Study of the phenomenon of Natasha Beketova. This 24-year-old saleswoman from Anapa suddenly remembered her past lives and spoke in ancient languages and dialects. Some language experts understand her speech, others question her knowledge. Now two of our special correspondents - in England and France - are checking her stories about past lives in these countries. We will definitely familiarize you with their conclusions in one of the next issues. And we decided to devote this issue to what is generally known today about reincarnation - the transmigration of souls. Moreover, right now in the United States, a sensational book by the professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia Ian Stevenson, who has collected unique material on more than 2000 cases of reincarnation since 1960, is preparing for release. So what is it - reality, fantasy or waking dreams?
FROM THE HISTORY OF THE ISSUE
Belief in reincarnation is rooted in ancient oriental teachings, but scientists have long been interested in this phenomenon. In the 1960s, American psychologists Sorvard Deslefsen, Helen Wombach and Professor of Psychiatry Ian Stevenson pioneered the study of reincarnation, and their followers organized departments at the Institute of Parapsychology in the UK and the University of Munich. In the 1970s, English professor Don Johnson was the first to investigate "xenoglossia" - the ability to speak previously unknown languages. Together with two hypnotherapists, he created the Center for Eternal Return in the United States, where married couples who were husband and wife in other lives were studied. In 1980 in the United States, about a hundred psychiatrists from different countries founded the Association for Therapy and Past Life Research.
THREE KINDS OF MEMORY
Scientists distinguish three types of memory of the past.
DEJA VYU (French for "already seen") is a mental phenomenon that many face. At some point, it seems to you that you were already in a given situation or observed the same landscape … However, do not flatter yourself: deja vu is nothing more than a play of your imagination, in some cases - of a patient. According to the director of the Center for Mental Health Alexander Tiganov, this phenomenon refers to paramnesia, that is, memory distortions. And if the brain is not examined in time, then this effect (if it is often repeated!) Can lead to either memory loss or hallucinations.
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GENETIC MEMORY
This is a deeper type of memory, when the subconscious mind suddenly gives out information about distant ancestors. The famous psychologist Carl Jung was the first to study genetic memory. He believed that the experience of an individual is not lost, but is inherited from generation to generation, remaining in the far corners of the brain. For example, Jung himself was convinced that he lived in the 18th century, although his year of birth was 1875. Once he was struck by a painting by a French artist depicting a doctor of that time - he recognized his shoes as his own. “I had a vivid conviction that I had once worn them,” he wrote. I can literally feel these shoes on my feet. By the way, my hand often, against my will, printed the number 1775 instead of 1875, and at the same time I felt an inexplicable nostalgia. Jung made inquiries and found out that one of his ancestors was a physician in the province at the time.
By the way, Sylvester Stallone believes that his distant ancestor was a sentinel of some nomadic tribe. And Keanu Reeves is sure that his great-great-grandfather was a dancer at a Bangkok temple. Moreover, their stories were confirmed during the control sessions of hypnosis, when they made an "excursion" into the past of their ancestors.
The manifestation of genetic memory is actively counteracted by our consciousness, since "visions" of the past can cause a split personality. But this memory can manifest itself during sleep, when mind control is weakened.
REINCARNATION
These cases have nothing to do with genetic memory: a person recalls the lives of strangers, in whose bodies his soul allegedly took over. Proponents of reincarnation are sure that after death a person's soul passes into a new body. According to Eastern teachings, each of us can live from 5 to 50 reincarnations. Moreover, past lives can be remembered only in special cases: with head injuries, mental disorders or in a trance state. Scientists dealing with this problem argue that past life events can affect the health and behavior of an individual. So, for example, a person can be afraid of fire because in one of his previous incarnations he died during a fire in Rome.
2000 CASES OF REINCARATIONS
The largest authority in this field, Professor of Psychiatry Ian Stevenson (USA), began studying the experience of reincarnation in the 1960s. He described more than 2,000 unique incidents of reincarnation that took place in different parts of the globe. Moreover, he studied each case himself: he went to the place and carried out colossal research work, helping people to connect fragments of memories. Collected photographic material, asked eyewitnesses and even made excavations, acting as a historian, ethnographer and even a detective.
Dr. Stevenson considers three phenomena to be proof of the fact of reincarnation: the ability to speak an unfamiliar language, the presence of moles, scars and scratches on a given person and his predecessor in the same places and, albeit small, but historical evidence.
A third of the number of his general observations are people who have had birth defects. For example, a boy with a powerful scalp on the back of his head remembered that in a past life he was hacked to death with an ax blow to the head. Stevenson found a family where a man who had been killed with an ax once lived, and found out the nature of the wound, which, like tracing paper, lay on a skin defect on the boy's head. Another child, born with seemingly chopped off fingers on his hand, recalls that he was injured in agricultural work. And Stevenson found people who confirmed that there really was such a person who died of blood loss when his fingers fell into the thresher. The third case - a girl was born with a leg without a foot. This girl remembered herself as a young woman who was hit by a train, she had an amputation of her right foot, but she did not survive. And so thoroughly tested,cases confirmed by the protocols of forensic medical autopsy - hundreds.
Classic cases of reincarnation, according to Stevenson, can be considered the stories of children from 2 to 5 years old about their "past" life. To the surprise of researchers, these stories often coincide to the details with what actually happened, although the child could not have known the circumstances of the previous life of the person he was describing. But by the age of 8, the memory of previous lives disappears. It is not for nothing that the Eastern sages teach that the past is hidden from people out of mercy to them: few are able to survive thousands of deaths and accept the inevitability of an infinitely long journey.
CASES OF REINCARNATION FROM STEVENSON'S BOOK
Blue roses of the city of the dead
Patient Juan was admitted to one of the Mexican psychiatric hospitals, who complained that he was "overcome by mysterious pictures." Juan saw himself as a priest of a huge temple on some big island. Every day, he placed the dried mummies in large sarcophagus earthenware jars, which he then took to the altars in the countless small rooms of the temple. Moreover, Juan described what was happening in the smallest detail, right down to blue dresses with blue roses embroidered on them by the priestesses who served him. On the walls of the rooms where the jugs were placed, he said, were painted blue birds, fish and dolphins. The case helped to figure it out. Stevenson in one of the scientific journals found an article about the legendary Labyrinth on the island of Crete, which turned out to be not a palace, as it was believed for a long time, but a necropolis - a giant city of the dead. The burial ceremony was fully consistent withwhat the Mexican Juan, who had never heard of the island of Crete, "saw". Moreover, he did not know that the blue and blue colors of the ancient Greeks were symbols of sorrow, and birds, fish and dolphins accompanied the souls of the dead to the underworld.
Two-year-old drunkard
When a boy named Sujit from Sri Lanka was 2 years old, he told his mother that his real home was eight miles south, that his name was Sammy Fernando, that he worked on the railroad, then became an alcoholic and was killed by a truck. An investigation by Stevenson revealed that Sammy did live in the area and died as Sujit described. In total, 59 matches were collected between the child's story and the memories of the worker's relatives. The boy surprised his parents with all the new details from his past life as an alcoholic until almost 6 years old, when all the memories disappeared completely.
REMEMBER ALL HYPNOSIS WILL HELP
Many hypnologists are convinced that the best way to investigate reincarnation is through deep hypnosis. For example, scientists at the University of Munich interviewed several hundred people under hypnosis about the events that they remembered in the first 3 years of life, and came to an amazing result. Almost 35% of the respondents were able to "remember" events that, as it was proved, never happened to them. And people who were hypnotized often began to speak in languages they did not know. For example, psychologist Ian Kurier, in Nobody Dies Forever, describes how an American doctor from Philadelphia hypnotized his wife into the past. And suddenly the woman spoke in a low, male voice with a Scandinavian accent. The invited experts concluded that the woman, who suddenly became a “man,” speaks outdated Swedish. However, not all researchers share the opinion of hypnologists.
OPINION OF THE SKEPTIC
Leading expert of the Association "Ecology of the Unknown" Yuri FOMIN:
- Similar experiments were conducted many times by the Moscow psychologist-hypnotist Vladimir Raikov. After immersing them in hypnosis, he could easily force his patients to reincarnate into other, long-dead people. And the patient successfully copied the words, the thinking style of the person indicated to him. But at the same time, the “soul” of the patient in the “past life” could take turns in several people living at the same time, which clearly contradicts the theory of reincarnation. This suggests that a hypnotist can follow the lead of a hypnotist or simply fantasize about an event he knows. It is also known that "pictures of the past" are often seen by people with severe mental illness or after clinical death. Usually these conditions are perceived by doctors as hallucinations and delusions.