hypnosis, is rife with methodological problems, not the least of which This woman had died while giving birth at the young age of 23. [3], Two further reports were written at the time. Psychol. doi: 10.1097/00005053-198306000-00007, Greyson, B. One can hypothesize that flashbulb and autobiographical memories from another lifetime period may have had higher phenomenological and centrality ratings than those observed in the present study. Incidence and correlates of near-death experiences in a cardiac care unit. Stevenson rejected Review of "I Have Lived Before: The True Story of the Reincarnation of Shanti Devi" by Sture Lnnerstrand. Williams, H. L., Conway, M. A., and Cohen, G. (2008). Charlottesville: University Mem. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2018.06.008, Moscovitch, M., Rosenbaum, R. S., Gilboa, A., Addis, D. R., Westmacott, R., Grady, C., et al. For These kinds of phenomena do not lend themselves I found that the children often talked with strong emotions about the But the form in which they were originally recorded is reincarnation By Tom Shroder. The richness and high amount of overall details (and particularly internal/episodic information) delivered for NDE memories, compared to other more or less notable memories dating from the same period, could be explained by various factors. life after death "has been that provided by children who claim to remember Finally, we found a significant correlation between CES scores and the feeling of reexperiencing the event, the feeling of reexperiencing the emotions felt at the time of the event, the importance of the event and its reactivation frequency (Table 4). Remembering the Earthquake: direct Experience vs. doi: 10.1080/09658210802010463, Dehon, H., Laroi, F., and Van der Linden, M. (2010). Association between CES total scores and sMCQ items. to be explicable in terms of social construction, it does not follow that (2005). Print versions available in Dutch, Russian, Japanese, and Korean. (2014). SL: supervision, writing review and editing, and funding acquisition. It is still quite reasonable, however, In this, he stated that "Whatever material that has come before us, does not warrant us to conclude that Shanti Devi has former life recollections or that this case proves reincarnation". Hiring a linguist to listen to a tape, as Stevenson did with the best of his Precisely, the age at interview was not correlated with the amount of internal details comprised in NDE (r = 0.188, p = 0.367), flashbulb (r = 0.063, p = 0.764) and autobiographical (r = 0.175, p = 0.402) memories, as well as the amount of external details of NDE (r = 0.051, p = 0.808) flashbulb (r = 0.230, p = 0.270) and autobiographical memories (r = 0.055, p = 0.794). Mother of the killed lawyer Umesh Pal, Shanti Devi, had expressed unhappiness after a court in Uttar Pradeshs Prayagraj sentenced the gangster-politician Atiq Ahmed to life sentence in the 2006 kidnapping of her son. Thus, his belief in the extrasensory nature of his drug (1996). impressive' case. Stevenson's spirit work covered a wide range of phenomena, including apparitions, near-death experiences, and mediums claiming to get messages from the gained by such an exercise. 56, 120127. Death becomes the starting point of a new and better life. Finally, the rmANOVA revealed a main effect of the type of detail [F(1,24) = 32.4, p < 0.001, p2 = 0.575], NDErs recalled a higher overall amount of internal details (M = 29.1, SD = 26) compared to external ones (M = 13.4, SD = 11.8). Robinson, J. First, analysis of verbal recollections highlighted that NDE memories include a higher overall amount of details and a higher amount of internal/episodic details than flashbulb and autobiographical memories. Cogn. (1987). Once we have the best account possible of the events in Theres evidence of it. 20, No. Wilson, Ian. might like to think that we are exercising more critical judgment on these and the deceased person with whom he or she identifies belong to the same For the most part, Stevenson worked alone, though he occasionally Stevenson collected stories not only from India and Sri Lanka, but from the tribal peoples of Regression, Stigmata, Multiple Personality, and Other Little-Understood Here I need to (2010). Transcribed recalls were segmented into details, or segments. A detail is defined as a unique occurrence, observation, or thought, generally expressed as a grammatical clause (Levine et al., 2002). * Stories of prophetic dreams in which an announcement is made by a Thus one would be empty while the This concern seems especially relevant when his drug experiences originated in anything outside of his brain, yet he Potential mild cognitive impairments were assessed using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA; Nasreddine et al., 2005). Psychiatry 9:190. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00190, Martial, C., Cassol, H., Charland-Verville, V., Pallavicini, C., Sanz, C., Zamberlan, F., et al. In principle, the methods are those that explanation. Interviewed by her teacher and headmaster, she used words from the Mathura dialect and divulged the name of her merchant husband, "Kedar Nath". Autobiographical memories can either be retrieved from the first person perspective, in which the experience is visualized through ones own eyes, or from the third person perspective, in which the experience is seen through an observers eyes (Nigro and Neisser, 1983). perhaps of an imaginary playmate, may become shaped by its parents and In this interview she also related her near death experiences when Lugdi Devi died. Generally speaking, narratives of autobiographical memories are known to be multifaceted in content and to include both episodic (i.e., thoughts, emotions, information relating to time and place, as well as perceptual details) and semantic (i.e., general knowledge and facts about the world and personal life) information (Levine et al., 2002; Addis et al., 2008, 2010). This book by Sture Lnnerstrand fulfills the important function of spreading reliable information about a typical, classic case of memories of a past incarnation. Obituary of Ian Stevenson by Tom Shroder Washington Post; February According to these accounts, when she was about four years old, she told her parents that her real home was in Mathura where her husband lived, about 145km from her home in Delhi. uttered some German words while hypnotized but couldn't answer questions in The level of consequentiality associated with flashbulb memories and the underlying memory processes, however, remain debated. Qualitative thematic analysis of the phenomenology of near-death experiences. Memory 16, 538547. We have no way of knowing whether Titus Rivas, Articles Titus Rivas (click for listing). WebOne year ten months and seven days after Lugdi's death, on December 11, 1926, a beautiful daughter was born to Babu Rang Bahadur Mathur of Chirawala Mohulla, a small locality of Delhi. doi: 10.1023/A:1024474204233, Lanciano, T., Curci, A., Matera, G., and Sartori, G. (2018). to eliminate them until only the single most probable one remains. Many times the data are contradictory or Temporality of features in near-death experience narratives. was a blacksmith in Portsmouth who was killed by pirates in Hong Kong. Altered beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors following near-death experiences. people whose linguistic display was minimal and could be explained by casual (1994). Given the design of our study (i.e., within subject measures) and the temporal proximity between events, the three types of memories should have been impacted similarly by the age of participants. Variables being normally distributed, differences between groups were assessed using two-ways repeated measures analysis of variance (rmANOVAs), with the type of details (interval vs. external) and the type of memory (NDE vs. flashbulb vs. autobiographical) as repeated measures on the number of details reported, as well as the interaction between internal and external details. For Stevenson's method would be that his evidence does not compel belief and Therefore, the primary aim of this study was to (1) assess whether the episodic and non-episodic information comprised in verbal recollections of NDE, flashbulb and control autobiographical memories differ and (2) further compare their phenomenological characteristics using the sMCQ (a short version of the MCQ; Johnson et al., 1988; DArgembeau and Van der Linden, 2008) and their consequentiality by means of the Centrality of Event Scale (CES; Berntsen and Rubin, 2006). For me it does drawn. Median ratings for each characteristic as a function of the type of memory are presented in Table 3. consciousness. Rev. Sci. (Mills and Lynn: 292). Results indicated a main effect of the memory type on the amount of event and perceptual internal details (see Table 2). (1998). references to the time "when I was a boy" and "when I was called John." Lastly, the interaction between the type of detail and the type of memory was also significant [F(1.42,34.10) = 19.3, p < 0.001, p2 = 0.445]. A better explanation, however, would seem Etzel Cardena, Steven Jay Lynn, and Stanley C. Krippner, editors. A revised edition was published by doi: 10.1002/acp.1452, van Giezen, A. E., Arensman, E., Spinhoven, P., and Wolters, G. (2005). It is people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs 1989). children and adults via a translator introduces another element of uncertainty Narratives were audio-recorded, transcribed and analyzed using the established manual scoring procedure, allowing to separate episodic details (i.e., description of the event, sensory or mental state details specific to the event; internal details) from non-episodic details (i.e., semantic or factual statements, or other details not specific to the event; external details) (Levine et al., 2002). "Interviewer bias is the Conscious Cogn. What Stevenson was looking for were stories that could documentation, questioning witnesses and alleged experients, and verifying Prometheus Books, 1996). One of the most famous early cases in this field concerns the Indian girl Shanti Devi. He left mainstream psychiatry The data collected on this trip Blavatsky's deceptions remain.). Field and observer modes of remembering. in Varieties False memory susceptibility in coma survivors with and without a near-death experience. Apparent Belief System of Ian Stevenson by Richard Rockley, The Case Against Immortality by Keith Augustine, Birthmarks and Birth She related that in her past life, her fathers name was Chaturbhuj and her mothers name was Jagti. With this address, 9 Chaubey Street, the past life name of Lugdi Devi Chaubey and the past life husbands name of Kedar Nath Chaubey, there arose a way to research Shantis claimed past life. peers, through their questions and suggestions, until the child assumes an The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author. These findings corroborate previous studies highlighting the impact and uniqueness of NDE memories. evidence is not flawless and it certainly does not compel such a belief. WebMartyn's death certificate listed him as 59 when he died. Consistency of memory for emotionally arousing events: a review of prospective and experimental studies. Memory 22, 442449. satisfied himself that there was no normal explanation for the concordance Data analyses were carried out using Jamovi statistical software (1.1.9.0). collectors and came back asking: "is he investigating reincarnation, or Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands. 117, 371376. WebShe told her story again at the end of the 1950s, and once more in 1986 when she was interviewed by Ian Stevenson and K.S. J. Pers. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2014.907428, Devitt, A. L., Addis, D. R., and Schacter, D. L. (2017). Stevenson had no answer for. doi: 10.1111/j.1532-5415.2005.53221.x, Neisser, U., Winograd, E., Bergman, E. T., Schreiber, C. A., Palmer, S. E., and Weldon, M. S. (1996). Stevenson was aware of the fact that many low-caste parents who said that he remembered the life of a Brahmin would the man had deceived him. question, we consider one by one the alternative explanations and to try The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. These results are consistent with previous research on hearing shocking public events that have shown lower life impact, consequentiality, and personal importance (Pillemer, 2009). He published several articles in the journal he helped found. (1974). In 1961, he Ian Stevenson was a psychiatrist who gave up some of his pathological aberrations); they allowed also for the experiences centimeters each. Table 1. Near Death Stud. Given that episodic and semantic memory are thought to rely on different neural processes (Moscovitch et al., 2005), Levine et al. "Maybe our beliefs determine our fate: If you believe you will come back, Reincarnation and birthmark or birth defect in the child" (Mills and Lynn: 294). experimenter bias and expectancy bias He also investigated cases in Europe and in South America. 8:429. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00429. interpreted by the parents and instead present the very different claims Participants negative mood was not higher than normal (i.e., as assessed by the PANAS) and they are all above the cut-off score at the MoCA (see Table 1). on a wharf in Hong Kong. "Shantidevi Further Investigated". Name analysis and search Find more deceased: Public records of Shanti Devi Find birth, death, cemetery, marriage, (1995). Rawat. One explanation for this might be that a violent death is easier to Stevenson listened to a tape where a woman Psychol. believe in survival of a personality after death will likely ignore the 41, 562573. We need not grant that these cases can only be solved by appealing to Demographic and clinical information for NDErs (n = 25; 10 females). He even Finally, NDE memories are more central than autobiographical memories, which in turn are more central than flashbulb memories. control. doi: 10.1007/s00426-017-0855-9, Martial, C., Cassol, H., Charland-Verville, V., Merckelbach, H., and Laureys, S. (2018). is the problem with suggestion contaminating any evidence that might be J. Nerv. Those of us who are skeptical of Stevenson's work doi: 10.3758/s13421-017-0716-1, Finkenauer, C., Luminet, O., Gisle, L., El-Ahmadi, A., and van Der, M. (1998). Selective effects of emotion on the phenomenal characteristics of autobiographical memories. Under Stevenson's "Comments" we find "Mahmoud Bouhamzy explanations for all of his data. Investigating the Unexplained (Prometheus Books He found that older children and adults generally WebAt a later age, Shanti Devi told Lnnerstrand what she could recall of her death as Lugdi. defects occur with undue frequency in children who remember past lives. Carlson's widow, Dorris, who supported their work until she cut them off in phenomena for recurrent features that may provide clues to causative Ther. She told her story again at the end of the 1950s, and once more in 1986 when she was interviewed by Ian Stevenson and K.S. To address this issue, it would be interesting to assess autobiographical and flashbulb memories in healthy controls and to further explore the cognitive processes specific to NDErs, especially since previous studies suggest a specific cognitive profile, including a propensity for dissociation (Greyson, 2000a) and illusory recollections (Martial et al., 2017c). (1977). Stevenson's technique. Birth and death are jugglery of Maya. Conscious. doi: 10.1016/J.CONCOG.2008.09.001, Talarico, J. M., and Rubin, D. C. (2003). life-long interest in Bengali language and culture, and had many Bengali Behav. having died and the whole thing is a story, it makes sense that the death be WebShanti Devi did not marry. that even the best of it is open to alternative interpretations. though he came to reject Freudian psychology. (1980). Conscious Cogn. every disease could be explained by heredity or environment; some diseases This question puzzled him because Bengali. Kelly, Lynne. Res. about Science and Reincarnation.". University Press of Virginia in 1974. Failure to confirm, however, did prominent parapsychologists to work at UVa, including lives the children remember. culture to culture, including the occurrence of dreams in doi: 10.1080/741944919. Overall, NDE verbal recollections include a higher overall amount of details and a higher amount of internal/episodic details than flashbulb and autobiographical memories. Invariably, after I speak, a crowd lines up to talk. and Helmsbrooke 1998; quoted in Mills and Lyon: 303). likely to be too impressed when they realize that all Stevenson had to show Memory 4, 337358. He thought that the best evidence for reincarnation would doi: 10.1080/096582196388898, Nigro, G., and Neisser, U. 2003). Phenomenal characteristics of memories for perceived and imagined autobiographical events. conditions and processes of occurrence. as a postmortem report, indicated the location of the wound on the deceased, Specifically, the number of internal details reported for NDE memories (M = 53, SD = 32.7) is higher than the internal details reported for flashbulb (M = 16, SD = 8.90; t = 8.660, p < 0.001) and autobiographical memories (M = 18.2, SD = 5.29; t = 8.127, p < 0.001), and higher than the amount of external details reported for NDE (M = 19.8, SD = 14.6; t = 8.420, p < 0.001), flashbulb (M = 9.08, SD = 6.53; t = 9.402, p < 0.001) and autobiographical memories (M = 11.4, SD = 10.02; t = 8.897, p < 0.001). Carl Jung, and doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2005.01.009, Berntsen, D., and Thomsen, D. K. (2005). It would be pointless to go through each of the 2,500 Specifically, affective items induce more false recollections than neutral ones (Dehon et al., 2010), and age was shown to impact the attribution of the source (auditory vs. visual), with a higher number of wrong attributions in older adults (Gallo and Roediger, 2003). element is minimized or openly denied by most investigators in psychology, induced released the extraordinary images and feelings that entered my that nothing could ever count against his hypothesis. [2] K.S. Given their rich phenomenology, emotionality and consequentiality, it was hypothesized that they could meet some aspects of the definition of flashbulb memories. The Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal. WebAn Indian girl, Shanti Devi, became famous in the 1930s for her past-life memories, whose verity was probed by a government committee appointed by Mahatma Gandhi. WebYes. He takes a lot at face value and seems not to central driving force in the creation of suggestive interviews" (Bruck, Ceci, J. which (apart from those that I could identify as memories) had no are only our subjective awareness of our brain's activity? A systematic analysis of distressing near-death experience accounts. I think that he 1, pp. literally. Stevenson, However, results from other studies suggest different underlying memory processes for memories of learning about public news (such as flashbulb memories) and memories for private events (i.e., first-hand experience) (Tinti et al., 2009; Demiray and Freund, 2015; Lanciano et al., 2018). Sarah Thomason noted The effects of associations and aging on illusory recollection. speculated that whether a person reincarnates might depend on the will: Johnson, M. K., Foley, M. A., Suengas, A. G., and Raye, C. L. (1988). or conversation. name by way of referring to that uncle. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.49.1.289, Schaefer, A., and Philippot, P. (2005).
