We have already referred to the ongoing reincarnation research of Dr. Ian Stevenson, which has tended to focus mainly on evidence based on reincarnation memories in young children. More recently, Dr. Stevenson has also begun to explore what he calls the relationship between biology and reincarnation.
Birthmark reincarnation evidence is especially prevalent among the Inuits (or Eskimos) and the Tlingit Indians of Alaska. Both the Tlingits and the Inuits are familiar with violent death and with wounds caused by savage attacks from wild animals. They also report frequent injuries inflicted by spears, guns, knives or axes as the result of fights. Dr. Stevenson has explored several hundred cases where the birthmarks that appear on a person’s body are claimed to be linked to surgical procedures or stab and bullet wounds which occurred in previous lives.
The scars of Victor Vincent
A case in point is that of Victor Vincent. Victor was a full-blooded Tlingit Indian who lived on an island in southern Alaska. In 1946, toward the end of his life, he became very close to his niece, Mrs. Corliss Chotkin — the daughter of his sister — and told her that after he died he would be reborn as her next son. Vincent also maintained that she would know it was him because her newborn son would bear two birthmarks related to scars that Vincent had on his body. Vincent had a very distinctive scar on his back, and another on the right side of his nose near its base. He told Mrs. Chotkin that he would imprint these scars onto the body of his next incarnation to prove that he had indeed been reborn.
In December 1947, fifteen months after her uncle Victor died, Mrs. Chotkin gave birth to a son, whom she named Corliss Junior — the baby was born with birthmarks in exactly the same locations as Victor Vincent’s scars. The scar near the boy’s nose became less noticeable as he grew older but the mark on his back became even more distinctive, and had all the characteristics of a surgical incision that had healed over: it was raised and pigmented and also itched like a wound on the mend.
When the boy was just over a year old he began to utter his first words, and around the age of thirteen months he said to his mother, “Don’t you know me? I’m Kahkody.” This was Victor Vincent’s tribal name, and Mrs. Chotkin was amazed that her son seemed to speak with the same accent as her deceased uncle. Later, when he was two and being wheeled along the street in Sitka, where the family lived, Corliss Junior spontaneously recognized one of Victor Vincent’s stepdaughters and called her correctly by her name, Susie. Later that year he recognized Victor Vincent’s son William, who was visiting Sitka unannounced, and said to his mother,
“There is William, my son.”
At the age of three Corliss Junior identified Victor Vincent’s widow, Rose, in a large crowd — spotting her even before Mrs. Chotkin had noticed her — and on another occasion he recognized a close family friend of Victor’s who happened to be in Sitka at the time. Later he identified other friends of Victor’s, referring to them correctly by their tribal names.
By the age of nine, however, Corliss was able to recall fewer and fewer memories of his former life, and by the age of fifteen he could recall nothing at all from his previous incarnation. Indeed, in most cases such as this, the memories of past lives seem to disappear with the passage of the time. It is with good reason that Dr. Stevenson seeks to document the evidence of reincarnational memories in young children — before the evidence is lost.
The “life readings” of Edgar Cayce
Edgar Cayce is one the most famous psychics and reincarnationists of all time, and yet belief in reincarnation was not part of his religious upbringing.
Edgar Cayce was born on March 18, 1877 in Kentucky. He came from a fundamentalist Protestant Christian background. As a young man, Cayce discovered that he could give accurate healing diagnoses for other people by going into a hypnotic trance. Here he would be assisted by inner guidance toward the diagnosis of diseases, often using medical terms which were completely unknown to him. On one occasion he gave a diagnosis in fluent Italian, even though he was not familiar with this language in his everyday waking consciousness. This remarkable psychic gift led him in turn to giving “life readings” — readings which seemed to reveal the existence of past lives and their karmic influence on present-day health problems.
It came as something of a shock to Edgar Cayce when his subconscious mind began to alert him to the possibility of past lives and reincarnation. He was familiar with the concept of psychic potentials — clairvoyance, telepathy, precognition and the power of prophecy — but reincarnation seemed too fantastic to be credible. It was also contrary to his Christian beliefs.
In 1923 Cayce traveled to Dayton, Ohio, to meet a man named Arthur Lammers. This meeting would change his approach to psychic diagnosis forever. Lammers was interested in the occult, and it seemed to him that if Cayce could correctly diagnose ailments by going into trance, he might also be able to uncover the metaphysical secrets of life, death and spiritual development. Lammers asked Cayce if he had ever sought to discover our true purpose on Earth, the nature of the soul, and what we were doing before each of us was born.
Cayce didn’t have an immediate answer for Lammers and was somewhat taken aback because until this point he had used the Bible as his sole source of spiritual authority. Cayce nevertheless agreed to explore these issues further, and gave Lammers a trance reading. The reading revealed that Lammers had been a monk in a past life. Cayce also began to use Sanskrit terms such as “karma” and “akasa,” which he had never used before. From this time onwards, Cayce’s trance readings would frequently refer to past lives, and would often use mystical terminology to explain the secrets of the spiritual world.
As a result of his meeting with Lammers, Cayce also agreed to use the following formula as the basis of his life readings while he was in a state of trance:
“You will have before you [name] born [date] in/at [place of birth]. You will give the relation of this entity and the universe and the universal forces, giving the conditions which are as personalities, latent and exhibited, in the present life; also the former appearances on the earth plane, giving time, place and the name; and that in each life which built or retarded the entity’s development.”
The idea of these life readings was to reveal both the positive and negative influences that past lives had brought to bear on one’s present existence. The readings would also demonstrate how certain attitudes and personality characteristics were specifically connected to previous incarnations.
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