Talk:Possible Objections Against Past Life Recollection

By Vishal Agarwal

Possible Objections Against Past Life Recollection

No.	Objection	Response
1.	Retrocognition: It is wrong to assume that when someone has unexplained knowledge of persons, events, places or things from the past, then that knowledge must relate to his past life. We know of several cases where people know secret details about the lives of others that they could not have found out by any means. For example, Peter Hurkos, a Dutch gentleman could sometimes see perfect strangers and describe secret facts about their lives. In one example, when he was recovering in a hospital, he looked at a patient and declared that the man was a secret agent working for the British and that the agent would be killed soon. The prediction came true. He made many other predictions that were true more than 85% of the time. He had some psychic powers. This phenomenon of knowing secret details without being told or without learning them from ordinary means is called Retrocognition. Could not the so-called cases of past-life recollection also relate to some other person’s lives, and not that of a past life of the person who remembered them? In other words, they could all be examples of Retrocognition.	Retrocognition is merely a psychic phenomenon that is very different from past-life recollection. In retrocognition, the person remembers or learns facts about the lives of many different people, whereas in past-life recollection, only a single person is involved in general. (people can remember their multiple past lives, too). Moreover, it is often the case with retrocognition that the psychic learns facts about places, events, people, etc., who exist not in the past, but in the present or even in the future. On the other hand, past-life recollection is always concerned with the past. For example, a 14-year-old teenager named David in England visited the British Museum with his parents to see some newly arrived Mummies from Egypt. David commented correctly that there should be three initials on the underside of the sarcophagus, and that he knew this because he was an inspector of these coffins in his previous life.
2	Obtain information from normal means or Guesswork	In many cases, the information is too intimate or difficult to obtain (e.g., Xenoglossy). Therefore, this is not a valid objection.
3	Fraud by Subject: Sometimes, it is argued that people who claim to recollect past lives merely pretend to do so with ulterior motives. E.g., they crave more attention or fame or want to claim that they were great individuals in previous lives. Many of the so-called cases of past-life recollection can be outright fraud where the person found out the details through other means, and then claimed that he remembered them from a past life.	However, studies have shown that in practically all these cases, the subject had no discernible ulterior motive. Furthermore, there was either no great difference in the financial condition of the family of the subject in this life and the past life; or the person was poorer in his past life than in his present life. “Those who reject reincarnation in toto frequently explain away this phenomenon as being either an example of hoaxing (though confirmed cases are rare) or as a result of something called cryptomnesia (also known as lost or hidden memories) – the phenomenon by which a person recounts historical details under hypnosis gleaned not from a past life, but from a long forgotten book or movie that they may have seen. For the most part, however, most such memories have no easy explanation and remain among the most extensive evidence of the reality of past lives in existence.” “Unfortunately, while most of these cases prove to be imbued with enough detail to make them plausible as past-life memories, none has proven to be irrefutable proof of reincarnation. There are always a few erroneous details thrown in among the verifiable facts to cast doubt on their authenticity, and so while they remain good evidence for incarnation, they are likely to always remain just outside of the veil of being considered “proof” of reincarnation.” “….the children in the best cases Stevenson has studied recounted extensive details – including the means of their death (something children would be unlikely to fantasize about) – long before meeting their prior family. It was usually through the wealth of information the children provided originally that locating the prior life family was even made possible.”
4	Fraud by parents or family members of the Subject	In many cases, parents have no incentive to commit the fraud because there is no financial gain, or worldly fame to be had. In many cases, the discovery of reincarnation within their household runs counter to their own Abrahamic belief that reincarnation does not happen. Many parents are skeptical about the statements made by their children. In other cases, reincarnation cases within the family bring embarrassment to the parents.
5	Fraud by Investigators	This is unlikely because investigators like Ian Stevenson have followed a very rigorous methodology in their investigation, and so have others. The scientific rigor of their methodology has been acknowledged and appreciated in academic journals like the Journal of the American Medical Association, the American Journal of Psychiatry, the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, etc.
6	Cryptomnesia: Sometimes, we acquire some information from a person or another source, but then forget the source after some time. This phenomenon is called Cryptomnesia. This situation makes us feel that we must have got the information in some mysterious way, or that it is a recollection from a past life.	The onus is on the doubter to prove that the person got this information from an explainable source. In fact, in many cases of past-life recollection, no known source of the information could be determined. Moreover, the person recollecting his past life identifies very strongly with and feels very close to the individual that he was in his past life. “It is difficult to prove cryptomnesia. How does one “prove” to others the books he or she read or the movies he or she watched as an eight-year-old child? Since it is nearly impossible to locate the “source material” for most forgotten memories, the assumption that a past-life memory is based on a movie or book must remain purely speculative…” “The other problem with the theory is those cases in which there is no apparent source for the recalled details. Often the details are so obtuse or take place in such a largely unknown or foreign environment that it is impossible to locate a possible source for them. Then there is the problem of recounting past lives that prove to be mundane or commonplace. Even mediocre fiction, after all, usually has some interesting characters or curious plot twists to enliven the story; who writes epics about ordinary and largely uneventful lives?” “Additionally, we do not see past-life fantasies gleaned from other types of literature such as science fiction or fantasy. Undoubtedly many people have read H. G. Wells or J. R. R. Tolkien, yet I have never encountered a case in which a person recalled under hypnosis being a crewman onboard Captain Nemo’s Nautilus…..If cryptomnesia is the source for all past-life memories, we should find as many genres of false memories as there are genres of fiction, yet such is not the case…..”
7	Genetic Memory: Our genes pass on memories from the lives of our ancestors into our minds.	This can explain only those cases where the person is reborn into the same family in his next life. But in most cases, the person has no genetic relationship to the person that he was in his past life. “The first and the biggest problem with this hypothesis is that there is no scientific evidence that memories can be passed along genetically and no known mechanism that might explain how it could happen. Additionally, even if such were theoretically possible, it should only affect one’s direct descendants, yet very few people have past-life memories in which they recall having been a direct family ancestor….” “Further, if such past-life memories were indeed embedded within a DNA strand, one would expect those memories to surface in one’s biological siblings and other close relatives as well….Certainly, this would do much to confirm the theory, and yet there has never been a case of siblings recalling the same or similar past lives.” “The second problem with genetic memories is that in many cases subjects recall their own deaths in their previous lives – often with great clarity. However, for a genetic memory to be transferred to one’s offspring, only those memories that had been acquired up to the time of conception should, by all rights, make it into genetic coding. Any events – and, especially, one’s own death – that occur after conception could not be passed on for obvious reasons, theoretically making any genetically-induced memory of a prior death impossible.”
8	ESP (Extra-sensory Perception): Many people seem to have a ‘sixth sense’ because they can describe events, places, people, etc. from the present, past, or future even though they had no means of knowing these facts. Retrocognition mainly relates to the past, whereas ESP mainly relates to the future. ESP is also therefore a kind of psychic ability. This objection states that all the so-called cases of past-life recollection are instances of ESP.	Carter (2012a: 67-68) gives several reasons why this explanation of past life recollection is untenable: “… There are several things wrong with telepathy or clairvoyance as an explanation of past-life cases. First of all, the errors made by the subjects are far more consistent with the characteristics of memory than ESP. For instance, ESP cannot explain why subjects have difficulty recognizing persons or places that have changed since the death of the previous personality, and cannot explain why the subjects are unaware of changes in the previous personality’s environment they have not yet seen. Second, information acquired clairvoyantly or telepathically is not typically experienced as something remembered. Also, the best clairvoyants and telepaths make a predictable number of mistakes, but we have seen that Swarnlata and Bishen Chand made virtually no errors. Third, the ESP hypothesis would predict that we would occasionally find more than one child claiming to remember the life of a certain deceased person, and making statements about the deceased person’s life that, upon checking, turn out to be accurate. But we have not found cases with more than one child making such claims. Fourth, while ESP can explain the acquisition of knowledge, it cannot explain the acquisition of skills requiring a great deal of practice. That is, ESP can explain knowing that something is true, but cannot explain knowing how to do something. But we have seen two cases in which the subjects exhibited the skills that they did not have the opportunity to learn: Bishen Chand knew how to skillfully play the tabla without being taught, and Swarnlata knew how to perform complicated songs and dances, in a language neither she nor her parents spoke. Fifth, in most cases, the operation of ESP appears to be goal-directed, operating to satisfy some desire or need of the experience. But in many cases of the reincarnation type, we can find no plausible motion on the child’s part to imitate the deceased person. On the contrary, the child’s statements and behavior frequently cause the child trouble with his or her family. Sixth, there is simply no evidence, apart from these cases, of young children having the ability to impersonate a person they have never met…. Finally, the ad hoc nature of this explanation is apparent when we consider the fact that we have no evidence of ESP abilities in most of these children apart from their claimed memories of a previous life…”
9	Spirit Possession: This refers to instances where the Atma of a dead person enters within and possesses the body of a living person (called the ‘medium’). It is possible that in all these cases of past-life recollection, a dead person’s Atma has entered the recollector’s body and has taken possession of it. As a result, this recollector is then able to narrate events from the past that he has not been told about, and it appears to the listener that he is talking about a past life.	Mediums behave in a very different way than people who recollect their past lives. In the latter case, the recollector narrates the event in a very matter-of-fact way, very casually. He does not appear possessed, nor does he have to undergo some psychological process like hypnotism in all cases (although deep hypnotism can also bring forth past life memories).
10	Cultural Fantasy: Some critics of past life recollection research argue that it is a cultural fantasy, i.e., people who are born in cultures where rebirth upon death is accepted widely will display a tendency to claim that they remember their past lives.	There are several objections against this criticism: 1. Numerous people in Western cultures have reported past life recollections, which is contrary to the dominant opinion in their society that death results in resurrection on the Day of Judgment (and not rebirth). 2. Many individuals who recollected their past lives also showed birthmarks corresponding to injuries that they had sustained in their previous lives. 3. Most subjects start recollecting their past life when they are between the ages of 2 and 5, when the chances of cultural indoctrination are much less than for adults. 4. If past life recollection results from cultural indoctrination or fantasy, then such cases would show a greater occurrence of the beliefs, including in the Buddhism, that animals and plants can be reborn as humans, or that one suffers the consequences of karma performed in previous lives. There are very few cases of individuals recollecting their past lives as animals, and there is very little evidence that prior karma shaped the external circumstances (e.g., wealth or poverty) in the subject’s current life.
11	Spontaneous Past Life Recall cases are a product of an overactive imagination, and are fantasies.	“… even if a small percentage of past-life memories turn out to be entirely fallacious and the product of an overactive imagination, that should be no reason to dismiss the entire concept in toto. Every religious, philosophical, or political movement has its “fringe” element, and the occasional colorful character who claims to be the reincarnation of Napoleon no more disproves reincarnation than the psychotic who claims to be Jesus Christ disproves Christianity. The object researcher looks at the best cases of previous-life recall to determine the validity of reincarnationist claims, not the most questionable ones.”
13	Paramnesia: “This refers to the possibility that after the two families concerned have met, the adults attribute to the child many more correct statements about his previous personality than he made before the families met.”	Following is a counter to this objection: “Dr. Stevenson’s exhaustive cross-examination of witnesses is aimed at uncovering such weak cases. Paramnesia cannot apply, says Stevenson, to those cases in which someone made a written record of what the subject said about the previous life before the two families met. Nor would it apply where the investigator has come on the scene and received an advanced report before the families met….. It would be a mistake to imagine that both families in such a situation find being united an occasion of cordial fraternization and mutually joyful exchange of memories. When a child claims to have formerly lived in a wealthy family or one of a higher caste, it does not reflect credit on such a family that their child has been “demoted” in his new incarnation. Nor is such a family likely to welcome the child or his new parents with open arms, any more than families in this life welcome poor relations into the bosom of their home life. The same conflict occurs, but in a reverse sense, when the child is reborn into a “superior” state. The new family does not relish hobnobbing with a poor or low-caste previous family, nor does it enjoy thinking that its child had such an ancestry. But in either case, or in cases where both families are of equal status, the present parents may understandably be fearful that the previous father and mother may claim the child, or that the child himself will prefer the prior parents and insist on living with them. There also may be anxiety, on the part of the former relatives, that the child may reveal old family secrets. In one case, a former relative “fainted dead away” when the reborn child disclosed such private information….”