Science has many ways to test the truth. In recent decades, Western science has made great progress in developing the scientific areas in psychiatry, death, physiology, and psychology. Scientific scholars have confirmed that people indeed experience reincarnation.
Over Forty Years Of Effort To Confirm 3,000 Cases
Let's introduce these scientific achievements. The first case is from the University of Virginia, by a professor of psychiatry named Ian Stevenson. The main subjects of this professor's study were children between two and seven years of age. These children — who came from all over the world,
including the United States, Canada, South America, Europe, West Asia, and Southeast Asia — could all remember details from their previous lives.
Stevenson took more than forty years to compile his study of some 3,000 confirmed cases of reincarnation. The children in those case studies, though very young, were able to accurately state events from the past few decades or even from past centuries. They were able to describe these things in great detail.
While I was teaching in American universities, I contacted Professor Stevenson. At the time, he had published several books, including Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, which is the masterpiece of his work.
A Four-Year-Old Invited Her Dad to Her Past Life's House
I would like to report another case to you. It is about a girl in India named Swarnlata who could remember the circumstances of her past life. She was born on March 2, 1948 and lived with her family in an Indian city called Pradesh.
When Swarnlata was four years old, she could describe some experiences of her own former life. She said that in her past life she lived in another city in India called Katni. Her family name was Pathak, and she had a husband and children. The families of her past life and this life were total strangers to each other and geographically far apart. One day, her father took her past the city where she had lived in her past life.
Suddenly, she said to her father, “Daddy, daddy, my house is near here! Let's go visit and have some tea.” Her father said, “You silly child! Our house is still far away from here.”
But after that, her father often heard his young daughter talk about her encounters from her past life. Later, when this case became known to Dr. Stevenson and some of his colleagues in India, they began to carry out investigations. With Swarnlata's guidance, the researchers found the family of her past life.
In the process, this little girl Swarnlata's past life was revealed: She had been named Biya and she died in 1939, leaving her husband and two sons behind.
Meeting the Family of Her Past Life
When these professors took this little girl to the family of her past life, she was able to name each family member with perfect precision. At that time, the professors conducted a test: In order to observe her accuracy, the investigators deliberately tried to mislead her by introducing one of her former children as someone else instead. Nevertheless, when this little girl saw the son of her past life, she hugged him and said, “This is my son, his name is Murli.”
Rather than being affected by the professors' attempt to mislead her, this little girl — despite now being younger than the son of her former life — still could not help but naturally show a mother's love and care for him.
Even more interestingly, this little girl revealed one of her past husband's secrets. How?
As it turns out, one day her husband had gone into her cash box, taking her personal money, 1,200 rupees, and he had never returned the money to her. No one but the husband knew this had happened. At first, he had denied taking the money, but after Swarnlata's visit, he finally admitted that it had indeed happened.
This was regarded as evidence
of the existence of reincarnation later.
You see, if we owe somebody money, even if it is from a past life, the creditor will remember this fact in his heart. So, we should never have unpaid debts, for they cannot be escaped.
Nine Years of Singing and Dancing in Bangladesh
You might have noticed that this little girl said that in her past life she was a mother named Biya who died in 1939. But in this life, the little girl was born in 1948. Where did she go for the nine years in between? Swarnlata told researchers that she reincarnated and lived in a village in what is now Bangladesh. In that life, the girl had passed away at the age of nine. So the timing matches up perfectly.
But how did they prove this reincarnation?
It turns out that Swarnlata, from a young age, loved to sing and dance to a folk song from Bangladesh. Her family in the present life did not understand Bengali, so her parents never knew what she was singing about. They thought she was lost in her own imagination.
One of the professors investigating Swarnlata understood Bengali. He quickly wrote down the lyrics when Swarnlata was singing. The lyrics, which Professor Stevenson included in his paper, praised nature and described the joy of farmers at their harvest. It was very beautiful. The professors, following this little girl's directions, located the village of her past life in Bangladesh. After some verification, they discovered that the villagers all loved to sing and dance to this same song. It was very popular locally.
Swarnlata was a normal young Indian girl who grew up to earn a bachelor's degree in engineering from an Indian university at age nineteen and a master's degree in engineering at age twenty-one. Two years later, she began to teach at a highly accredited institution in India. She kept in contact with Dr.Stevenson, even after she became an adult. So she is a person with a typical mind.
Swarnlata is a living example of reincarnation. Her memories give us a strong confirmation that reincarnation does exist.
The Galileo Of The Twentieth Century - Prof. Ian Stevenson
Because modern people admire science and require scientific proof, Professor Stevenson used a scientific perspective and attitude to conduct his studies on reincarnation. He was not a religious person. When I contacted him, he said that he did not want to be known as religious or have any connection to religion, it would affect the credibility of his scientific research if he associated himself with religion.
The spirit of science has a few requirements:
1. First is discerning truth by using facts revealed in actual experiments. All of the experiments and cases must lead to the same truth for that truth to be accepted as fact.
2. The results of the scientific experiments must be repeatable. That is to say, Experiment A gets certain results, Experiment B conducted in another country gets the same results, and Experiment C conducted a year later gets the same results as well. The truth is repeatable if various experiments confirm it, regardless of time or location.
With this scientific spirit, as Professor Stevenson researched more than 3,000 cases over forty years, he was scrupulous about every detail. The facts of reincarnation that he confirmed have earned high praise from the scientific community and academia. In The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, an article stated,
Either Dr. Stevenson is making a colossal mistake,
or he will be known as the Galileo of the 20th century.
We just introduced the original Galileo; he is the Father of Modern Science, a man who dedicated himself to science. Why would a magazine honor Professor Stevenson as the Galileo of the 20th century?
Although Galileo's scientific discoveries are common knowledge today, in his time, they were considered a huge assault on religious ideas. Similarly, the facts of reincarnation that Professor Stevenson discovered and confirmed also stand in stark contrast to the accepted norms of today's thought. More research in the future will certainly confirm these discoveries.
Next, I would like to introduce to you all, little by little, the research by the Western scientific community in the area of reincarnation.
related post: Chapter Three: Five Areas Of Reincarnation Studies (Area One: Study Of The Existence Of The Soul)
Source Of Information:
《The Scientific Proof Of Causal Reincarnation》, by Dr. Zhong Maosen (Venerable Ding Hong), translated by Mahayana Pureland Team, published by Mahayana Pureland Organization, distributed by: Persatuan Penganut Agama Buddha Amitabha Malaysia, 90 & 92, Jalan Pahang, Gombak, 53000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.)
*** The information provided above does not contain personal opinion of this blog.
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