CHAPTER-5

Destiny Unfolded;            

Destiny- Reincarnation, karma and past lives.

A discussion of the laws of karma and rebirth and the need for right relationship in order for humans to move their lives forward in the cycle of evolution.

I suppose in the world today, there are really three approaches to the idea of reincarnation. A two-fold one in the west, where the idea itself is almost non-existent, either a belief in the transmigration of souls- that you could be a human being in one life and an animal in the next, and therefore, that there is great danger in swiping flies and treading on ants because it could be your grandmother-or simply an interest in past lives. That is almost the interest in the concept of rebirth in the west.
In the east, broadly speaking, people do believe in reincarnation and, correctly, in relation to the law of karma. Unfortunately, even in the east, the law of karma is seen from an erroneous point of view. Of course, here and there, both in east and west, there is a correct interpretation and approach to the idea of rebirth, and its close connection with the law of action and reaction, cause and effect. In the orient, most people believing in the law of karma accept that they are who and where they are because of their actions in a previous life, which is true; but, unfortunately, they think they can do nothing about changing their particular situation, which is not true. In the west, people tend to think that we are totally in control of their destiny, which we are to some extent, but that there is no greater law governing our destiny, which is not true. The westerners tends to reject the idea of a future life. It is an idea which is only just beginning to engage people’s minds. If one thinks about it at all, he really thinks about it in terms of; if I have a past it is interesting to know who I was. The popular literature in the west about reincarnation is almost exclusively about previous existences.
There are now many techniques, authentic or otherwise, advertised and used to take people back into an experience of their past lives; hypnosis, re birthing, and so on. Of course, there is also much serious research on the subject going on in several countries. The work of processor Ian Stevenson and others is adding much evidence pointing to the likelihood of the fact of reincarnation. Is it of value to know our past lives? After a certain point yes, before that point, not only is it not of major value, it can actually be dangerous. There is a little-known law that when we become truly aware of our past life we enter into the karma of that time. Most of us have a heavy enough load of karma to deal with in this life without an unnecessary load from some previous one, which happily we are not yet called upon to resolve. And it is irresponsible for so-called clairvoyants to tell people about their past lives; even if they are correct. Particularly if they are correct ! If they are wrong, people will still create thought forms around that incorrect image of themselves. That makes for glamour, illusion. If they are right, the people involved become subject to the karma for which they may not yet be prepared. There are occasions, in certain illnesses of a mental nature, which cannot be handled in any other way, in which it may be useful to go back to a previous life. These are relatively few, and the way is through hypnosis. The whole subject is fraught with danger and complexity. When our past lives enter spontaneously into our consciousness, they will do so under law. The more important thing is to know that every moment we are making karma , we are creating our next life right now. Needless to say, you will always find clairvoyants, channels and sensitive’s who are only too happy, for a price, to look into your past and to tell you about your previous lives. But how do you know if they are right or wrong? In what possible way can you verify what they may tell you? It is better for you to keep your money safe. If you are told that in a previous life you were important and powerful (it is usually some king, queen, priestess), a priestess in Egypt, say, how can you prove this? And are you, today, at least the equivalent in importance, influence and power in the world, contributing something original and creative to life?
Memories are not infallible;
It is also the easiest thing in the world to be mistaken in our own memories. Let me illustrate with an instance from my own experience which rose in my consciousness during a profound meditation lasting about five hours. I saw myself (it did not look like me now, but I recognized myself nevertheless) as a minister of religion during religious persecutions somewhere in Europe around the 1650. My Church looked on to a square. I stood on the steps outside the Church listening to the shrieks and cries of pain and terror. I knew what it meant: the Protestants were being set upon by the soldiery and put to the sword. From a road at one corner of the square the people came running, screaming, chased by the soldiers. Diagonally across the square and into the Church they ran, seeking sanctuary. I stood in the Church entrance, a very tall, broad figure in a long black cassock, urging the terrified people into the Church. The soldiers came up the steps, stabbing and laying about them with their swords. I was not at all afraid, but held my arms out sideways to block their passage. I said, “This is my holy place.” To my surprise, they were not the least impressed, and one ran me through with his sword. I can see it vividly now; this tall, broadly built man and the sword through his chest. I fell and can still clearly feel the sensation of the hard, cold stone on my cheek as I lay dying on the steps of my Church. For years I believed I had remembered in total clarity, like a film, my last minutes of a previous life, and it was not until about ten years ago that I learned from my master that the experience was real, had happened, but no to me. It was nothing to do with me; I had never lived near that town or been the minister in the black cassock. It was a clairvoyant experience of the death of someone closely related to me on the soul plane. So how do you know what you are picking up? How can you be sure?
Fatalism is not the correct approach.
Fatalistic eastern people have a different point of view, they are not so worried about who they were in their past life. They believe that if they are poor, hungry, miserable, indebted to the landlord, with hardly enough to feed their family, they were someone really terrible in the past life. They believe it is the law of karma because they were so bad, nastily horrible, such low-grade human beings in their past life, they deserve the misery they are in now. They believe that; it is the teaching, and they believe, because it is the law of karma, that there is nothing they can do about it. They accept it totally, fatalistically, as their due according to the law, and they also believe that if they accept their lot meekly and try to be good they will be rewarded with a life of higher status next time around. If there is anything which has kept the orient down, in terms of its living standards, its social happiness, social democracy and equality, it is the acceptance of the law of karma on that basis. There is nothing to prevent the untouchables of India from transforming their lives except the acceptance that their un touch-ability is due to their misdeeds in former lives. So, some kind of balance has to be reached, both from the eastern and the western viewpoints, in the approach to these two great laws; the law of karma, law of cause and effect, and the law of rebirth, its corollary.

The Law of cause and effect and karma.

This is the basic law governing our existence in this solar system and is the outcome of the action of the energy of the alter ego of our solar system, the constellation Sirius. Just as our personalities are acting out, more or less well, the intentions of ourselves as souls, so this solar system acts under the intentions of Sirius as its Soul. To put it more succinctly, the relationship between Sirius and this solar system is the same as the relationship between our soul and its reflection, the personality. Every thought, every action that we have and make, sets into motion, a cause. These causes have their effects. These effects make our lives, for good or ill. We are now, have been, and will go on, making our lives from moment to moment sooner or later , the causes set into motion by our thoughts and actions will produce effects which will rebound on us; and we will experience that as good karma or bad karma. When it is uncomfortable we call it bad karma. And it is good karma, when life is comfortable, easy. We take it as our right, our due, because that is what we expect life to be like. People really only talk about karma when they mean bad karma. It is important to realize and remember that we have more good karma than bad karma.
Lords of karma.
Like all laws, the law of karma is under the control, the jurisdiction, of certain entities—in this case, the lords of karma. The lords of karma are like cosmic judges. They look at this action and reaction or causes and effects which we set in motion, and they regulate this according to our needs as evolving souls. It is always the soul which incarnates, in every entity, human or sub-human, our souls incarnate in a personality with a given structure of energies, rays, which relate to the karma and the possibilities of that particular incarnation. The souls cooperate with the lords of karma to decide what pain or pleasure we will suffer in particular life. That, of course is precisely the wrong way to describe what happens. The soul is not at all interested, nor are the lords of karma, in our pleasure or our suffering. These are simply psychological reactions to events. What they are interested in, is the working out of the law, the cosmic law of cause and effect. Also, the soul has its own purposes for every given incarnation. It provides itself with a vehicle, the personality, with mental, emotional and physical bodies which will provide the possibility for its intentions being achieved in that particular life. That purpose might not be achieved, but the soul provides the possibility. The soul lives ever in hope !
The ultimate aim is to live life in such a way that we make no personal karma. We can do that either by being perfect or being dead. Since being perfect is much more interesting than being dead, most people accept the premise of trying, more or less, to achieve the soul’s purpose and staying to the last possible moment to do so. Thus, we work with this burden which we have ourselves created in the present and in past lives. We try, consciously or unconsciously, to become perfect. We have no control over the events of life. The only thing we can control is our reaction to these events. So the aim is to achieve such a measure of detachment from events that we can control ourselves. In this way we cope with the burden of karma in any given incarnation. This is not a case of sitting in a catatonic stupor, so that we do nothing and therefore create no karma.What we can do, in every event, in every situation, is distance ourselves from that event—looking at the event as out there, and us here, and not react. In this way we gradually create impersonation in relation to life, a detachment in relation to events, where we become indifferent to whether our karma is good or bad. Correctly seen, evolutionary life is a gradual renunciation of the lower for the sake of the higher. As a soul in incarnation, a high level of divinity has incarnated at a lower level of divinity, and the journey to perfection, the evolutionary goal, is the gradual renunciation of these lower levels, by embodying, at these lower levels, the higher; becoming more and more what one essentially is as a soul.
The soul makes its journey into incarnation over eons of time, and then back, out of the need to incarnate at all. The path of return for the soul is the gradual release of itself from the limitations of the physical, astral and mental planes. This is done by infusing its vehicles—physical, emotional and mental—with its energies and qualities. Two things are going on at the same time in this process. One is the gradual spiritualization of the vehicle by the soul. The other is the burdening of the vehicle, intentionally, by the soul, to burn up ancient karma.As the soul progresses in its in car-national experience, so its reflection, the man or woman in incarnation, receives a heavier and heavier burden of karma. Until, in the last incarnation of all, in which the person will be a fourth –degree initiate, the burden is at its heaviest. It is for this reason that the fourth initiation is called, in the west, the crucifixion and, in the east, the great renunciation. In that experience everything, all the lower aspects, are being renounced in favor of the higher spiritual reality. That is why the life of the fourth-degree initiate is usually, from the world’s point of view, painful, heavy indeed.
People imagine that, as a man or woman progresses in evolution, they should become freer and freer of karma. The opposite is true. Not only that, but as a man or woman becomes a disciple, becomes initiate, a world-server, they take more and more of the weight of world karma. They are the upholders of the world. Their shoulders are, and need to be, broad. Imagine a bridge over a river, and the river is the world and its karma, and the disciples and initiates are the pillars of the bridge, and the spaces in between are the masses of people. Where there are spaces, the water flows easily through. It is the pillars of the bridge that take the force of the flood, of the water. In a very real sense, the disciples and initiates of the world support the world. That is one reason why the life of a disciple is, from the average mans point of view, a very difficult life to lead. But, of course, he is governed by the great law of service. Under this law, disciples and initiates come very frequently into incarnation to serve world-need and to finish off this earth experience as quickly as possible—not to get it over with, but to serve the better. The more advanced a person is, the more he can serve, the more useful he can be to the world.
When a certain level is reached—that of the third-degree initiate, the relationship to the law of cause and effect changes. Gradually the law is manipulated by the person himself. As a conscious divine soul, working in the world, he becomes really the pilot of his own plane. He may have a co pilot,his master, but he is the pilot. It is not an automatic thing, but gradually this point is achieved. He takes an active part in his own evolution, consciously working with the law of karma under the control of his soul. Then it may come to pass, that his previous lives will open up before his inner eye. As this happens, also the karma of that time becomes open to him on the physical plane, which, of course, increases the burden of the initiate.The aim is that by the time the person is ready to take the fifth initiation and become a master; all karma will have been resolved, burned up, taken back to the source from which it came.
Service: the best method for resolving karma;
How do you get rid of karma; how do you deal with it ? Well, you cannot give it away. It is too heavy, nobody wants it. There is no sale for excess karma; everyone has enough of their own. So what do you do, how can you cope with this burden that limits your activity, your joy and happiness? There is a very simple method. It is called service. Service is the way par excellence for getting rid of karma. Of course it does not get rid of it, but it burns it up.
The process is something like this; as you serve you draw to yourself energy, by giving out energy, you get energy back; that is the law. Basically, it is the law of love, which governs our nature, without which the universe would not exist. It is of course, in another sense, the law of cause and effect itself. As you give love, you set in motion a cause, the effect of which is the return of love. So the law itself sets in motion its own fulfillment. As we serve, we demonstrate love. As we demonstrate love, by law, we get love. That strengthens and potentiates the individual in a way in which he can deal with his own karma. As the person progresses in love, in service, he is automatically distancing himself from the effect of events. The events take place, but they have less and less effect on his psychology. In the east they say: well, it’s my karma. In France they say: well, c’est la vie. Gradually, we have to develop an attitude of cést la vie, if it is good, easy; cést la vie. If it is hard, if it is painful, makes us unhappy: cést la vie. We really have to live with that attitude.
Right relationship ends the karmic cycle;
The law of karma is a great binding law, but it is benign. Nobody receives more karma than their soul, and the lords of karma, know they can usefully handle. Some lives for some people are very hard, very painful, very limited indeed, from the point of view of the soul. This is probably intentional and useful, productive. Because the soul knows that, by the burning in this way of a burden of karma from the past, greater progress can be made. What holds us back, what limits us, is our karma. The efforts made in dealing with the karma pave the way for periods of growth. Our development proceeds thus in cycles. The law of karma is not a mechanical law of punishment. If you hit somebody on the head, it is not inevitable that you will be hit on the head. It is not a question of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It is simply the energetic outcome of previous causes set in motion by ourselves. All that we do will inevitably come back in some way or other. However, we can do something about it. The untouchables of India can change their lives. They are not bound by karma to be untouchables. That is a social structure, a class system, which binds people to particular stations in life. It is totally artificial and man-made. The poverty, the squalor, the degradation and the misery of people in the third world is not necessary; it is not a result of karma, but of our greed. And we have the major responsibility to help them change these conditions and enter true living.
People think of karma as always from the past life, but what about yesterday’s karma, or the day before, last weeks last month’s karma? It is this succession of moments of action and reaction which today we are coping with, which tomorrow and in our next life other and with the whole of which we are a part, we will go on making bad karma. It is more important, more useful, to realize the benefit of right relationship, thus handling the laws of karma and rebirth correctly, them to know our past lives.
The Evidence for Reincarnation:
Scientifically documented true stories that prove past lives are real.
Reincarnation proof is surprisingly easy to come by due to the mountains of evidence that exist: thousands of documented and well-researched cases worldwide have been collected by researches over the last century. There is evidence that at least some, and possibly all, people have previously existed in another body and lived another existence. When anomalous memories appear as personal recollections, those who experience them tend to believe that they stem from their own previous life. However, the memories that surface in consciousness are not likely to be past-life. Instead, they appear to be experiences of the reincarnation-type. The latter are widespread as well. Stories suggestive of reincarnation are not limited, whether geographically or culturally.  They occur in all corners of the planet and among people of all cultures. There is of course more to reincarnation than memories. For reincarnation to have actually taken place the consciousness of the foreign personality must have entered the body of the experiencing subject. In esoteric literature this is known as the transmigration of the spirit or soul. It is said to occur in the womb, perhaps already at conception or shortly afterward, when the rhythmic pulses begin that develop into the heart of the embryo. The spirit or soul of an individual does not necessarily migrate to another individual. Buddhist teachings, for example, tell us that the soul or spirit does not always reincarnate on the earthly plane and in a human form. It may not reincarnate at all, evolving to a spiritual domain from where it either does not return or returns only to fulfill a task it was to accomplish in its preceding incarnation. But what concerns us here is the possibility that reincarnation could truly occur. Can the consciousness that was the consciousness of a living person reappear in the consciousness of another? In his book the Power Within, British psychiatrist Alexander Cannon wrote that the evidence on this score is too strong to be dismissed.For years the theory of reincarnation was a nightmare to me and I did my best to disprove it and even argued with my trance subjects to the effect that they were talking nonsense. Yet as the years went by one subject after another told me the same story in spite of different and varied conscious beliefs. Now well over a thousand cases have been so investigated and I have to admit that there is such a thing as reincarnation.
Variations and variables in reincarnation-type experiences;
Perhaps the main variable is the age of the person who has a reincarnation-type experience. Those who do are mostly children between the ages of two and six. After the age of eight the experiences tend to fade and, with few exceptions, vanish entirely in adolescence. The manner in which the reincarnated personality has died is yet another variable. Those who suffered a violent death seem to be more frequently reincarnated than those who died in a natural way.Reincarnation stories tend to be clear and distinct in children, whereas in adults they are mostly indistinct, appearing as vague hunches and impressions. The more widespread among them are the déjà vu; recognizing a site or a happening one sees for the first time as familiar. The sensation of déjà connu, encountering a person for the first time with a sense of having known him or her before, also occurs, but less frequently.
Whether reincarnation stories convey verifiable information, evidence and proof about places, people and events has been tested in reference to eyewitness testimonies and birth and residence certificates. The experience often turns out to be corroborated by witnesses as well as by documents. Sometimes even minute details correspond to real events, persons, and sites.Vivid reincarnation stories are accompanied by corresponding patterns of behavior. Behavior suggestive of the reincarnated personality appears even when that personality was of a different generation and a different gender. A young child could manifest the values and behaviors of an elderly person of the opposite sex from the past life. The pioneering research on recent reincarnation stories is the work of Ian Stevenson, a Canadian-American psychiatrist who worked at the University of  Virginia School of Medicine. During more than four decades, Stevenson investigated the reincarnation-type experiences of thousands of children, both in the west and in the east. Some of the past life memories recounted by the children have been verified as the experience of a person who had lived previously, and whose death matched the impressions reported by the child. Sometimes the child carried a birthmark associated with the death of the person with whom he or she identified, such as an indentation or discoloration on the part of the body where a fatal bullet entered, or a malformation on a hand or the foot the deceased had lost.In a path-breaking essay published in 1958, “The evidence for survival from claimed memories of former incarnations’’, Stevenson analyzed the evidence from reincarnation stories of children and presented narratives on seven of the cases. These past life cases turned out to be verifiable, with the incidents recounted by the children recorded in often obscure local journals and articles.
Reincarnation story-1; The case of Ma Tin Aung  Myo;
In case reported by Stevenson involved a Burmese girl called Ma Tin Aung Myo. She claimed to be the reincarnation of a Japanese soldier killed during the second  world war. The case spans huge cultural differences between the person reporting the experiences and the individual whose experiences she reports.
In 1942 Burma was under Japanese occupation. The allies regularly bombed the Japanese supply lines, particularly the railways. The village of Na-thul was no exception, being the important railway station at Puang. Regular attacks made life very hard for the villagers, who were trying their best for survival. Indeed, survival meant getting along with the Japanese occupiers. for villager daw Aye tin (who was later to be the mother of Ma tin Aung Myo) this meant discussing the relative merits of Burmese and Japanese food with the stocky, regularly bare-chested Japans army cook who was stationed in the village. The war ended, and life returned to a semblance of normality. In early 1953 Daw found herself pregnant with her fourth child, the pregnancy was normal, with the odd exception of a reoccurring dream in which the Japanese cook, with whom she had long lost contact, would follow her and announce that he was coming to stay with her family. On December 26, 1953, Daw gave birth to a daughter and called her Ma tin Aung Myo, the baby was perfect with one small exception: a thumb-sized birthmark on her groin.
As the child grew up it was noted that she had a great fear of aircraft. When one flew overhead she would become agitated and cry. Her father, U Aye Maung, was intrigued by this, as the war had been over many years and air crafts were now simply machines of transport rather than weapons of war. It was therefore strange that Ma was afraid that the aircraft would shoot at her. The child became more and more morose. Stating that she wanted to go home, later home became more specific; she wanted to return to Japan. When asked why this was the case, she stated that she had memories of being a Japanese soldier based in Na-thul. She knew that she had been killed by machine-gun fire from an aircraft, and this is why she feared airplanes so much.
As Ma tin Aung Myo grew older she accessed more past life memories of the life of her previous personality. She was later to tell Stevenson that she remembered that the previous personality came from northern Japan and that he had five children, the eldest being a boy, and that he had been an army cook. From then on the past life memories became more precise. She remembered that she (as the Japanese soldier) was near a pile of firewood next to an acacia tree. She described wearing short paints and no shirt. An allied aircraft spotted him and strafed the area around him. He ran for cover: as he did so, he was hit by a bullet in the groin, which killed him instantly. She described the plane as having two tails. This was later identified as substantial reincarnation evidence, being a Lockheed P-38 lightning, an aircraft used by the allies in the Burma campaign. In her teens Ma tin Aung Myo showed distinct masculine traits. She cropped her hair short and refused to wear female clothing.
Between 1975 Ma tin Aung Myo was interviewed three times about her reincarnation memories by Ian Stevenson. She explained that she wanted to be married to a woman and had a steady girlfriend. She said that she did not like the hot climate of Burma nor its spicy food. She much preferred highly sweetened curry dishes. When she was younger she loved to eat semi-raw fish, only losing this preference when a fish bone stuck in her throat.
Reincarnation story- 2; Paddy Fields Tragedy;
Stevenson described how a Sri Lankan girl remembered a past life in which she had drowned in a flooded paddy field. She described that a bus had driven past and splashed her with water just before she died. Subsequent research, searching for the proof of this reincarnation found that a girl in a nearby village had drowned after she had stepped back to avoid a passing bus while walking on a narrow road above flooded paddy fields. She fell backward into deep water and died. The girl who manifested this experience had from a very early age, shown an irrational fear of buses: she would also get hysterical if taken near deep water. She had a fondness for bread and had a liking for sweet food. This was unusual, in that her family did not like either. However, the previous personality was noted for both of these preferences.
Reincarnation story-3; The case of Swarnlata Mishra;
Another typical Stevenson case was that of Swarnlata Mishra, born in a small village in Madhya Pradesh in 1948. When she was three years old she began having spontaneous past-life memories of being a girl called Biya Pathak, who lived in a village more than a hundred miles away. She described that the house Biya lived in had four rooms and was painted white. She began to sing songs that she claimed she used to know, together with complex dance routines that were unknown to her present family and friends. Six years later she recognized some people who had been her friends in the past life. This stimulated her father to start writing down what she said and searching for proof of her reincarnation.
Her case generated interest outside of the village. One investigator who visited the city discovered that a woman who matched the description given by Swarnlata had died nine years previously. Investigations subsequently confirmed that a young girl called Biya had lived in just such a house in that town.
Swarnlata’s father decided to take his daughter to the town and to have her introduced to members of Biya’s family. As a test to see if she indeed was a reincarnated personality, the family introduced people who were not related to the child. Swarnlata immediately identified these individuals as being impostors. Indeed some details of her past life memories were so precise that all were amazed.
Reincarnation story- 4; Patrick Christenson and his brother;
One case offering substantial reincarnation proof was that of Patrick Christenson, who was born by cesarean section in Michigan in March 1991. His elder brother, Kevin, had died of cancer twelve years earlier at the age of two. Early evidence of Kevin’s cancer was detected six months prior to his death when he began to walk and had a noticeable limp. One day he fell and broke his leg. Tests were done, and after a biopsy on a small nodule in his scalp, just above his right ear, it was discovered that little Kevin had metastatic cancer. Soon tumors were found growing in other locations in his body. One such growth caused his eye to protrude and eventually resulted in blindness in that eye. Kevin was given chemotherapy, which resulted in scars on the right-hand side of his neck. He eventually died of his illness, three weeks after his second birthday. At birth Patrick had a slanting birthmark with the appearance of a small cut on the right side of his neck, exactly the same location as Kevin’s chemotherapy scar, showing startling evidence of reincarnation. He also had a nodule on his scalp just above his right ear and a clouding of his left eye, which was diagnosed as a corneal glaucoma. When he began to walk it was with a distinct limp, again, offering further proof of reincarnation.
When he was almost four and a half he said to his mother that he wanted to go back to his old orange and brown house. This was the exact coloring of the house in which the family had lived in 1979 when Kevin was alive. He then asked if she remembered him having surgery. She replied that she could not because this had never happened to him. Patrick then pointed to a place just above his right ear. He added that he didn’t remember the actual operation because he was asleep, which was consistent with details of Kevin’s past life.
Reincarnation story- 5; Ancestral Memories of Sam Taylor;
Another case offering substantial proof of reincarnation involved an eighteen-month-old boy called Taylor. As his diaper was being changed he looked up at his father and said, “When I was your age I used to change your diapers, later Sam disclosed details about his grandfather’s life that were completely accurate. He said that his grandfather’s sister had been murdered and that his grandmother had made milkshakes for his grandfather using a food processor. Sam’s parents were adamant that none of these subjects had been discussed in his presence. When he was four years old, Sam was shown a group of old family pictures spread out on a table. Sam happily identified his grandfather every time with the announcement, “that’s me! In an attempt to test him, his mother selected an old school class photograph showing the grandfather as a young boy. There were sixteen other boys in the photograph. Sam immediately pointed to one of them, once again announcing that that was him. He was right.
What the evidence tells us;
Reincarnation-type experiences can be vivid and convincing to the extent that they appear to be testimony and evidence that a previously living personality has been incarnated in the subject. This belief is strengthened by the observation that birthmarks on the body of the subject correspond to the bodily features of the person whom he or she seems to incarnate. This is most strikingly the case when the past life personality suffered bodily injury. The corresponding marks or deformations sometimes reappear in the subject, seeming to offer proof that reincarnation is indeed occurring. Many observers of this phenomenon, including Stevenson himself, held that matching birthmarks are significant evidence for reincarnation. However, the coincidence of birthmarks and other bodily features in a child with the fate of a previously existing person is not necessarily an assurance that, that person is reincarnated in the child. It could also be that the brain and body of the child with the given birthmarks and bodily features are especially adapted to recall the experience of a personality with analogous birthmarks and deformities.