn or
indirectly through the mother. The preparation of their friend's body, the act of marking it,
and the anticipation of her return must have resulted in the kind of emotional charge
often seen in telepathic impressions.
The maternal impression cases presented by Stevenson indicate how the process may
work. In the course of identifying with the mother, the young child is instead diverted to
an individual who has absorbed the mother's attention during the pregnancy, but who
has no other role in the life of the child. It is not surprising that
remembering a previous life is almost never a pleasant experience. Too often the
children are troubled by confusion regarding their identity, and this becomes even more
severe for those children who, conscious of being in a small body, remember having
been in an adult one, or who remember life as a member of the opposite sex. To these
tormenting awarenesses may be added a tearing division of loyalties between present
and previous families. (p. 9)
Telepathic impressions by pregnant women that lead to rebirth memories and birth
defects in their children, we can now see, may be vigilance responses gone astray. What
should have alerted the mother to threats to herself and the embryo has become lodged
in her mind and instead brings mental and physical harm to her child.
Even if cases suggestive of reincarnation are better understood in terms of maternal and
telepathic impressions, this does not contradict the general concept of reincarnation. On
the contrary, the idea of causal or "karmic" bonds that connect one person with another
is upheld by the data Stevenson has collected--only the actors are different. In
Stevenson's rebirth scenario, the agent is a deceased individual; in the telepathic
impression scenario, the agent is a living person. The concept of reincarnation is
augmented, not set aside, by the findings.
As the result of Stevenson's work, we can see how the theory of telepathic impression
may be tested. It can now be predicted that birth defects in children who experience a
previous life are more likely to be associated with traumatic events that occur in the
mother's first trimester, rather than in the second or third. With respect to events that are
witnessed by someone other than the mother, we would expect a preponderance of
cases where she and this person are emotionally bonded. In either case, the mother
should be tested on absorption scales, because impressionability may be related to
psychosomatic responses of which maternal impressions may be examples. Studies of
this type may help to separate the better cases from those where the memories and
markings only partially match the life of the deceased.
Rebirth cases, in some respects, are like out-of-body experiences. There is little doubt
that the OBE experience of occupying a location in space separate from the body's is
real, and it is also true that OBEs are sometimes associated with awareness of distant
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events--that is, with ESP, at least if the OBEr is linked emotionally to the target. But the
frequent failures to correctly perceive the distant scene show that the OBE subject does
not actually occupy the site. OBEs are psi-conducive; they do not ensure psi. In a similar
vein, there is no doubt that rebirth experiences are real to the children who have them. It
also seems certain that their memories, birthmarks, and birth defects often match the
conditions of the deceased better than chance would allow. Like out-of-body
experiences, rebirth experiences appear to be psi-conducive. And, like veridical OBEs
and other forms of ESP, the psychic connection in rebirth experiences may be ruled by
emotional bonds to the living, rather than to the departed.
William G. Roll
Department of Psychology
State University of West Georgia
Carrollton, GA 30117