Talk:Similarity Between Lives
Extensive research of people who have recollected their past lives or lives also yielded some cases where the unique physical characteristics (like birthmarks or deformities) of the individual in his current life had an eerie connection to their experiences in the past life. For example, a person with a deep scar on the side of his abdomen was perhaps stabbed at the same spot in his past life (and previous body). Some cases have also had phobias (e.g. fear of loud sounds) which was explained, upon research, to be because they died due to loud gunfire. Ian Stevenson’s massive research describes,
“…examples of correlating birthmarks offering physical evidence of past lives include an Indian boy who recalled being killed by a shotgun blast to his chest. On this little boy’s chest was an array of birthmarks that matched the pattern and location of the fatal wounds as verified by the autopsy report. Another shotgun victim was hit at point-blank range on the right side of the head as confirmed by the hospital report. The Turkish boy who remembered this life was born with a malformed ear and an under-development of the right side of his face.”[1]
How do we explain this phenomenon through Hindu spiritual wisdom? A modern scholar comments - “Another mysterious feature of past-life memories cases is that some children have birthmarks and birth defects at the same precise locations where the person they remember being had fatal wounds or other distinct bodily marks. How might this happen? Many scientifically documented reports have shown that mental impressions can express themselves as bodily marks……The Vedic model can help us understand how the same principle can be extended from the body of one lifetime to the body of the next lifetime. … During reincarnation, the mind that is the bearer of mental impressions goes along with the soul from the previous gross body to the next gross body. So when the previous gross body was inflicted with the fatal wounds, the impressions of that wound were created in the mind. And when the mind along with the soul enters into the next body, it causes those impressions to get expressed as birthmarks or birth defects at the corresponding bodily locations.”[2]