Stevenson thought that the idea of reincarnation might help modern medicine better understand aspects of human behavior and development. He traveled a lot over a period of 40 years to investigate 3,000 childhood cases that suggested to him the possibility of past lives.
Stevenson saw reincarnation as the survival of the personality after death, although he never suggested a physical process by which a personality might survive death.
Stevenson's research was the subject of Jim B. Tucker's "Life Before Life" (2005).
Stevenson found that the best evidence supporting the belief in reincarnation comes from the cases of young children who, typically between the ages of 2 and 5, make statements about a previous life they claim to have had before being born. Their statements are often accompanied by behaviour that is unusual for their family but appropriate for the life that the child claims to remember. There is often a "forgetting of the imaged memories between the ages of 5 and 8; a high incidence of violent death claimed in the claimed previous life; and mention of the mode of death by the subject".
Some 35 per cent of the subjects have birthmarks or birth defects which often correspond to injuries or illness experienced by the deceased person who the subject remembers. Medical documents have confirmed this correspondence in more than forty cases.
Ian Stevenson authored or co-authored more than a dozen books. Stevenson died in 2007, and many of these books are mentioned in his obituaries in the "British Medical Journal", "New York Times", and the "Washington Post".
Jhelum
Jhelum (Urdu and ) is a city on the right bank of the Jhelum River, in the district of the same name in the north of Punjab province, Pakistan. Jhelum is known for providing a large number of soldiers to the British and later to the Pakistan armed forces due to which it is also known as city of soldiers or land of martyrs.
This area is sometimes called North Panjab, Upper Panjab, Greater Pothohar/Extended Pothwar (or occasionally North Panjnadi region), and nowdays more specifically and correctly known as Panjistan Region and when it is combined with Mirpuri, Poonchi (in Kashmir) and (Southern) Hindko localities (mostly Hazara) is also known as "Panjistani belt".
The Panjistani language (as originally certified by Mohammad Afzal UK 1987 and some others) was formerly called North Panjabi, Upper Panjabi, Pothwari, Mirpuri, Western Pahari, Northern Lahnda, etc. In Jhelum it is spoken with the local accent or dialect known as Jhelumi.
These political parties namely the Panjistan Freedom Party (PFP) Panjistan National Party (PNP) Panjistan Communist Party (PCP) Panjistan Republican Party (PRP) Panjistan Democratic Front (PDF) Panjistan Popular Front (PPF) Panjistan Socialist Party (PSP) Panjistan Unionist party (PUP) Panjistan National Unity Party (PNUP) Panjistan Democratic party (PDP) Panjistan workers party (PWP) Panjistan Social Democratic Party (PSDP) and these major socio-cultural groupings called Panjistani language movement (PLM) Panjistani language board (PLB) Panjistani Literary Forum (PLF) Panjistani language Society (PLS) and Just4Panjistani Commission (J4P) want the creation of North Panjab or Panjistan province and recently formed the Charter of Panjistan council (or CPC).
Parapsychology
Parapsychology is the study of psychic events. These phenomona involve the exchange of information between a person and their environment, without the use of the five senses. They include extrasensory perception (such as telepathy), influence of mind on matter (psychokinesis), anomalous experiences (such as past life experiences and near death experiences) and apparitions. Such things have been reported for a very long time.
In 2005, Nobel Laureate Brian Josephson said that many scientists are not yet swayed by the evidence for parapsychology and the paranormal. Josephson contends that some scientists feel uncomfortable about ideas such as telepathy and that their emotions sometimes get in the way when making evaluations.
Created by psychologist Michael Shermer. It states that the brain makes sense of the world by seeing patterns. Because of this the mind is constantly looking for new patterns to better understand the world. However, sometimes the mind finds patterns where none exist. This is called Paternicity or pareidolia. It is the tendency to find patterns, even when they aren’t really there. When this happens people often view the world through these false patterns.
Heuristics are ways of thinking that conserve mental effort that allow quick decisions about a large amount of information. One problem with heuristics is that they are often wrong.
Anchoring and Adjustment is a type of heuristic in which a person makes an educated guess about a question. Then, when that person learns new information they adjust their answer around their original guess. Psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman first discovered this type of heuristic. In one of their first studies on Anchoring and Adjustment they gave divided participants into two groups, gave them one of two problems and asked them to guess the answer.
These two problems were:
1 is the anchor in the first problem and 2 is the anchor in the second problem. The average guess of the group given the first problem (with 1 as the anchor) is much lower than the group given the second problem (with 2 as the anchor). The average guess of the first group was 512 and the average guess of the second group was 2,250. Even though these answers were very different both were very far from the true answer, which was 40,320.
The Availability Heuristic is used when a person answers a question based on how easily instances of an event come to mind. An example would be living in a neighborhood with a high crime rate and overestimating the amount of robberies that take place in the United States every year.
Handedness
Handedness is the preference for using either the left or the right side of the body for certain things. People are described as left-handed or right-handed when they prefer to write with their left or their right hand. They may prefer the use of certain hands for certain tasks.
Most people are right-handed. Many prefer to use their right eye, right foot and right ear if forced to make a choice between the two). The reasons for this are not fully understood.
Ambidexterity is when a person has approximately equal skill with both hands and/or both sides of the body. True ambidexterity is very rare. In some sports work is done to even up the influence of the non-dominant side. Soccer is a good example.
Handedness is caused by the lateralisation of brain function. Lateralisation is not only found in humans: it is found in many kinds of animals.
Handedness seems to follow from the brain hemisphere division of labor. In most people the left side of the brain controls speaking, and the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain controls the right side of the body. In 90-92% of all humans, the left hemisphere is the language hemisphere. Therefore right-handedness predominates. This theory predicts that left-handed people have a reversed brain division of labor.
Many societies have tried to force right-handedness onto left-handed children ("forced laterality"). The general experience is that such attempts are not entirely successful, and cause distress. Writing is a case in point. A right-handed script moves towards the right, and the righthanded writer's hand reveals what has just been written, which is good feedback. When a left-handed person writes a right-handed script, their hand obscures (hides) what has just been written. That interferes with the natural visual feedback to the writer. So the way our alphabet is written, moving to the right, is better for right-handed writers.