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Question: Is there any proof for reincarnation?

Answer: Before we can understand the proof for reincarnation, we need to understand how reincarnation takes place. The Bhagavad-gita explains that our current existence is three-dimensional: physical (related with the gross material body that we can see and touch), mental (related with the subtle material body centered on the mind) and spiritual (related with the soul). At the time of death, the soul, along with the subtle body, goes to the next gross body, leaving this gross body behind. As the same subtle body carries on to the next life, aspects related to the subtle body - skills, fears, memories - are carried on from this life to the next.

Whether these aspects - skills, fears, memories - will be remembered in the next life or not will depend on, among other factors, the extent of impressions that have been created in the mind by the activities related to them. Here are examples of phenomenon that persuasively point to reincarnation:

1. Precocious children who have abilities far greater than their age are a medical mystery. How does a child of five solve complex calculus problems that graduate level students struggle with? Because he has cultivated maths skills in his previous life.

2. Many people with mental problems - especially phobias - that are incurable by normal psychotherapy have been cured by Dr Brian Weiss of the Sinai Medical Research Center, USA. He traces, through hypnotically-induced past life regression, that these phobias originate in a traumatic previous-life death caused by the very object toward which one has phobia in this life. For example, he found that several patients having hydrophobia had died due to drowning in a previous life. When the patients realize that the traumatic event is already over, then their phobia disappears or at least decreases dramatically. Those who don't consider reincarnation real

have no explanation for the real healing that has taken place.

3. Numerous cases of past-life memories are documented by rigorous resarchers like Dr Ian Stevenson in his books, especially Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect. The quality of his research was acknowledged in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association, which stated that he had "painstakingly and unemotionally collected a detailed series of cases in which the evidence for reincarnation is difficult to understand on any other grounds..He has placed on record a

large amount of data that cannot be ignored."

No wonder prominent author Collin Watson, "The sheer volume of evidence for survival after death is so immense, that to ignore it is like standing at the foot of Mt. Everest and insisting that you cannot see the mountain."

The author is associate-editor for ISKCON's global magazine, Back to Godhead