he decided to do some in-depth
research. He has since published
several books where he describes
his investigations of past lives.
In Many Lives, Many Masters
(1988), Dr Weiss explains the reality of reincarnation
and the spirit world from the psychiatric perspective. Ian Stevenson,
MD, who died in 2007, was one of
the most well known researchers to
have provided strong evidence for
the reality of reincarnation. From
1957, at the University of Virginia,
he headed the Department of
Psychiatry and later the Division
of Perceptual Studies until his
2002 retirement. He did not use
the method of hypnosis to verify
whether a person had a recollection of a previous life; instead, he
studied thousands of cases in children in the USA, England, Thailand,
Burma, Turkey, Lebanon, Canada,
India and other countries who had
spontaneous memories about their
previous lives.
First, he verified all the information from a child about their previous life. Next, he identified the
deceased person whom that child
claimed to be in their previous
life. Later, he verified the facts of
the past life of the deceased person that coincided with the memories of the child. He also compared
and verified body marks and birth
defects with wounds and scars of
thedeceased, all of them confirmed by
medical records.
A good example of a birthmark
case involved Ravi Shankar. This child
remembered being decapitated in
his previous childhood by a family
member who was hoping for a patrimony from the child’s father. Ravi
Shankar had a birthmark around his
neck. When Dr Stevenson investigated this case, he was able to confirm
that the child whom Shankar told him
about from his past life had in fact
been decapitated.
Dr Ian Stevenson
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