00:02 this little boy is referred to as Sam in 00:05 case studies a year and a half before he 00:08 was born his grandfather died when he 00:11 was about eighteen months old his dad 00:14 was changing his diaper one day and Sam 00:16 looked up at him and said when I was 00:18 your age I used to change your diaper 00:20 since 1996 doctor Jim Tucker a 00:24 psychiatrist at the University of 00:26 Virginia has been gathering case studies 00:28 of past life recognition in children 00:31 that could prove that a soul returns to 00:33 earth in another body we've now got 00:36 2,500 cases in our files from all over 00:38 the world many people believe in some 00:41 form of reincarnation the concept dates 00:44 back to 800 BC and the hindu punished 00:46 odds beginning in india the belief that 00:50 some essential part of ourselves may 00:52 return after death to a new body is now 00:55 being examined by some scientists as 00:58 another way to prove the survival of 01:00 consciousness can the study of past life 01:04 recollections support this theory the 01:07 answer may lie within young children's 01:09 memories very young children usually 01:12 between the age of two or three who 01:14 start reporting that they have memories 01:17 from having had a past life some of them 01:19 talk about being deceased relatives but 01:22 others will talk about being strangers 01:24 in other locations and if they give 01:26 enough details like the name of the 01:28 other location people have often gone 01:30 there and found that in fact someone had 01:33 died in the recent past there's life 01:35 matches the details of the children gave 01:38 the late psychiatrist dr. Ian Stevenson 01:41 advanced the field of reincarnation 01:44 research in the 1960s interviewing over 01:47 3,000 people who claimed to have passed 01:49 like the memories two-thirds of them 01:52 said that in a previous life they died 01:55 from unusual causes he focused on 25 01:59 cases in India and realized that young 02:02 children talking about past lives was 02:05 much more common than anyone had known 02:07 dr. Stevenson created categories to 02:09 screen for cases worthy of further study 02:12 his colleague Jim Tucker still uses this 02:15 method the criteria we use to decide 02:19 whether to register a case would include 02:23 two of the following characteristics of 02:25 prediction of rebirth and announcing 02:28 dream a birthmark or birth defect that 02:31 seems related to the previous life 02:33 statements of memories about the 02:35 previous life behaviors that seem 02:37 related and then also recognitions of 02:41 people are places from that life Sam's 02:44 story is an example of how a small child 02:47 may express what some believe on 02:49 memories of a previous life when Sam was 02:52 for four and a half his grandmother died 02:55 and his father went out to take care of 02:59 her belongings when he came back he 03:01 brought a group of family photos which 03:03 before that Sam's family had not had any 03:07 of his father's family photos in the 03:09 house one night Sam's mom had them 03:13 spread out on the coffee table looking 03:14 at them when Sam came over and started 03:17 pointing to pictures of his grandfather 03:19 mommy he's come 03:22 those are pictures daddy brought back 03:25 from grandma's funeral 03:28 that's my car you see that picture 03:36 turned out that that was the 03:38 grandfather's first new car and one that 03:40 he was was very attached to his parents 03:44 that had no belief in reincarnation in 03:46 fact his mother was the daughter of a 03:47 Southern Baptist minister sorry come 03:52 talk to mommy for a minute it's just a 03:54 coincidence Sam's mother became 03:56 intrigued by her son's statements she 03:59 started testing him with questions about 04:00 his grandfather she showed him a class 04:03 photo when his grandfather was in 04:05 grammar school 04:06 silly do you recognize anyone in this 04:10 photo 04:12 there I am 04:15 no family that's your grandpa when he 04:17 was a boy no that's me when I looked at 04:22 the picture even after having looked at 04:25 the other pictures of his grandfather I 04:27 really would not have been able to say 04:30 with any certainty which boy I thought 04:31 was the grandfather and of course Sam 04:33 was for the time that he did this some 04:36 children not only remember their past 04:38 life but the afterlife as well about 20% 04:43 of the children will describe events 04:45 between the time when the previous 04:47 person died and when the child is born 04:50 some of them described basically sort of 04:53 hanging out either where the previous 04:55 person lived or where the previous 04:56 person died so they may describe their 05:00 funeral then there are other children 05:02 who talk about going to other realms 05:04 like heaven things like that some of 05:07 them will talk about seeing other beings 05:09 there or talking with God I died in 05:12 China to heaven God gave me a ticket 05:15 that let me come back down to earth this 05:17 is not part of our everyday experience 05:19 that people talking about past lives if 05:21 the children are able to describe 05:23 memories that then turn out to be 05:24 accurate for somebody who lived and died 05:26 in the pan 05:27 then this suggests that memories or 05:31 something connected with memories can 05:34 carry over possibly after the death of 05:37 the body I've had a number of friends 05:40 and acquaintances who have said that 05:43 there are children when they were two or 05:44 three would make one sort of unusual 05:46 statement like there's one woman who 05:49 said her her child said in my last life 05:52 I drove a big truck this is as they're 05:54 running down the road when they never 05:55 said anything else and you know you 05:58 don't make too much of that if in these 06:00 cases the children don't stuff after one 06:02 or two statements when children continue 06:05 to talk about having had a past life 06:06 they may offer more specific details do 06:11 you remember your family 06:14 some people denied the stare goldfish 06:17 who turned her into a fish some bad guys 06:21 she died the father had only recently 06:27 heard about the sister being murdered 60 06:31 years before and then her body had been 06:34 dumped in the bay and he felt absolutely 06:38 certain that the boy had never heard 06:39 about it 06:40 some people point out what they believed 06:42 to be flaws in Tucker's studies how do 06:45 we know all these things actually 06:46 happened that is the boy said this he 06:49 pointed there I mean I presume these are 06:52 anecdotes and stories told by the 06:54 parents recounted to the author who then 06:58 writes down we know from research on 07:00 memory from research on how much parents 07:04 influenced their children and the 07:07 reconstruction of events and how 07:08 unreliable that is exactly how that can 07:11 be distorted some people have argued 07:13 that it's the parents enthusiasm for a 07:16 case that makes it stronger than it 07:18 really is so one of the things we code 07:21 for is the parents initial attitude 07:25 about a case and when I looked I found 07:27 that in fact the initial attitude has no 07:29 correlation whatsoever with how strong 07:31 the case ultimately appears to be 07:35 memories aren't the only signs of a 07:38 former life in dr. Tucker's cases a more 07:41 rarer occurrence is when physical 07:43 characteristics carryover from one body 07:45 to another from one life to the next in 07:48 a number of our cases the child is born 07:51 with a birthmark or a birth defect that 07:54 matches a wound usually a fatal wound on 07:57 the body of the previous person this is 08:00 something that's fairly common most of 08:02 these are not the usual blemishes that a 08:04 lot of people have but they can be quite 08:07 specific or unusual markings there's a 08:11 little boy in Thailand named Chloe when 08:14 his grandmother was dying she expressed 08:17 a wish to come back as a man and then 08:20 when she died her daughter-in-law took 08:22 some white paste and ran her finger down 08:26 the back of the neck of the body then 08:29 Chloe was born a few years later and had 08:32 this white mark on the back of his neck 08:35 that looked just like someone running a 08:37 finger down the back of his neck then 08:40 when he got old enough to talk he talked 08:42 about having been his grandmother said 08:45 held her Riceville belonged to him and 08:47 made statements like that a common 08:50 practice in several Asian countries 08:51 involves marking the dying relative with 08:54 soot or paste when the soul was 08:57 reincarnated the family can recognize 08:59 its rebirth by this mark certainly I 09:02 think the birthmarks and birth defects 09:04 argue that there is something that has 09:07 carried that trauma with it to another 09:10 life and then affected the fetus of 09:12 Tucker's 2500 cases more than 2,000 will 09:16 involved violent or unusual deaths his 09:19 data suggests that physical trauma in 09:21 one life can carry over that the mind 09:24 can remember past violence and inflicted 09:27 on a new body there's a famous case of a 09:30 man who relived an event where he was 09:32 tied up and developed what looked like 09:35 rope marks on his arm so there are 09:37 examples of mental images producing very 09:41 specific marks on the body what are the 09:44 conclude 09:45 the dr. Tucker draws from this 09:47 intriguing data I think the best 09:50 explanation for our strongest cases is 09:53 that memories emotions and even physical 09:56 trauma sometimes can carry on from one 09:58 life to another the explanation for how 10:00 this carry over occurs largely remains 10:04 to be elucidated but in general terms 10:06 the idea that consciousness is not 10:10 purely a creation of the brain so 10:13 consciousness could be considered a 10:15 separate entity from the physical brain 10:18 and then could continue on in another 10:20 life the idea of reincarnation sets up a 10:24 number of possibilities regarding the 10:26 existence of the soul survivors of 10:29 clinical death may also provide a 10:31 glimpse into what happens after death