Extra Credit: Surviving Death

Extra Credit: Surviving Death - Reincarnation

Extra Credit

The film that I watch was Surviving Death by Leslie Kean, particularly the first season's last episode. This episode encompassed the two significant cases that I chose to focus on—Ryan Hammons’ case, which has the most amount of verified information, and James Leininger. The episode explores through the parents and the primary psychiatrist who dealt with his case. It showcased old videos of the moments where Ryan picks out the images from the recognition tests. It also showed Martyn’s daughter, who also told her perspective on Ryan's facts.
This portion of the episode solidified my understanding of Ryan’s and gave a perspective on how this affected him later as an older adult.

James Leininger was also showcased, and it showed the differences between the two cases and their ability for recognition. James, even as an adult, can go back to the final times of his past personality. This episode compasses the two major cases that my paper also looks into. Reading articles and books gives information, but a visual aspect is really compelling to me because it makes everything more “real.” The one main takeaway that I think is important comes from what Jim Tucker says, which states, “While memories can fade, it no way diminishes a child’s original experience” (Tucker). The adult experiences of these particular children are not really touched upon within the numerous articles and books that I have read. Surviving Death does an excellent job of reporting these individual’s cases and the life they have now after the fade of their memories. The way they describe the cases in this visual adaptation is similar to how I choose to bring my frame, synchronicity, into these cases. Overall, Surviving Death episode six is a great resource for finding out the current situations of adults who once had past life experiences and the variations between cases.

Comments

Topics for Consideration

For this assignment, I had some difficulty deciding on the main topic that I would want to tackle. At first, I was considering looking into the Mandela Effect. I found this idea fascinating in terms of how a group of individuals can form a collective memory that somehow, in some cases, years later find out was misheard or misread. However, looking into the matter, I realized that some of the Mandela Effect’s examples were already things that I have always thought to be correct. In searching for another exciting topic, I came across the frequently asked question of what life is beyond death. As a child, like most other kids, there was this idea exposed to us of heaven and hell or this fantasy land that long-awaited us after death. However, having a Hindu upbringing, there is a major tenet towards reincarnation. For this project, I feel it would be interesting to explore the different ways that life after death is carried through different cultures, religions, and even how it is present...

Scouting the Territory

My topic has not changed since the first blog post. I have not redefined it, but I know that I would like to also focus on the cases of children who remember their past lives. So while I explore the afterlife, I want to incorporate and add on the reincarnation aspect seen with these cases. Looking on Google, keywords like “afterlife,” “reincarnation,” and “children with past lives” opens up a realm of possibilities for exploring routes for the paper. The word “afterlife” showcased a variety of shows and documentaries from Time and Netflix. Using “reincarnation” brought me to links that we’re defining what the term meant, but interestingly, it also showed results of ways in which it’s real and the signs that prove it. On Wikipedia, most of the information was based on the different types of ways religions saw the afterlife and dove into the issue's psychological and philosophical sides. The arguments presented were just trying to find ways to prove what the afterlife is like and had...

Research Questions and Scholarly Sources

Shifting away from the afterlife and into past lives, there needed to be a little bit of adjustment; however, I believe I included the research questions I’d like to explore. Many children are able to vividly remember and provide descriptions of what they preserve as their “past life.” How accurate are these cases, and do these cases pose any benefits for children? Are children just highly imaginative, and does a child’s highly developmental mind play a role in their experiences? Could there be any overlap between these children? Sources: Haraldsson, Erlendur. “Children Who Speak of Past-Life Experiences: Is There a Psychological Explanation?” Psychology & Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, vol. 76, no. 1, Mar. 2003, p. 55. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1348/14760830260569256. Kean, Leslie. Surviving Death: a Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife. Three Rivers Press, an Imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a Division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2018. Pasricha,...

The UneXplained: Past Lives

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