Names and Signs: Reincarnation, Inheritance and Social Structure on the Northwest Coast

Matlock, James G.

doi:10.1525/ac.1990.1.3-4.9

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Cases are far less common in southern India (Pasricha, 2001). Same-family cases among native peoples of northwest British Columbia may exceed this rate (Matlock, 1990a;Matlock & Mills, 1994;Mills, 1988aMills, , 1988bMills, , 1994a).…”

Section: Spontaneous Past-life Experience Casesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Past-life experiences.

Mills¹,

Tucker²

2014

Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence (2nd Ed.).

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Ajendra Singh Chauhan (Mills, 2004), a boy in northern India, repeatedly described memories of a past life when he was between 36 and 60 months old. His case was first identified by G. S. Gaur, who recorded Ajendra's statements as described by his father in 1992, when Ajendra was 13 years old. According to his father, when Ajendra was about 3 years old, he was offered a glass of milk at his aunt's home and remarked, "I used to have a mare. Two water buffaloes used to give milk. I used to drink a bucket of milk." Ajendra continued, "One time a pundit [Brahmin] widow of fair complexion tried to mix poison in the food. Then I beat her a lot. . . . Daddy, don't go in the garden in the dark. Dacoits [gangsters] live there." Then, one hot summer night when Ajendra was lying on his father's chest on the roof of their dwelling, Ajendra said, "Papa, the dacoit came. He started shooting from the wall, and I got hit." Ajendra mimed how he had crouched behind his father and shot at the dacoits.

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Section: Spontaneous Past-life Experience Casesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Past-life experiences.

Mills¹,

Tucker²

2014

Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence (2nd Ed.).

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, even in societies that do believe in reincarnation, spontaneous cases are not very common. A study in northern India of the incidence of such cases indicated that only 1 in 500 individuals had reported a spontaneous PLE (Barker & Pasricha, 1979); however, cases among the Native peoples of northwest British Columbia may exceed this rate (Matlock, 1990a;Matlock & Mills, 1994;Mills, 1988aMills, , 198810, 1994a.…”

Section: Frequency Of Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

Past-life experiences.

Mills

Lynn²

Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence.

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The case of Ajendra Singh Chauhan of northern India illuminates some of the fascinating and puzzling aspects of reported past-life experiences (PLEs). This previously unpublished case is rare insofar as a written record and a tape recording of the child's statements were obtained before the case was "solved." Solving a case is defined as matching an individual's PLEs with those that occurred in the life of a person who lived previously.In this case, the previous personality's family was unknown to Ajendra's family. Note that previous personality is the term used in this chapter for the person the experient claims, or is claimed by someone else, to have been in a previous life. The term is useful insofar as it is neutral with respect to whether the claim is accurate or not.The case of Ajendra was first identified by G. S. Gaur, who recorded Ajendra's statements, as described by his father in 1992, when Ajendra was 13 years old. Ajendra made the statements between the ages of 36 and 60 months. In 1992, Gaur traveled the 75 kilometers to the town the experient claimed to have been from and found a corresponding previous personality. A few months later, the first author investigated the case with Gaur and took Ajendra and his family, for the first time, to the previous personality's village. It was evident that the families did not recognize each other initially and had not met before.

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Establishing Personal Identity in Reincarnation: Minds and Bodies Reconsidered

White

2015

J Cogn Cult

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Little is known about how the minds and bodies of reincarnated agents are represented. In three studies, participants decided which individual, out of multiple contenders, was most likely to be the reincarnation of a deceased person, based upon a single matching feature between the deceased and each of the candidates. While most participants endorsed reincarnation as entailing a new body, they reasoned that candidates with a similar physical mark (e.g., a mole) or a similar episodic autobiographical memory to the deceased, when alive, were more likely than candidates with other physical or psychological based similarities to be the reincarnation of the deceased. As predicted, by increasing the distinctiveness of a matching physical mark and an episodic autobiographical memory, while holding others constant, likelihood judgments for the candidate with the similar distinctive physical mark were significantly higher than candidates with non-distinctive physical marks, but differences between the distinct and general episodic autobiographical memory condition did not reach statistical significance. These findings support the claim that we intuitively represent reincarnated agents as psychologically determined but physically embodied, and that different assumptions underpin the use of physical and psychological features to establish identity in reincarnation contexts.

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Names and Signs: Reincarnation, Inheritance and Social Structure on the Northwest Coast

Cited by 3 publications

References 11 publications

Past-life experiences.

Past-life experiences.

Past-life experiences.

Establishing Personal Identity in Reincarnation: Minds and Bodies Reconsidered

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