One of the most remarkable outcomes of the researches of Dr. Ian Stevenson is the confirmation that certain congenital birthmarks of a child match the features or the mode of death of the previous life. Thus a child who remembered that she was run over by a train where her right leg was amputated, was born with congenital absence of the lower part of her leg.
There were so many cases of these that Stevenson wrote a separate book on this topic alone entitled Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect, with detailed discussion of cases including photographs. A summary of his findings was published the Journal of Scientific Exploration and can be read online. Click here to read the full article.
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A congenital absence of lower part of leg of a girl in Burma who remembered that she was run over by a train in the previous life and her right lower leg was amputated. |
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A boy in India remembered that he accidentally inserted his fingers into the fodder-chopping machine in a previous life. He was born with an unusual absence of his fingers. |
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A Turkish boy who remembered having been shot by a shotgun at close range on his right ear was born with an absence of the right ear. |
Book and Journal Articles on Birthmarks:
Stevenson, Ian. Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect.Praeger, 1997.
Keil HHJ, Tucker JB. “An unusual birthmark case thought to be linked to a person who had previously died.”Psychological Reports 87:1067-1074, 2000.
Pasricha, Satwant (1998). Cases of the Reincarnation Type in Northern India With Birthmarks and Birth Defects. Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 259-293.
Roth, Christopher F. (1998). Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects.Anthropology of Consciousness 9 (2‐3):64-68.
Stevenson, Ian (1989). A Case of Severe Birth Defects Possibly Due to Cursing. Journal of Scientific Exploration, ol. 3, No. 2, pp. 201-212.
Stevenson, Ian (1992). “Birthmarks and Birth Defects Corresponding to Wounds on Deceased Persons”, paper presented at the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration, Princeton University, June 11–13. Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 403-410.
Tucker JB & Keil HHJ. “Experimental birthmarks: New cases of an Asian practice.” Journal of Scientifi c Exploration, Vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 269–282, 2013
![Shanti Devi was born in Delhi, India.[1] As a little girl in the 1930s, she began to claim to remember details of a past life. 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 145 km from her home in Delhi. She also shared three unique features about her husband – he was fair, wore glasses, and had a big wart on his left cheek. She also stated her husband's shop was located right in front of the Dwarkadhish temple in Mathura.[2] Discouraged by her parents, she ran away from home at age six, trying to reach Mathura. Back home, she stated in school that she was married and had died ten days after having given birth to a child. Interviewed by her teacher and headmaster, she used words from the Mathura dialect and divulged the name of her merchant husband, "Kedar Nath". The headmaster located a merchant by that name in Mathura who had lost his wife, Lugdi Devi, nine years earlier, ten days after having given birth to a son. Kedar Nath traveled to Delhi, pretending to be his own brother, but Shanti Devi immediately recognized him and Lugdi Devi's son. As she knew several details of Kedar Nath's life with his wife, he was soon convinced that Shanti Devi was indeed the reincarnation of Lugdi Devi.[3] The case was brought to the attention of Mahatma Gandhi who set up a commission to investigate. The commission traveled with Shanti Devi to Mathura, arriving on 15 November 1935. There she recognized several family members, including the grandfather of Lugdi Devi. She found out that Kedar Nath had neglected to keep a number of promises he had made to Lugdi Devi on her deathbed. She then traveled home with her parents. The commission's report, published in 1936, concluded that Shanti Devi was indeed the reincarnation of Lugdi Devi.[3] Two further reports were written at the time. The report by Bal Chand Nahata was published as a Hindi booklet by the name Punarjanma Ki Paryalochana. 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".[4] This argument was disputed by Indra Sen, a devotee of Sri Aurobindo, in an article later.[5] A further report, based on interviews conducted in 1936, was published in 1952.[6] Shanti Devi did not marry. 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. Rawat. In this interview she also related her near death experiences when Lugdi Devi died.[1] K.S. Rawat continued his investigations in 1987, and the last interview took place only four days before her death on 27 December 1987.[7] A Swedish author who had visited her twice published a book about the case in 1994; the English translation appeared in 1998.[8]](http://reincarnation.theosophical.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/shantidevi3.jpg "Shanti Devi")
