Vice media journal - The Hard Science of Reincarnation

[SleeplessFox]

I thought this might be interesting for our community:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgqygg/hard-science-of-reincarnation-past-lives

cheers
SF

 

[Cyrus]

...The most convincing cases, he realized, all involved ... who had birthmarks corresponding to injuries incurred by other people when they faced violent, untimely deaths....

Can anybody explain to such an ignorant individual like me, what do the birthmarks on a new recently born body have to do with the death of the body its soul inhabited in the past reincarnation?

How can a PL physical wound be transferred into a new life and onto a new body?

All such stuff smells of a cheap witchcraft to me.

Left off reading the article right after this passage.

No trace of seriousness. No credibility.

 

[deborah]

Good read thank you for posting!

Even in Europe, where parapsychological research is more common in universities like the University of Edinburgh and the University of Northampton, the broader psychology community remains skeptical of this work.

Tucker and his colleagues at DOPS are not the only academics in this field in the U.S, either. “I think there's an assumption oftentimes that if you're studying parapsychology, that means that you absolutely believe everything you're studying, and I try and work hard to say that you don't have to believe in everything you study. It's an academic interest and these are experiences that human beings have reported across different times and across cultures, and we really need to try and understand all aspects of human experience,” said Christine Simmonds-Moore, a parapsychologist and associate professor of psychology at the University of West Georgia.

 

[deborah]

Cyrus - have you read Carol's second book? About children who return to the same families and birth marks can play a role?? Or the book by Mills about Native American's who mark the dying so they can identify them?

 

[Speedwell]

...The most convincing cases, he realized, all involved ... who had birthmarks corresponding to injuries incurred by other people when they faced violent, untimely deaths....

All such stuff smells of a cheap witchcraft to me.

Left off reading the article right after this passage.

No trace of seriousness. No credibility.

You mean Dr. Ian Stevenson's research cannot be trusted? What about Dr Jim Tucker's work? Or that of Erlendur Haraldsson? These are pretty much the mainstays of serious academic reseach into past lives. And all have described birthmarks in at least some of their cases.

Perhaps it is the concept of reincarnation itself which you reject?

 

[Cyrus]

Cyrus - have you read Carol's second book? About children who return to the same families and birth marks can play a role?? Or the book by Mills about Native American's who mark the dying so they can identify them?

No, I haven't. Sorry for that.

 

[Cyrus]

You mean Dr. Ian Stevenson's research cannot be trusted? What about Dr Jim Tucker's work? Or that of Erlendur Haraldsson? These are pretty much the mainstays of serious academic reseach into past lives. And all have described birthmarks in at least some of their cases.

Perhaps it is the concept of reincarnation itself which you reject?

You exagerate, I reject the concept of "reincarnation WITH birthmarks".

Still, I only asked for an explanation. If it's not asking for too much.

Can somebody explain the mechanism of birthmarks in reincarnations as if I were a 5 year old child - or indicate where such an explanation can be found?

Explanation, NOT a mere description.

Is it a top secret? Or is it smth. one should blindly believe in?

Like in the Middle Ages - Credo, quia absurdum est?

 

[SleeplessFox]

...

I totally see your point here. I can't deliver an explanation either but only mention something that is equally unexplainable and weird: there's this german documentary filmmaker who experienced extreme backbone damage from an accident. All doctors he consulted told him that he will never ever be able to walk again and that the wheel chair was his destiny. Some weeks/months after he was diagnosed with paraplegia he all of a sudden recovered from it and today he's up on his feet and well again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clemens_Kuby

What I'm trying to say is: how can someone heal from such a fatal (body damaging) accident without any scientifically explanation? This question might correlate with your question: how can a new born human show wounds from an acciddnt that didn't happen in the current life he/she is experiencing?

Just to make this clear: I'm not serving a fairy tale that Mr. Kuby invented to earn more publicity and money. His case is well documented (at least in the german written web content). As a matter of fact I'm very suspicious of stories like these since too many people try make money from their "unbelievable story".

 

[There and back again]

The modern mind is a real hindrance when it comes to even the most basic of spiritual matters being only good for business and modern politics but not much else. As for birthmarks the hard evidence is there has been noticed for only God knows how long throughout both Eastern and Western cultures so how that can be tossed is beyond me.

 

[Cyrus]

I totally see your point here. I can't deliver an explanation either but only mention something that is equally unexplainable and weird: there's this german documentary filmmaker who experienced extreme backbone damage from an accident. All doctors he consulted told him that he will never ever be able to walk again and that the wheel chair was his destiny. Some weeks/months after he was diagnosed with paraplegia he all of a sudden recovered from it and today he's up on his feet and well again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clemens_Kuby

What I'm trying to say is: how can someone heal from such a fatal (body damaging) accident without any scientifically explanation? This question might correlate with your question: how can a new born human show wounds from an acciddnt that didn't happen in the current life he/she is experiencing?

Just to make this clear: I'm not serving a fairy tale that Mr. Kuby invented to earn more publicity and money. His case is well documented (at least in the german written web content). As a matter of fact I'm very suspicious of stories like these since too many people try make money from their "unbelievable story".

Thank you, Fox, for so balanced analysis.

How strange all those great investigators haven't yet found a plausible explanation to this phenomenon.

As if it didn't matter to them that the cause they are defending starts looking like a palm-reading and loses its credibility.

Though, it must be admitted there has never been lack of adepts of their theories, there always have been lots of people pretending being spiritual, whereas all their spirituality stays on the level of palm-reading. Pity. Human nature never changes. Mistaking soft for warm, so to say.

IMHO.

 

[SleeplessFox]

To view a skeptic's opinion on this topic:

 

[Cyrus]

Hi, folks !

Well, skepticism is NOT a whim, not a kind of a "caprice d'enfant" .

I, personally, hate this term, but well, I use it here only to avoid confusion, as many people are accustomed to use this word in one or another sense.

The only reason for going skeptical is the fear of going wrong.

It might look beautiful to interpret some birthmark as a record of some PL event (usually tragic, which might add to the beauty of the whole thing), but the very beauty of the phenomenon provokes some uneasiness, some inner alarm, a gnawing presentiment that all such stuff may be an error, a falsety, a misinterpretation in the best case or even an outrageous lie and mystification, at the worst.

It might turn out that for some people it doesn't matter to go wrong if the path they follow brings them beautiful feelings.

I'm different, sorry. Committing an error is an inadmissible luxury for me, it's something I cannot allow myself to happen.

I'm just made this way, and I can't help it.

The beauty scares me.

As an example, just look at how the beauty in Nature is organized to capture credulous victims into a trap.

I firmly believe in reincarnation, first of all because I've done some regressions myself and I've felt a thing or two, and also because some people I know did the same and shared with me their experiences and I believe them - I see no traps there.

IMHO.

 

[Susie C]

Excellent read.

 

[RedSunshine]

Hi, folks !

Well, skepticism is NOT a whim, not a kind of a "caprice d'enfant" .

I, personally, hate this term, but well, I use it here only to avoid confusion, as many people are accustomed to use this word in one or another sense.

The only reason for going skeptical is the fear of going wrong.

It might look beautiful to interpret some birthmark as a record of some PL event (usually tragic, which might add to the beauty of the whole thing), but the very beauty of the phenomenon provokes some uneasiness, some inner alarm, a gnawing presentiment that all such stuff may be an error, a falsety, a misinterpretation in the best case or even an outrageous lie and mystification, at the worst.

It might turn out that for some people it doesn't matter to go wrong if the path they follow brings them beautiful feelings.

I'm different, sorry. Committing an error is an inadmissible luxury for me, it's something I cannot allow myself to happen.

I'm just made this way, and I can't help it.

The beauty scares me.

As an example, just look at how the beauty in Nature is organized to capture credulous victims into a trap.

I firmly believe in reincarnation, first of all because I've done some regressions myself and I've felt a thing or two, and also because some people I know did the same and shared with me their experiences and I believe them - I see no traps there.

IMHO.

Your opinion matters.