“It’s so hot today that if I die, you don’t need to cremate me. I'll just burn out,”the aunt of four-year-old Ajid Singh joked wearily on a sultry day. To which the boy replied: “So what? After all, nothing special happened to me when they burned me at the funeral pyre.
In response to further questioning, the boy began to tell in detail about the life of a real judge from the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi …
“Once I was returning home by car,” says another village boy, five-year-old Titu, and at the same time the little boy's thin voice thickens, becomes truly masculine. - Approaching the house, I gave the beep for my wife Uma to open the gate. Then I saw two people running towards the car with pistols. Shots rang out, and one of the bullets hit me in the head on the right. On the boy's right temple there is a round scar, as if from an overgrown bullet hole …
These are not delusional fantasies of young insane, but carefully verified and documented real-life cases that took place in Northern India. This rather rare phenomenon, known as "reincarnation" or "reincarnation", poses numerous mysteries for scientists.
Experts from the Bangalore Institute of Mental Health and Neuropathology, as well as from the University of Delhi, have recorded about 300 such cases over the past quarter century. Forty-five of these are described in Dr. Satwant Pasrich's recently published book in Delhi, Claims for Reincarnation. An empirical case study in India."
Here is one of the typical cases of reincarnation. Manju Sharma was born into a brahmana family near Mathura, Uttar Pradesh. At the age of two, she suddenly began to say that she was born in the village of Chaumukha, located a few kilometers from her native village, that she named her “former” parents, and some details of her past life. According to her, Manju's father, the owner of a tobacco shop, took her to school and left on business. Returning from school, the girl tried to scoop up water from the well to sprinkle it on the statue of the deity, but lost her balance and drowned in the well.
The little girl repeated her story many times, until one of the local residents who knew her “former parents” heard it. Having learned about the girl's mysterious behavior, the "former parents" decided to meet with her. Manju burst into tears when she saw her "former" father, mother and brother.
Ladali and Hansmukhi - that was the name of the newly arrived spouses - came to the conclusion that the memory of a two-year-old girl reflects the life of their daughter, who really drowned in a well four years earlier. With age, Manju began to think less and less about her "past life", however, even in her adult years, she remained afraid of wells.
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For each of these cases, Dr. Satwant Pasricha interviewed many relatives of the children in their "past" and "present" births and systematized the findings. The result is the following picture: as a rule, the "effect of reincarnation" is observed in children aged two to seven years.
Over the years, they almost completely forget the details of the "past life". In 82 percent of cases, children clearly remembered their name in the "past birth", and in 67 percent - the circumstances of "their own death"
It is noteworthy that in half of the registered cases of reincarnation, people in their "previous lives" died a violent death. Their average age in "past lives" was 35-40 years. Reincarnation took place on average after a year and a half, although its duration varied from one day to eleven years. As a rule, "wandering souls" took possession of a child living at a relatively close distance from the place of "last birth". In 99 percent of the reported cases of family ties between families where “past” and “present” birth occurred, there were no.
The case of 32-year-old Uttara Khuddar from the state of Maharashtra became a complete mystery for Dr. Pasrich. At certain phases of the moon, she began to speak in a previously unfamiliar Bengali language. Once, during such a period, a man who spoke Bengali was invited to the house, and he translated the words of Uttara. She claimed that her name is Sharada, she lives in Bengal, and her husband is a doctor. At the same time, she accurately recreated the details of the life of Bengal at the beginning of the 19th century, showed sincere surprise at the sight of modern things, such as an electric fan, a switch. She said that she was bitten by a snake and after that she lost consciousness.
The case is unusual for two main reasons. Firstly, reincarnation came after an unprecedentedly long time - about a century and a half. Secondly, the woman spoke in a language unfamiliar to her - this was verified - and in a dialect characteristic of the last century.
Trying to scientifically substantiate the phenomenon of reincarnation, Dr. Pasricha in her conclusions went "by contradiction", excluding certain hypotheses. These are not children's fantasies, she argues, since the child is talking about a real person, whose personality and circumstances of life are reliably established. The possibility of so-called genetic memory was also considered. However, this version had to be rejected, since in the overwhelming majority of cases there were no even distant kinship ties between “rebirths”.
The possibility of such explanations of reincarnation as extrasensory communication was not excluded. However, this is contradicted by the fact that only three children examined were found to have extrasensory abilities. But how to explain the frequent appearance of "congenital marks" on the bodies of young children where they had fatal wounds in their "past lives"?
It is impossible with the help of the "psychic hypothesis" to explain the "case of Uttara", in which the soul of a Bengali woman who lived at the beginning of the 19th century entered.