Reincarnation as a Scientific Concept

Reincarnation as a Scientific Concept focuses on the question of whether reincarnation should be recognized as a serious subject by the contemporary scientific community.

After a historical overview of the psychical research into reincarnation memories, the authors present well-documented cases that have been studied by scholars from East and West.

The authors place themselves in the tradition of American psychiatrists Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker and their Indian predecessors, as well as colleagues such as the late Dr. Erlendur Haraldsson, Dr. Satwant Pasricha and anthropologist James Matlock.

Dr. Rawat has independently studied many children with memories of a past life in Asia, including classic cases in India such as Shanti Devi, Jagdish Chandra and Swarn Lata Mishra.

Rivas has investigated cases in the Netherlands that show the same basic pattern, even though most of them remain unsolved.

The authors address alternative psychological and parapsychological hypotheses for the findings in the field and demonstrate why reincarnation of a personal psyche offers the best explanation. Based on this assumption, they look at the possible future of parapsychological reincarnation research.

Dr. Kirti Swaroop Rawat was born in 1936 in Beawar, Rajasthan, India. He is currently residing at Goyal Nagar, Indore, Madhya Pradesh. He is married to Mrs. Vidya Rawat and has one daughter, Mrs. Bharti Khandelwal, and two sons, Dr. Bharat Rawat and Jai Rawat. Dr. Rawat holds master degrees in philosophy and sociology from Rajasthan University in Jaipur. He was awarded a Doctorate in Philosophy at the same University with a dissertation about reincarnation, and conducted his own research into cases of memories of past lives in India, Nepal, and the Netherlands. For many years, he also worked as a teacher. He has to his credit many books, articles, poems and stories. Over the years, Dr. Rawat travelled widely to give lectures and seminars in India and other countries such as the USA, England, Spain, The Netherlands, Belgium, and Nepal. He has also been interviewed by many TV and radio channels such as the Discovery Channel.

Titus Rivas, MA, MSc, was born in 1964, in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, as the son of a Dutch school teacher and a Spanish social worker. He is single, and shares his life with a dog, Moortje, and two cats, Kissa and Mitxi. He is an author, researcher, and teacher of courses about parapsychology, and philosophy. Rivas studied philosophy and psychology at the Dutch universities of Nijmegen, Utrecht and Amsterdam. He has carried out reincarnation and survival research in the Netherlands and other European countries for the former Foundation for the Scientific Study of Reincarnation, Athanasia Foundation, the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), and the Dutch and British Societies for Psychical Research. For IANDS, Rivas co-authored The Self Does Not Die, together with Anny Dirven and Rudolf H. Smit, about confirmed paranormal aspects of Near-Death Experiences. Rivas has published many books about parapsychological subjects, and also about the philosophy of mind, spirituality, animal ethics and veganism, mental healthcare, and social issues.