Pursuing reincarnation research professionally
Let me start by defining “academic reincarnation research” – because we’ve seen a certain amount of confusion about what that means. Here are four examples of practices claimed to produce reliable information about reincarnation which, however reliable it is, cannot legitimately call themselves science:
- Comparing pictures of current and historical celebrities and declaring that they are the same people in different lives because they have similar interests. This is speculation.
- Gathering information from religious texts about reincarnation and declaring it to be fact. That is belief.
- Meditating, having an NDE, dreaming or otherwise entering an altered state of consciousness, and receiving insights that inspire you, and declaring them to be truth. This is unverified personal gnosis.
- Logical speculation: this can be useful but cannot be called research as research involves either seeking out or analyzing cases – dealing with real data, in other words. Insofar as it is speculative and uses pure logic rather than data to make its arguments, it is philosophy.
Because it is currently very difficult to get a steady job doing reincarnation research – usually we are paid in research grants – reincarnation researchers generally have another income source that is reliable, often in an academic field whose body of knowledge and techniques lends itself to reincarnation research. Often it is psychology or psychiatry (Ian Stevenson, Jim Tucker, Erlendur Haraldsson), sometimes anthropology (Antonia Mills, James G. Matlock), but can be other fields such as linguistics (Ohkado Masayuki) or even journalism, which isn’t an academic field per se (KM Wehrstein). They then do their reincarnation research on the side.
In short, reincarnation research as of this writing is grossly underfunded, considering the importance of the questions it addresses: the nature of consciousness, the mind/body relationship and, most important, what happens after death.
This was the overriding reason for the creation of ICRR. Our plan is to access funding from sources that have never before been tapped to create a significant financial injection into the field.
But we are still in the building and seeking stage–we’ll let everyone know the moment we have funds to allocate!–so as of this writing, funding is still a challenge for reincarnation researchers.
If all this hasn’t scared you off… you may be sufficiently interested in reincarnation to proceed!
Suggested steps:
- If you are still in the educational phase of your life, seek courses, degrees and dissertation topics in areas of interest into which reincarnation can somehow be integrated. Example: James G. (Jim) Matlock wrote his anthropological masters thesis on the relationship between reincarnation beliefs and social customs in animistic tribal cultures worldwide.
- Familiarize yourself with the existing body of literature. Read all the Ian Stevenson works you can get your hands on. Read those of other researchers. Best overview is still Jim Matlock’s Signs of Reincarnation, so read that. Take courses. We are developing basic and intermediate courses; an advanced course that is available is Jim Matlock’s “Signs of Reincarnation” (general course info here, syllabus here). It is at the masters level, thorough, wide-ranging, demanding, geared in part to train aspiring reincarnation researchers, and reasonably-priced. And because it’s a discussion course with weekly Zooms, you’ll make new friends who share your passion.
- Consider what skills and other assets you might already have that you can to bring to the endeavour. Are you a good listener? That makes you a good interviewer. Are you good at chasing down information? That makes you good at verifying memories. Are you good at stats? That enables you to do statistical analyses. Are you an outside-the-box thinker? That makes you able to initiate new lines of inquiry within the topic. Is your background in a science? That makes you conversant with scientific method and trained to be rigorous in methodology. Are you affiliated with a university? There are various advantages in that. Do you live in a reincarnationist culture? It’ll likely be relatively easy for you to find cases.
- Keep in touch with ICRR! Being a member gives you access to our more advanced resources and provides opportunities for mentoring and support in the field as well as the publicizing of your work. We are a home for researchers!
– KM Wehrstein
Cover Image: Dr. Ian Stevenson in front of the Division of Perceptual Studies which he founded in 1967. © University of Virginia.