Signs of Reincarnation

James G. Matlock, Ph.D., is a research fellow with the Parapsychology Foundation in New York. He has worked at the American Society for Psychical Research in New York and the Rhine Research Center in Durham, North Carolina. Matlock has published widely on reincarnation and related issues and is co-author, with Erlendur Haraldsson, of I Saw a Light and Came Here: Children’s Experiences of Reincarnation. He has contributed articles on reincarnation to the online Psi Encyclopedia. Since 2013, he has taught a courses on reincarnation research and theory through the Alvarado Zingrone Institute for Research and Education.He holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

This is an aptly titled book. Matlock is a research fellow at the Parapsychology Foundation of New York, and his thesis is that reincarnation actually occurs and is not just a fantasy. In the introduction the author writes that "because beliefs about reincarnation provide the backdrop against which the evidence appears, [he] gives some attention to beliefs but ... focuses on the interaction between belief and experience rather than on beliefs as strictly intellectual data.” He goes on to define reincarnation and address its challenge to materialism; summarize signs, beliefs, and customs in animistic cultures; and provide a brief history of belief in rebirth and karma (the effect one’s beliefs and actions have on future lives). In the remaining chapters he discusses his research methods and studies principal signs of reincarnation, secondary signs, and recollections of past lives. The final chapter describes the process of reincarnation. Matlock’s thesis is impossible to prove, but so are other views of the afterlife, for example biblical views of heaven and hell. Recommended. All readers.

• Foreword: A Tale of Two Theories, by Jeffrey MishlovePrefaceChapter 1: Introduction to the Study of Reincarnation Signs What is Reincarnation? Challenge to Materialism Chapter 2: The Belief in Reincarnation Signs, Beliefs, and Customs in Animistic Cultures A Brief History of the Belief in Rebirth, West and East Karma, God, and the Individual in Rebirth TheoryChapter 3: Research Methods and Interpretative Frames Accounts of Past-Life Memory Recorded Before 1960 Ian Stevenson’s Field Research and Its Critics Interpretive Frames for Reincarnation CasesChapter 4: Child Studies: The Principal Signs of Reincarnation Involuntary Memory of Previous Lives Behavioral Identification with the Previous Person Birthmarks and Other Physical SignsChapter 5: Child Studies: Secondary Signs of Reincarnation Signs of Discarnate Agency Universal, Near-Universal, and Culture-Linked Patterns The Psychological Impacts of Past-Life MemoryChapter 6: Past-Life Recall in Adulthood and Third-Party Reports Developmental Factors in Past-Life Memory Retrieval Fantasy and Fact in Past Life Regression under Hypnosis The Contributions of Shamans, Psychics, and MediumsChapter 7: The Process of Reincarnation Beyond Materialism Personal Identity and Postmortem Survival Reincarnation and LifeAfterword: Implications of Reincarnation Cases for Biology, by Michael NahmReferencesGlossary of Specialized and Technical TermsIndex