Psychology Today | 22.07.2026 19:21
Back in the 1990s, I sat with His Holiness the Dalai Lama; this meeting was highlighted by my studies on reincarnation in the parapsychology program at Duke University's Rhine Research Institute. I had learned that a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, Ian Stevenson, spent more than 40 years investigating more than 2,500 cases of children who remembered their past lives, including details like their previous names and the causes of their deaths; in 11 cases, the children had birthmarks that supposedly resembled the fatal wounds of the person they claimed to have been. I found Stevenson's work fascinating. This is in addition to Sogyal Rinpoche’s explanation in “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying” of why most people don’t consciously remember their past lives and belief in the transmigration of souls through sundry lifetimes.
