Before I go further with my speculation on Q-waves, I wanted to post an excerpt from Carol Bowman's book, Return from Heaven, which deals with reincarnation within the same (sometimes extended) family. One of the readers of this blog suggested the book to me some months ago. Unfortunately, so much time has passed that I don't remember who it was. But if you're still reading, thanks!
It really is an fascinating book, despite the paperback's tacky and sentimentalized cover art, and it has persuaded me that reincarnation does take place in at least some cases. This is an idea I resisted for a long time because the prospect of reincarnation has never appealed to me. But "the facts beat me," as Alfred Russel Wallace said in explaining his reluctant adoption of spiritualism.
Bowman, who maintains a Web site about reincarnation, has investigated many of these cases. Unlike well-known researcher Ian Stevenson, Bowman concentrates on cases in the United States. She has found some doozies, and the story of a small boy named Sam is one of them. It's found in Chapter 7, "U-turn in the Womb." Bowman reports,
The story is condensed from the journals the mother, Jodie, kept as it was unfolding. Sam made many more statements not reported here in which he gave accurate details of his birth and at least two past lives, and he described "the other world" where he lived before he was born.
I've condensed the material much more. Those who want the full story and many other interesting and highly evidential case histories are urged to read Carol Bowman's book. Here is a greatly shortened version of Jodie's first-person narrative about Sam and his younger brother, Peyton:
Sam's first word was cousins.... Sam was obsessed with his cousins since he was a baby. When we first took him from Sacramento to visit them in San Francisco, before he could talk, he was visibly changed from the moment he saw them, excited and happy to be with the four cousins and his aunt Molly and uncle David. But his continuing obsession didn't make a lot of sense because the cousins were much older than Sam -- six to twelve years older -- and we didn't visit them more than a couple of times a year.
David and Molly are Jodie's in-laws. Several years earlier, Molly lost twin babies in the eighth month of pregnancy when a kink in the umbilical cord caused the twins to asphyxiate.
Even though I didn't know Molly very well, I asked her to be with me at Sam's birth.... When I told her my due date, October 19, she responded, "Oh, my God, that's the day I lost the twins."...
From the time Sam figured out that the car was the vehicle that would take to his cousins' house, every time we got in the car he would yell, "Cousins! Cousins!"... When we actually did intend to take a family trip to see David and Molly and the cousins, we couldn't tell Sam until the last minute, because if we did he would camp at the front door days in advance...
Once he asked, "Mom, when can I live with the cousins in the big house by the water with the big stairs? ... The stairs which didn't have carpet and I could hear them walking up and down the stairs."... I had no idea what he was talking about....
As he got older, Sam began insisting that Molly's family was his real family.... [Once] Sam burst into the room mad, hands on hips, extremely excited, and asked, "Why it isn't Kevin [David and Molly's oldest child] my big brother?" I tried to stay cool. I explained to him that Kevin was his cousin, not his brother; Peyton was his brother. But Sam would not accept this. "Why isn't Kevin my big brother? Why are you keeping me here?"...
Then one evening a few weeks later, we were all winding down before bedtime and Sam asked ... "Do you remember when Peyton and I were in your tummy at the same time?"
Jodie explained that this was incorrect; Sam was born first, and Peyton was born two years later.
Sam got a blank look on his face... then he started laughing with relief and said, "Oh, now I remember. You're wrong, Mom! We were in Aunt Molly's tummy at the same time and we didn't get born! ... Why didn't we get born, Mom? Why didn't we get born?" Then, before I knew it, he took off after his little brother, screaming, "It's all your fault! I told you I wanted to get born really bad and you didn't want to! Tell me how you took me out of there! ... How did you do that?"... Peyton pulled the pacifier out of his mouth, and his little face got more angry than I have ever seen it. He yelled at his big brother, "I wanted Daddy!"
Sam fired back, "I didn't want Daddy, I wanted Uncle David!"
When things calmed down, Sam decided to "figure this out" and
started counting on his fingers. "First I was in Aunt Molly's tummy and I didn't get born. Then I tried to get back into Aunt Molly's tummy but Sophie [Molly's youngest daughter] was there in the way. So I tried to kick her out ... and that didn't work, Mom! Then I got in your tummy and then I got born.... I sure did work hard getting here, Mom!" [A few moments later Sam] asked me, "Does Peyton always have to follow me every time I'm born?"...
Sam told his little brother what he had just remembered. Peyton started laughing. To my surprise he seemed to understand completely. I sat there thinking, "These two are talking about something that happened long before they were born [and] they're acting like it's normal." ...
Recently we were making a homemade birthday card for Aunt Molly. I asked the kids what they wanted me to write on the card... Peyton said, "Tell her I was her blue baby and now I'm Peyton and now I'm red."
Remember that the twins asphyxiated and so were literally "blue" babies. Although Jodie wisely did not write this on the card, she did eventually share her experience with Molly. Molly accepted it and said it explained why she had felt compelled to be present at both boys' births. Asked about the house on the water, she explained,
"When I was pregnant with twins, we lived in a house right on the bay; it was the only house we ever lived in that had uncarpeted stairs. We moved from that house three days before the twins died!"...
[Molly] showed Sam a picture of herself pregnant with twins. She asked him, "Do you know who's there in my tummy?" Without hesitation he answered, "Me and Peyton."
Molly then asked Sam why the twins were not born, but Sam didn't answer. Later he told his mother
that he really couldn't tell her everything. When I asked him why not, his response surprised me: "I couldn't tell her because they would laugh at me... They would laugh at me because they know it's not allowed." ...
"What's not allowed?"
He said, "Switching tummies. I had to get permission for that." Then he got very quiet and guarded, as if someone were looking over his shoulder. I realized there was something he wasn't supposed to tell and I wasn't supposed to know....
Since the day I acknowledged Sam's memories and he accepted me as his mother, his behavior has been totally different. He's not dark and angry anymore.... He's much more relaxed and easy-going and his frequent temper tantrums have almost completely stopped. [Pages 169-179]
Hi Michael,
I’m still reading, and you’re welcome! I’m delighted, and somewhat awed, that you’ve not only read the book I recommended to you, but actually changed your mind about reincarnation. This re-confirms what I find most exciting most about your blog. Rather than a statement of position, it’s a journal of your own continuing process of discovery and change.
Several months ago, when you were discussing reincarnation at length here, you and I exchanged some arguments for and against. Frankly, with the weight of the evidence that seems to point to reincarnation, I was surprised at your refusal to admit its existence. I did appreciate, though, that you were refreshingly candid about your bias: you said you simply hated the idea that you’d have to return once again to the earth plane.
It was at that point that I suggested you read the Bowman book. Thanks for taking me up on that suggestion and for today’s entry!
Here’s a link to another case that Carol Bowman helped to develop. It’s as compelling as the accounts in Return from Heaven, maybe even more so. She considers it to be the most impressive American case on record.
http://www.ntcsites.com/acadianhouse/nss-folder/publicfolder/AP/cover_feature_24_3.htm
Posted by: Bruce Siegel | December 26, 2006 at 04:20 PM
One more suggestion, Michael. Read Lifecycles by Christopher Bache. Subtitled "Reincarnation and the Web of Life", it's one of the smartest and most elegantly argued books I know on ANY subject. Bache not only demonstrates the logic of the reincarnational scheme, he shows us just how beautiful it is.
Posted by: Bruce Siegel | December 26, 2006 at 05:32 PM
Hi Bruce,
Sorry I forgot who recommended the book. Thanks again for the suggestion!
I'll add the Bache book to my reading list, along with Bowman's earlier book. And I've saved your linked article to read offline.
Scott Rogo's book The Search for Yesterday also helped convince me about reincarnation, even though Rogo himself comes to no definite conclusions.
Thanks again!
Posted by: Michael Prescott | December 26, 2006 at 08:14 PM
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Michel,
Good Day!
Every word that you may publish about reincarnation is very important for the human being. Please, cary on.
Thank you.
Best regards,
*
Leal -66-
Taubaté-SP - Brazil
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Posted by: Eudison de Paula Leal | December 27, 2006 at 01:47 AM
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Michel,
Please, visit my blog:
http://sinapseslinks.blogspot.com
Tks,
Leal
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Posted by: Eudison de Paula Leal | December 27, 2006 at 01:50 AM
Leal,
By reading your blog you seem to be a Kardecian Spiritist. Correct? If that is the case, you may want to take a look at this website:
http://www.SpiritAndScience.org/
Michael and everyone else,
Please take a look at the references on reincarnation we have here:
http://www.spiritandscience.org/Reincarnation.htm
Happy new year and many blessings to all,
Ulysses Castillo
[email protected]
Posted by: Ulysses | December 27, 2006 at 01:00 PM
When I was a very little girl, I used to have frequent nightmares that I was tied to a pole and crowds of people were jeering me. I would wake up terrified. I was told that when I was as young as two that I would wake up screaming 'no no no'.
I have often wondered if these were memories from an incarnation as one who died at the stake.
Posted by: person | December 28, 2006 at 11:52 AM
Belief in something due to purely anecdotal evidence is a common error made by uncritical thinkers. Also, your statement that you never believed in it before because it "never appealed" to you is also very telling. Whether or not an idea appeals to you, its credulousness should rest solely on the evidence that supports it.
And anecdotes, such as the story relayed in this post, don't count as compelling evidence.
Can you imagine if our justice system worked in this manner? Relying entirely on eye witness testimony and ignoring all other evidence? Witnesses lie, they forget, they make stuff up to fill in the blanks (sometimes unknowingly--by allowing their own prejudices and biases to creep into their memories).
Anecdotes may be what sparks your interest in a subject, and indicates that perhaps further investigation, controlled studies, and experimentation are in order... but they shouldn't be what you entirely base your beliefs and convictions on. To say that reincarnation is real based entirely on anecdotal evidence is intellectually criminal.
Posted by: Rudis | January 05, 2007 at 03:52 PM
>To say that reincarnation is real based entirely on anecdotal evidence is intellectually criminal.
Bowman's cases are no more "anecdotal" than any other psychological case histories.
>Can you imagine if our justice system worked in this manner? Relying entirely on eye witness testimony and ignoring all other evidence?
Unfortunately, it's the skeptics who ignore all other evidence.
>your statement that you never believed in it before because it "never appealed" to you is also very telling.
What it tells you is that I try to be open about my biases.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | January 07, 2007 at 02:24 PM