Case Study of Dr. Stevenson's Reincarnation

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In the late 1950s, psychiatrist Ian Stevenson (1918-2007) of the College of Medicine in Charlottesville, Virginia, began looking for answers to the question of past existence memory.

He began to study the accounts of reincarnation using a systematic scientific procedure.

Even his critics could not fail to recognize the thoroughness with which he controlled the methods used, and were aware that any criticism of his controversial discoveries would have to follow an equally rigorous method.

Dr. Stevenson's initial research was published in 1960 in the United States and a year later in England. He carefully studied hundreds of cases where it was claimed to have memories of previous births. After testing these examples against his scientific criteria, he reduced the number of eligible cases to just twenty-eight.

But these cases had a number of common strengths: all subjects remembered that they were certain people and lived in certain places long before their birth. In addition, the facts they presented could be directly confirmed or refuted by an independent examination.

One of the cases he reported concerned a young Japanese boy who, from a very young age, insisted that he was formerly a boy named Tozo, whose father, a farmer, lived in the hamlet of Khodokubo.

The boy explained that in a previous life, when he - as Tozo - was still young, his father had died; shortly thereafter, his mother remarried. However, just a year after this wedding, Tozo also died - from smallpox. He was only six years old.

In addition to this information, the boy gave a detailed description of the house where Tozo lived, the appearance of his parents, and even his funeral. The impression was that it was about genuine memories from a past life.

To verify his claims, the boy was brought to the village of Khodokubo. It turned out that his former parents and the other people mentioned had undoubtedly lived here in the past. In addition, the village, which he had never been to, was clearly familiar to him.

Without any help, he brought his companions to his former home. Once there, he drew their attention to the store, which, according to him, did not exist in his previous life. Likewise, he pointed to a tree that was unfamiliar to him and which apparently has grown since then.

An investigation quickly confirmed that both of these allegations were true. His testimony prior to his visit to Khodokubo totaled sixteen clear and specific statements that could be verified. When they were checked, they all turned out to be correct.

In his work, Dr. Stevenson emphasized his high confidence in children's testimonies. He believed that not only were they much less susceptible to conscious or unconscious illusions, but they could hardly read or hear about the events in the past that they describe.

Stevenson continued his research and in 1966 published the first edition of his authoritative book, Twenty Cases That Indicate Reincarnation. By this time, he had personally studied nearly 600 cases that seemed best explained by reincarnation.

Eight years later, he published the second edition of this book; by that time the total number of cases studied had doubled and amounted to about 1200. Among them, he found those that, in his opinion, “do not just inspire the idea of reincarnation; they seem to provide strong evidence for her."

The case of Imad Elawar

Dr. Stevenson heard of a boy, Imad Elawar, who lived in a small Lebanese village in the Druze settlement area (a religious sect in the highlands of Lebanon and Syria) of a past life story of a boy, Imad Elawar.

Although it is believed that the Druze are within the framework of Islamic influence, they actually have a large number of very different beliefs, one of which is the belief in reincarnation. Perhaps as a result of this, the Druze community has numerous cases of memories of past lives.

Before Imad reached the age of two, he had already started talking about a previous life that he had spent in another village called Hribi, also a Druze settlement, where he claimed to be a member of the Buhamzi family. He often begged his parents to take him there. But his father refused and believed that he was fantasizing. The boy soon learned to avoid talking about the subject in front of his father.

Imad made a number of statements about his past life. He mentioned a beautiful woman named Jamile, whom he loved very much. He talked about his life in Hribi, about the pleasure he had while hunting with his dog, about his double-barreled gun and his rifle, which, since he had no right to keep them, he had to hide.

He described that he had a small yellow car and that he used other cars that the family had. He also mentioned that he was an eyewitness to a road accident during which his cousin was hit by a truck, inflicting such injuries on him that he soon died.

When in the end an investigation was carried out, it turned out that all of these allegations were credible.

In the spring of 1964, Dr. Stevenson made the first of several trips to the mountainous region to speak with young Imad, then five years old.

Before visiting his "home" village, Imad made a total of forty-seven clear and definite statements about his previous life. Dr. Stevenson wanted to personally verify the authenticity of each, and therefore decided to take Imad to the village of Khribi as soon as possible.

Within a few days it was possible; together they set off for twenty miles to the village along a road that rarely traveled and which kept winding through the mountains. As in most of Lebanon, both villages were well connected to the capital, Beirut, on the coast, but there was no regular traffic between the villages, due to the poor cross-country road.

Arriving in the village, Imad made sixteen more statements on the spot: he spoke vaguely in one, was mistaken in another, but was right in the remaining fourteen. And of those fourteen statements, twelve were about very personal experiences or comments about his previous life. It is highly unlikely that this information could have come from a source other than the family.

Despite the fact that Imad never gave the name that he wore in his previous life, the only figure in the Buhamzi family to whom this information corresponded - and corresponded very accurately - was one of the sons, Ibrahim, who died of tuberculosis in September 1949. … He was a close friend of a cousin who was killed in a truck run over him in 1943. He also loved the beautiful woman Jamila, who left the village after his death.

While in the village, Imad recalled some more details of his former life as a member of the Buhamzi family, impressive both in their character and in their authenticity. So, he correctly indicated where, when he was Ibrahim Buhamzi, he kept his dog and how it was tied. Neither was the obvious answer.

He also correctly identified “his” bed and described what it looked like in the past. He also showed where Ibrahim kept his weapons. In addition, he himself recognized and correctly named Ibrahim's sister, Hoodu. He also recognized and named his brother without prompting when he was shown a photographic card.

The dialogue that he had with "his" sister, Slim, was convincing. She asked Imad, “You said something before you died. What was it?" Imad replied, "Huda, call Fuad." It was really so: Fouad left shortly before, and Ibrahim wanted to see him again, but died almost immediately.

If there was no conspiracy between the young Imad and the elderly Thin Buhamzi - and this seemed almost impossible given the careful observation on the part of Dr. Stevenson - it is difficult to imagine any other way how Imad could have learned about these last words of the dying man. except for one thing: that Imad was indeed the reincarnation of the late Ibrahim Buhamzi.

In fact, this case is even more significant: out of forty-seven statements made by Imad about his past life, only three turned out to be erroneous. This kind of evidence is hard to dismiss.

One might argue that this incident took place in a society in which belief in reincarnation is cultivated, and therefore, as one would expect, fantasies of immature minds in this direction are encouraged.

With this in mind, Dr. Stevenson makes a curious point he noted: Past-life reminiscences are found not only in cultures in which reincarnation is recognized, but also in those where it is not recognized - or, in any case, not officially recognized.

He, for example, investigated about thirty-five cases in the United States; there are similar cases in Canada and the UK. In addition, as he points out, such cases are also found in India among Muslim families who have never recognized reincarnation.

It need hardly be emphasized that this research has some rather important implications for scientific and medical knowledge about life. Nevertheless, as obvious as this statement may seem, it will be categorically denied in many quarters.

Reincarnation is a direct challenge to modern concepts of what a human being is - a position that excludes everything that cannot be weighed, measured, dispersed or isolated in a Petri dish or on a microscope slide.

Dr. Stevenson once told television producer Jeffrey Iverson:

“Science should pay much more attention to the evidence we have that points to life after death. This evidence is impressive and comes from a variety of sources if viewed honestly and impartially.

The prevailing theory is that when your brain dies, so does your consciousness, your soul. It is so firmly believed that scientists stop seeing that this is just a hypothetical assumption and there is no reason why consciousness should not survive the death of the brain."