Children’s Past Lives

This is a very interesting film made around the year 2000 for the BBC about past life recall amongst children in various parts of the world, and from diverse cultures.

It starts by looking at the work of Ian Stevenson’s successor at the University of Virginia, Jim Tucker, and his list of 1000s of cases of past life recall. In this case we visit one such child, Harley, born in a very conservative part of the States, and to orthodox parents, who suddenly started talking about his previous life.

We then move on to Dr Erlendur Haroldsson, from the University of Iceland, who has been investigating similar cases in Sri Lanka, and elsewhere, for the past 30 years or so. My own teacher Godwin used to act as interpretor for Dr Erlendur in Lanka on occasion.

This is a very interesting case, first because of the persistence of the memory of this child, and secondly because of the detail she cannot possibly have known about, and her recognition of her previous family members.

We also hear from a sceptic from the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, who shows how easy it is to find fits to details given out by children.

The last case comes from Ireland, and a Catholic family, which unexpectedly found their long-dead mother reborn again.

Of course none of the evidence is conclusive, but it is highly suggestive, and the evidence mounts year by year, and is found not only where you might expect it, amongst people with a predisposition to belief in rebirth.