Old Souls
I would like to share with you some 'random' excerpts from Tom Shroder's book "Old Souls'...
(Tom Shroder is a journalist that wrote this book about Stevenson's findings)
"I came across an article about a Dr. Ian Stevenson, identified as the Carlson Professor of Psychiatry of Virginia Medical School, who had been investigating reports of past-life memories from a very different source: spontaneous, waking memories experienced by very small children, no hypnosis involved...
What astonished me was that Stevenson wasn't claiming to have investigated just a handful of such cases, but hundreds of them-more than two thousand, in fact, from all over the world.
My first thought, I confess, was that perhaps this was some kind of wacko...but upon reading further, I saw that this was clearly not the case. I found a quote from a 1975 article in no less than The Journal of the American Medical Association stating that Stevenson "has collected cases in which the evidence is difficult to explain on any other grounds."
"Upon being introduced to him, and told what he was working on, Tom Shroeder asked, "What are you trying to accomplish?"...
"World peace, " Stevenson said, then let the silence that followed linger before adding, "I'm quite serious. If you removed the fear of death, the world would be stood on its head. There would be no reason for war."
"When I asked if he thought that his research had "proven" reincarnation, he said, "I don't think there is any proof in science outside of mathematics." However, he said, "Of the cases we know now at least for some- reincarnation is the best explanation we have been able to come up with. There is an impressive body of evidence, and I think it is getting stronger all the time. I think a rational person, if he wants, can believe in reincarnation on the basis of evidence."
"In general", Stevenson said, "I tend not to claim too much for the spiritual benefits of proving reincarnation. When I first went to India, I met with a swami there, a member of a monastic order. I told him about my work and how I thought it would be quite important if reincarnation could be proven, because it may help people to lead more moral lives if they knew they would come back after death. There was a long silence, a terrible silence, and finally, he said, 'Well, that's very good, but here, reincarnation is a fact, and we have just as many scoundrels and thieves as you do in the West.' I'm afraid that rather deflated my missionary zeal."
"He (Stevenson) has permitted me to accompany him on field trips...
He has responded to my endless questions and even invited me to participate in the interviews that are the heart of his research. The evidence he is referring to does not come from fashionable New Ages sources, past-life readings or hypnotic sessions...
The details Stevenson's children recall are far more homely and more specific than those...
These children supply names of towns and relatives, occupations and relationships, attitudes and emotions that, in hundreds of cases around the world, are unique to a single dead individual, often apparently unknown to their present families.
But the fact is, the people the children remember did exist, the memories that the children claim can be checked against real lives and their alleged fears of identification verified-or contradicted by a variety of witnesses..."
Tom Schroder says: "How in the world, I wondered, could I have never before heard of this man's work?...How was it possible that a case of hypnotic regression was the basis for a best-seller, while hundreds of cases of the spontaneous production of verifiable memories took a day at the library to discover?"...
"Now we are near the end of our last trip together, perhaps the last trip of Stevenson's career...
He is asking me, the outsider, the skeptical journalist who has seen what he has to show, to explain. How can scientists, professed to hold no dogma that reasonable evidence cannot overturn, ignore the volumes of reasonable evidence that he has provided?"
"Stevenson clearly felt that his life's work had been scorned, or merely ignored, by those mainstream scientists whom he considered his peers..."For me", Stevenson writes, "everything now believed by scientists is open to question, and I am always dismayed to find that many scientists accept current knowledge as forever fixed."
"However impressive", Stevenson said, "mystical experiences are incommunicable, whereas scientific observations are and must be communicable; there is no science without public demonstrability. This means independent verification."
Which is exactly what attracted me to Stevenson's work in the first place. He has never said anything like "Believe this because I believe it." What he is saying is, "Look at what I've found. Examine it any way you want to examine it. Think of your own questions, find tests of truth that have escaped me, and if you imagine a more reasonable explanation for all this, please let me know."
That's science-even if it happens to involve questions that most scientists don't take seriously.
Stevenson earned his medical degree from McGill University in Montreal in 1943, graduating at the top of his class. He trained in internal medicine and did some work in biochemistry, but ultimately specialized in psychiatry. In 1957, at the age of thirty-nine, Stevenson became the head of the department of psychiatry at the University of Virginia Medical School, and was from there that he began his research into reports of children who claim to remember previous lives.
(Tom Shroder is a journalist that wrote this book about Stevenson's findings)
"I came across an article about a Dr. Ian Stevenson, identified as the Carlson Professor of Psychiatry of Virginia Medical School, who had been investigating reports of past-life memories from a very different source: spontaneous, waking memories experienced by very small children, no hypnosis involved...
What astonished me was that Stevenson wasn't claiming to have investigated just a handful of such cases, but hundreds of them-more than two thousand, in fact, from all over the world.
My first thought, I confess, was that perhaps this was some kind of wacko...but upon reading further, I saw that this was clearly not the case. I found a quote from a 1975 article in no less than The Journal of the American Medical Association stating that Stevenson "has collected cases in which the evidence is difficult to explain on any other grounds."
"Upon being introduced to him, and told what he was working on, Tom Shroeder asked, "What are you trying to accomplish?"...
"World peace, " Stevenson said, then let the silence that followed linger before adding, "I'm quite serious. If you removed the fear of death, the world would be stood on its head. There would be no reason for war."
"When I asked if he thought that his research had "proven" reincarnation, he said, "I don't think there is any proof in science outside of mathematics." However, he said, "Of the cases we know now at least for some- reincarnation is the best explanation we have been able to come up with. There is an impressive body of evidence, and I think it is getting stronger all the time. I think a rational person, if he wants, can believe in reincarnation on the basis of evidence."
"In general", Stevenson said, "I tend not to claim too much for the spiritual benefits of proving reincarnation. When I first went to India, I met with a swami there, a member of a monastic order. I told him about my work and how I thought it would be quite important if reincarnation could be proven, because it may help people to lead more moral lives if they knew they would come back after death. There was a long silence, a terrible silence, and finally, he said, 'Well, that's very good, but here, reincarnation is a fact, and we have just as many scoundrels and thieves as you do in the West.' I'm afraid that rather deflated my missionary zeal."
"He (Stevenson) has permitted me to accompany him on field trips...
He has responded to my endless questions and even invited me to participate in the interviews that are the heart of his research. The evidence he is referring to does not come from fashionable New Ages sources, past-life readings or hypnotic sessions...
The details Stevenson's children recall are far more homely and more specific than those...
These children supply names of towns and relatives, occupations and relationships, attitudes and emotions that, in hundreds of cases around the world, are unique to a single dead individual, often apparently unknown to their present families.
But the fact is, the people the children remember did exist, the memories that the children claim can be checked against real lives and their alleged fears of identification verified-or contradicted by a variety of witnesses..."
Tom Schroder says: "How in the world, I wondered, could I have never before heard of this man's work?...How was it possible that a case of hypnotic regression was the basis for a best-seller, while hundreds of cases of the spontaneous production of verifiable memories took a day at the library to discover?"...
"Now we are near the end of our last trip together, perhaps the last trip of Stevenson's career...
He is asking me, the outsider, the skeptical journalist who has seen what he has to show, to explain. How can scientists, professed to hold no dogma that reasonable evidence cannot overturn, ignore the volumes of reasonable evidence that he has provided?"
"Stevenson clearly felt that his life's work had been scorned, or merely ignored, by those mainstream scientists whom he considered his peers..."For me", Stevenson writes, "everything now believed by scientists is open to question, and I am always dismayed to find that many scientists accept current knowledge as forever fixed."
"However impressive", Stevenson said, "mystical experiences are incommunicable, whereas scientific observations are and must be communicable; there is no science without public demonstrability. This means independent verification."
Which is exactly what attracted me to Stevenson's work in the first place. He has never said anything like "Believe this because I believe it." What he is saying is, "Look at what I've found. Examine it any way you want to examine it. Think of your own questions, find tests of truth that have escaped me, and if you imagine a more reasonable explanation for all this, please let me know."
That's science-even if it happens to involve questions that most scientists don't take seriously.
Stevenson earned his medical degree from McGill University in Montreal in 1943, graduating at the top of his class. He trained in internal medicine and did some work in biochemistry, but ultimately specialized in psychiatry. In 1957, at the age of thirty-nine, Stevenson became the head of the department of psychiatry at the University of Virginia Medical School, and was from there that he began his research into reports of children who claim to remember previous lives.
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