Reincarnation
- History Fix Podcast
- Apr 12
- 18 min read
Episode 157 Reincarnation: How Cultures Throughout History Have Believed in the Recycling of Souls
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My youngest son has always been a precocious child, speaking full sentences at a year and a half old. I’ll never forget one night, when he was probably 2 years old. I was laying him down in his crib, tucking him in at bedtime. I covered him with his blanket and laid my hand on his head, if only to feel his soft, warm baby hair. “Goodnight buddy,” I said, expecting a “night night mama” in return. What he said instead unsettles me to this day. “I used to be a grown up,” he said, suddenly very serious. “I used to be a grown up and then I died and now I’m here.” I was taken aback to say the least. At just two years old, I didn’t even realize he understood the concept of death or what it means to die. I didn’t ask too many questions, I didn’t pry, just sort of backed out of the room, perplexed, a bit shaken if I’m honest. I wrote it off. Kids say the darndest things, right? But, part of me wishes I had asked more questions that night. Who were you when you were a grown up? Where did you live? What was your name? Because, what if he actually had answers? And what if his answers could be verified? Corroborated? I know it sounds crazy to us especially in the west where reincarnation is little more than woo woo superstition. But, to most of the world, for thousands of years, reincarnation is a very real concept. Let’s fix that.
Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and this is History Fix where I tell surprising true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. I am back after a week off with a brand new free for all episode. If you missed me last week, that’s your cue to head over to Patreon where I will be releasing mini fixes in each of my off weeks throughout the summer. I am hoping to return to a weekly release schedule in the fall but for now, this is the best I can do. Anyway, patreon.com/historyfixpodcast, always linked in the description.
That was a true story in the opener, by the way. My now 5 year old really did say that back when he was 2. I asked him about it not long ago, if he remembered saying that, remembered anything about it and, of course, he did not. I waited far too long to dig deeper unfortunately. But, I haven’t stopped thinking about it. I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of reincarnation which, in Latin, means quite literally “entering the flesh again.” So this is the idea that, after someone dies, they are born again into a new body and they live a whole nother life as someone else. Now there are all sorts of different ideas about how this works depending on the culture or religion. Does everyone get reincarnated? How many times can someone be reincarnated? Do they always come back as humans or could they come back as another type of animal? A bug? A plant? It all varies.
But what I find really interesting about reincarnation is how widely believed in it is by cultures all over the place from all different time periods who believed vastly different religions. So, I found myself wanting to dig into the history of reincarnation. Where did this idea come from? How widespread is it? And of course we’ll also talk about more recent studies into these supposed cases of reincarnation, examples, and evidence and whatnot. But first, the history.
The origins of belief in reincarnation are obscure, of course. If we look to some of the ancient cultures that were the first to write things down, to record their ideas and religious beliefs - the Sumerians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians - they did not appear to believe in reincarnation. Not really anyway. I mean with Egypt, they didn’t. They believed that the soul, or ka, went on to an afterlife. It didn’t return to earth in someone else’s body. But they did sort of toy around with the idea. For example, several Egyptian pharaohs claimed to be deities reborn into human bodies. That’s a little different than reincarnation though, I suppose. These are gods being born as men, not men being born as other men. So this concept of reincarnation did not come from the ancient mesopotamian cultures, ancient Egypt and Assyria.
It seems to have emerged instead around the 6th century BC, so like 2,600 years ago, in at least 3 different places that we know of. Ancient India, Ancient Greece, and areas of western Europe where the ancient Celts lived. All three of these cultures believed in reincarnation starting at around the same time. We also see it, although we can’t say for sure when the idea emerged, but we also see it in the beliefs of Indigenous Americans and Aboriginal Australians.
When we look at India, the main religion there is Hinduism. Just under 80% of the population of India is Hindu. And reincarnation is a core belief of Hinduism. We also see reincarnation in Buddhism, because Buddhism came from, was sort of an offshoot of Hinduism. Same with Jainism. All of these eastern religions really hinge on this concept of reincarnation - that your soul returns to another body after you die and, critically, that your position in your next life, how good of a life you get, depends on how well you behave in this life. If you live a good life, if you make good choices, you are kind to people, you are kind to the Earth, you will come back in an even better position next time. Or, you may not even have to come back at all. You may move on, graduate sort of to paradise, something like heaven, Swarga, Nirvana, which is the ultimate goal. If you make poor choices, you are selfish, you are gluttonous, you treat people badly, your next life will not be great. So, in this way, same with like Christianity’s heaven and hell, it’s a way to make people behave. Right? There is a lot of fear involved in reincarnation. You better get it right this time or you’re coming back as a maggot or whatever. Today it remains a very eastern belief but, originally, it was a western thing too.
We see a belief in reincarnation emerge in ancient Greece which was really the great grandfather of the western world. There it was called metempsychosis. Evidence from this comes first from the Orphic gold tablets. So these are, there are 35 of them that have been found, they are scraps of gold foil with writing on them that have been found in ancient Greek graves. They seem to have served as sort of passports to the afterlife, instructing the dead person on how to navigate the underworld and possibly escape the wheel of birth, escape from being reborn again and just get to retire essentially and enjoy the afterlife. Because that was the ultimate goal. You didn’t want to be reborn over and over and over again into new lives. You wanted to do so well in your life that you could be done with that mess and sort of graduate and transcend this wheel of birth.
More proof that the ancient Greeks believed in reincarnation comes from the philosopher Plato who I feel like I talk about quite a lot. Plato is slowly joining the ranks of Christopher Columbus, Henry VIII, and Thomas Edison here. And, just like with those three I have a bit of a love hate relationship with this guy. Who am I kidding, Columbus is hate hate, but anyway… Plato wrote about reincarnation. According to the Institute of Noetic Sciences quote “Plato developed a cosmological theory of rebirth. He suggested that each soul needs to discover love as a mingling of pleasure and pain, fear and anger, “and other paired emotions”. This can be interpreted as realizing that emotions are just energies and can make us see the world through a distorted lens, while love is the truth. If the person managed to conquer the emotions through love and lived a “proper philosophical life”, they could return to the star from which they originated. On the contrary, if passions took over and governed their life, they would be reborn in human or animal form. The goal according to Plato’s cosmological theory was to escape from rebirth. A common theme among philosophers in this epoch was that one must live a pure life devoted to prayer and rituals to transcend the death-rebirth cycle,” end quote. Before Plato even, the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, yes of Pythagorean theorem fame, A squared plus B squared equals C squared. He didn’t actually invent it but that’s a whole nother story. Pythagoras clearly believed in reincarnation and claimed that he could remember his past lives.
Now, interestingly, because their mythology, gods and goddesses were so similar, the Romans didn’t really believe in reincarnation like the Greeks did. They were intrigued by the idea put forth by Pythagoras and Plato but it was more philosophy than it was religion. They leaned more towards, you either went to the underworld, right to Hades, or Pluto as the Romans called him. Or many Romans also believed that you just, nothing happened when you died. You just were no longer, the soul perished with the body. There was also the belief that the dead lived on through memories and ancestor worship. So the Romans were really all over the place with their afterlife beliefs. They didn’t know what to think.
In the year 313 AD though, something very significant happened in Rome, less than 100 years before it would ultimately collapse. Christianity was legalized. And in 380 it would become the official religion of Rome. After 300 years of mercilessly slaughtering Christians, they finally were like “I mean, it’s not bad, yeah, you know it might even be better than what we’ve got. I mean this stuff we’ve been spewing is pretty far fetched, no? Let’s go with their version. Let’s do Christianity.” And the rest, my friends, is history because Christianity has been the dominant world religion in the west ever since.
So do Christians believe in reincarnation. No, not really. Not officially. Neither officially do Muslims or Jews. The Abrahamic religions, those that came from Abraham and his many sons, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, do not officially believe in reincarnation. All of these believe in judgement after death and, based on how you did in life, you either go on to an afterlife in heaven or in hell. You don’t come back to Earth in another body. You live once and then you go on to one of those two places for eternity.
But Christians did sort of toy around with the idea at first, likely due to Greek influences. However, the belief in reincarnation was officially banned in the year 533 by the Fifth Ecumenical Council held by Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. He wasn’t down to be wishy washy like the Romans. He was like “We gotta decide here. Is it heaven and hell or reincarnation? It can’t be both.” And so he called this council and they quashed the whole reincarnation thing for the Christians. But not totally. Christians still kind of mess around with the idea. Some sects of Christianity believe that New Testament characters are actually reincarnations of Old Testament characters. For example, some believe John the Baptist was a reincarnation of the prophet Elijah. And some believe that Jesus was a reincarnation of Elijah’s disciple Elisha. There’s also the thought that the second coming of Jesus would be fulfilled through reincarnation. He would not come back in the same body that he had when he died at 33 years old back in whatever year that was. He would be reborn into a modern baby’s body. That’s one theory. But it is very much reincarnation, right?. The Catholic Church does not support reincarnation officially but, at the same time, certain Catholic sects have taught about reincarnations of the Virgin Mary. For example, Marie-Paule Giguère and Maria Franciska have both been claimed to be reincarnations of the Virgin Mary. So to say that Christians universally do not believe in reincarnation isn’t totally accurate.
So how did the idea get to the United States? Because the Puritans who essentially founded the country certainly didn’t believe in reincarnation. The Institute of Noetic Sciences explains quote “The German esotericist Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont wrote the first book-length work on reincarnation in English. He saw “soul evolution” as inseparable from human progress. He believed that each soul has an upper limit of 12 reincarnations over 1000 years, with sometimes long periods of rest between incarnations used to perfect the soul. The book, released in 1684, is called Two Hundred Queries Moderately Propounded Concerning the Doctrine of the Revolution of Humane Souls, and Its Conformity to the Truths of Christianity. [How bout that book title? Holy moly Franciscus!] In the book, eternal heaven or hell are depicted as irrational. The book was put together by George Keith, who was passionate about the topic. They met through a mutual acquaintance, and Keith went on to bring this view of reincarnation to America in 1690,” end quote.
But we also can’t say that this Keith guy was the first to bring the idea of reincarnation to America because the Indigenous people of the Americas already had beliefs very similar to reincarnation. The Institute for Noetic Sciences says quote “Long before the Europeans came, most native groups believed in rebirth based on indigenous theories of soul life. These are complex theories, but they all encompass a post-mortem existence, including cognitive awareness and the ability to be reborn. The concept of the soul has multiple parts, each returned to its respective domain after death (for example, the breath is believed to return to the stars). Like in the African traditions, reincarnates are given many names connected to the previous life. They are expected to live up to the accomplishments of the ancient soul. A disincarnate soul could be born into many bodies at once. People with the same name were believed to originate from the same soul. In short, there are 3 major perspectives on reincarnation among Native Americans: number one, post-mortem existence after death is similar to life here and now. Number two, individuals can choose between staying in the Village of the Dead or reincarnating. Number three, the naming process plays a central role and is believed to affect the destiny of the newborn,” end quote.
So reincarnation existed to some extent in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans. Even today, it’s more widely accepted than you might think. According to Lauren Cahn writing for Readers Digest, some 33 percent of Americans believe in reincarnation, including 29% of Christians. She goes on to claim that 10 percent of those believers report being able to recall their own past lives. So that brings us to the evidence, these witness accounts, people who can remember their past lives and what that proves or doesn’t prove about the possibility of reincarnation.
For that we need to turn to the work of psychiatrist Dr. Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia. Dr. Stevenson spent decades studying reincarnation and documented over 2,500 cases of children who claimed that they could remember their past lives. They could even recall specific details like their name, where they lived, how and when they died, which could then be corroborated and in many cases they were able to identify the exact person this kid was claiming to be. These memories, these testimonies by these children often presented themselves starting at around age 2 or 3 when the child could actually talk well enough to convey the information, but by age 6 or 7 the memories all but disappeared. They could no longer remember their past lives. And this is because around that age, 6 or 7 years old, we start to lose the memories of our early childhood. You probably don’t remember much from when you were 3 or 4 years old. Well memories of past lives apparently get dumped as well with those early childhood memories.
Now, Dr. Stevenson’s research has, of course, been highly criticized and there are a lot of skeptics. Most claim that these children are likely fabricating false memories based on their imaginations, or dreams, or stories that they’ve heard. Now, to me, that doesn’t really explain how they’re able to verify the details of these supposedly false memories, find a person by that name who died that way and whatnot. Skeptics also suggest that the children might be unknowingly recalling information they heard in books or movies and mistaking it as a past life memory which would explain, you know, if it was nonfiction book or movie, it would explain how the details could be corroborated. They also point out that the vast majority of the cases Dr. Stevenson documented came from cultures that widely believe in reincarnation, like in India. So this suggests a sort of confirmation bias going on, right? Like the parents are reinforcing the idea or even, possibly unwittingly, or even wittingly, feeding the child information that makes the past life memory seem more credible than it actually is.
So, because of the very real possibility of that, I’m really more interested in the documented cases of past life memories coming from people who don’t already believe in reincarnation. If you don’t believe in reincarnation and all of a sudden your toddler starts telling you that they used to be what’s his name and they died doing so and so and this is where they lived and this was their brother’s name or whatever and then you can go and corroborate all of that information and find out that, yes that person actually lived and those details about their life are correct. That’s far more compelling to me. So, I found a few examples like that that I want to share with you.
Both of these cases come from the research of Dr. Jim Tucker, a child psychiatrist who essentially took over for Dr. Ian Stevenson when he retired in 2002. Dr. Tucker first explains how the process works in that Reader’s Digest Article by Lauren Cahn. He says, before he even looks into a case, he asks two questions. Number one, do the parents seem credible. And number two, could the child have picked up the past life memories through TV, overheard conversations or other ordinary means. If he gets a yes and then a no to those two questions, he looks into it further. After hearing the past life memory retold by the child, Dr. Tucker and his team then try to corroborate the details. They try to find the person that this child is claiming to have been in a past life. If they can locate the person, they consider the case solved. According to Dr. Tucker in that article, close to three quarters of the cases the team has investigated are solved, which is a very high percentage, I think. I found that surprising.
One solved case Dr. Tucker researched that I find really compelling is that of Ryan from Oklahoma. One night, when Ryan was 4 years old, he woke up in the middle of the night screaming. His mother rushed into the room to see what was wrong and he just kept saying over and over “Mommy, I’m so homesick.” His mother Cyndi already knew what he was referring to because, over the past few months, Ryan had been begging her to take him to the house where he quote “lived before.” He said it was a big house in Hollywood with a pool and fast cars. He once said to her quote “I can’t live in these conditions. My last home was much better,” end quote. Which like, as a mom of 4 year old boys I’m like “oh please, give me a break.” Right? But now Ryan’s waking up at night screaming and claiming to be homesick for this other home he had in Hollywood. Cyndi is shaken up about it enough at this point that, the next morning, she goes to the library and brings home a bunch of books about old Hollywood. Ryan climbs up into her lap and they start flipping through the books together. She hopes this might calm him, that he might enjoy seeing pictures of the sort of things he keeps describing. When they got to one particular book, Ryan became very excited. It was clearly resonating with him. Finally, they came to a page with a photograph showing a scene from a 1932 movie called Night After Night. Ryan slammed his hand down on the page, stopping Cyndi from turning to the next one. “Mama!” he yelled. “That guy’s me! The old me!” he was pointing to a man in the picture from that movie.
Cyndi didn’t know what to think. She didn’t believe in reincarnation. But, the next day, she went back to the library and checked out a book about it, about children who remembered their past lives. At the end of that book was a note from the author, Dr. Jim Tucker, saying that he wanted to hear from parents of children who claimed to remember past lives. So Cyndi wrote him a letter and the official investigation into Ryan’s claims of old Hollywood glamor began. The goal, if you remember, is to solve these cases, that is to identify the actual person that these children are claiming to have once been. In Ryan’s case, there was a solid place to start, the man in the photograph of that 1932 movie scene. This man was not credited in the film. There was no mention of his name anywhere. So an archivist pored over books in an old film library until she found a man who resembled the one in the photo. His name was Marty Martyn and he had been a Hollywood agent. Turns out, Marty Martyn had made an unbilled cameo in that movie, Night After Night. So they found the guy from the photo but, like, there has to more proof than that right? So Dr. Tucker set up a meeting with Cyndi and Ryan and Marty Martyn’s daughter who was still alive. At this meeting, Ryan was able to tell them specific details about Martyn’s life, from his work history to the location and contents of his home and his daughter confirmed that more than 50 of those details were indeed correct. So, because they found the man Ryan was claiming to have been in a past life and because they were able to corroborate so many of the details he shared, details a 4 year old in Oklahoma who had never met Marty Martyn or anyone related to Marty Martyn couldn’t possibly have known. Ryan’s case is considered solved.
The other case I want to share with you is that of James Leininger (Lie-ning-er) from Louisiana. When James was 2 years old, he woke up one night screaming “airplane crash! Plane on fire! Little man can’t get out!” His parents, Bruce and Andrea, were concerned but, you know, they didn’t believe in reincarnation so that’s not where their minds immediately jumped. But James seemed to know an awful lot about World War II, specifically, World War II pilots and aircraft. For example, when his mother referred to an object on the bottom of a toy plane as a bomb, he corrected her. It was actually a drop tank. He was correct. Once when he was watching a History Channel documentary with his parents, the narrator called a Japanese plane a Zero. James corrected the narrator. It was actually a Tony. He was correct again. James remembered more details of his past life. He said that his name was James then too and that he’d flown off a ship called Natoma. This was enough of a detail to start doing some investigating, so Bruce and Andrea started researching WWII aircraft carriers. Sure enough, they found one called USS Natoma Bay. And one of the pilots onboard was a James Hutson who had been killed in action when his plane went down over the Pacific.
Now, I have to point out, I find it very interesting that James Leininger and James Hutson had the same name - James. Because that really harkens back to Indigenous American reincarnation beliefs that the names were important. “People with the same name were believed to originate from the same soul.” And the same can be said of African beliefs as well. The names were important. To name a baby after an ancestor was to possibly link their souls.
There are many critics and skeptics of the Leininger’s claims of course. Christopher C. French is one of them. French is a professor of psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, who heads a unit that studies claims of paranormal experiences. He says in that Readers Digest article quote “[Reincarnation is] an intriguing psychological phenomenon… But I think it is far more likely that such apparent memories are, in fact, false memories rather than accurate memories of events that were experienced in a past life,” end quote. When it comes to James Leininger he points out quote “Although his parents insisted they never watched World War II documentaries or talked about military history, we do know that at 18 months of age, James was taken to a flight museum, where he was fascinated by the World War II planes. In all probability, the additional details were unintentionally implanted by his parents and by a counselor who was a firm believer in reincarnation,” end quote.
But Dr. Tucker refutes that. He says he has documentation for many of James’ claims from before his parents even knew about James Hutson or the Natoma. And James’ father Bruce says in that article quote “I was the original skeptic… But the information James gave us was so striking and unusual. If someone wants to look at the facts and challenge them, they’re welcome to examine everything we have… You try telling a 2-year-old what to believe; you’re not going to be able to give them a script,” end quote. There are those that argue, you know Bruce and Andrea Leininger wrote a book about James’ past life memories called Soul Survivor. So people argue that they had motive to sort help plant those false memories, right to sell books.
And there are so many more cases, examples of reincarnation. As I said, many of them come from cultures that already believe in reincarnation, like places that practice Hinduism and those are, you know I have to agree with the skeptics that those are a bit less credible just because of the reinforcing environment in which they bloomed but when it comes to stories like Ryan's or James’, both of their parents were skeptics. They did not have a preconceived belief in reincarnation. So, those are a bit more compelling to me.
You know, if these past life memories really are false, I’m a bit perplexed by all of the corroborated details. Those are some pretty wild coincidences. But I see where the critics are coming from too. Human psychology is so complex. We know false memories are a very real thing, we know false confessions can be coerced surprisingly easily with just the littlest bit of suggestion, especially when it comes to young children, even accidentally by the adult. So even with all of these, you know, 2,500 cases, 75% of them closed cases, it’s not like we’ve proven that reincarnation is real. It’s not really something we can prove. Because it’s always going to be based solely on the word of a 2, 3, 4 year old and that’s not very good evidence.
I think what belief in reincarnation does, though, is give people hope. It gives people hope that there is some sort of life after death. That it doesn’t just all end. That your deceased loved ones could even possibly return, in the body of another. That you could interact with them. That you could encounter them again, maybe in this life, maybe in the next one. That your souls could, potentially meet back up somewhere and at some time. That’s a pretty wild thought, the interconnectedness of spirits that are essentially recycled. You know when you meet someone for the first time, someone you’ve never met before and yet, it feels like you’ve known them your whole life? Well maybe you have, except it wasn’t this life. Rob Tomlin concludes in that Medium article quote “Perhaps the greatest mystery of reincarnation is not whether it exists, but what it could mean for the journey of the human soul. If we have lived before — and will live again — then every moment, every action, and every relationship carries infinite meaning in the grand cycle of existence.”
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