James G. Matlock, PhD, an anthropologist, is coauthor (with Erlendur Haraldsson) of I Saw a Light and Came Here: Children’s Experiences of Reincarnation. He is a regular contributor to the online Psi Encyclopedia sponsored by the Society for Psychical Research in London. He has authored dozens of academic papers concerning reincarnation and related areas.
Here he points out that one could conceivably consider cases of the reincarnation type to be similar in many respects to cases of possession. In particular, there are instances in the reincarnation case database of previous individuals whose death occurs after the birth of a child who remembers an identifiable past life. Typically, those cases involve very young children who get sick and appear to die. Sometimes, funeral preparations are being made when the child revives and claims to be a different person.
New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980).
(Recorded on November 13, 2017)
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