James G. (Jim) Matlock, Ph.D.
> Jürgen Keil - The Principal Reincarnation
Researchers
Jürgen Keil, Ph.D.
Herbert Hans Jürgen Keil was
born in Freiburg, Germany, on May 30, 1930. As a young man he emigrated
to Australia, settling on the island of Tasmania. He attended the
University of Tasmania at Hobart and earned his B.A. degree in 1957,
followed by a Dip. Ed. in 1959 and B.A. hons. in 1960. He was a Teaching
Fellow in the university’s Department of Psychology for the
1960-1961 academic year and later a Lecturer in Psychology before
earning his Ph.D. in Psychology from the same institution. He has
now retired from teaching but retains the status of Emeritus Professor.
Keil supported himself during his undergraduate studies working part-time
as a fitter and turner in the university’s machine shop. One
of his tasks was to create some parts of a microbalance to be used
in a professor’s experiments on psychokinesis (PK). To Keil’s
astonishment, the experiments showed that some persons were able to
influence the apparatus through mental intention alone. He became
interested in parapsychology and wrote to J. B. Rhine at Duke University
in Durham, North Carolina. This led to his spending nine months at
Rhine’s Parapsychology Laboratory in 1961-1962, after which
he returned to teaching at the University of Tasmania. He remained
actively engaged in parapsychology, however, contributing to several
studies of what is called macro-PK (large-scale, observable PK) to
distinguish it from micro-PK effects, which can only be measured statistically.
Some of this work was with parapsychologist J. G. Pratt, a collection
of whose writings he later edited and published as Gaither
Pratt, a Life for Parapsychology.
Pratt spent the latter part of his career with Ian
Stevenson at the University of Virginia and this brought Keil
into contact with Stevenson. Keil was not initially interested in
Stevenson’s reincarnation research, but when Stevenson announced
that he would provide funding for three investigators to study children
who claimed to remember previous lives in an effort to “replicate”
his findings, Keil signed on. In 1988 he went to Burma (Myanmar),
Thailand and Turkey to study 23 new cases. He reported this work in
a solo publication (Keil, 1991) and in a joint report with the other
two investigators, Antonia
Mills and Erlendur
Haraldsson (Mills, Haraldsson & Keil, 1994).
Keil has continued his studies of children with past-life memories
since his introduction to them, concentrating on the same three countries.
He and Stevenson compared features of cases they had independently
investigated and showed them to be very similar (Keil & Stevenson,
1999), requiring some sort of “paranormal” explanation
(Stevenson & Keil, 2000). Among their independently investigated
cases were some of Burmese children who asserted that they had been
Japanese soldiers who died in Burma during the Second World War (Stevenson
& Keil, 2005). Keil also worked with Jim B. Tucker, M.D. in Thailand
and Burma and reported another series of papers with him, including
a case with a change of sex between the previous person and the subject
(Tucker & Keil, 2001) and a study of “experimental birthmarks”
(marks placed on the body of the deceased with the express purpose
of tracking that person’s spirit into its next life) (Tucker
& Keil, 2013). In another paper, Keil drew attention to “silent”
cases, those which are very similar to cases with past-life memory
claims but which consist only of “announcing dreams” (dreams
in which a figure appears and announces its intention to be reborn
to a particular woman) or physical signs such as birthmarks (Keil,
1996).
From the beginning of his work with children with apparent past-life
memories, Keil recognized that they presented a real phenomenon and
agreed with Stevenson’s conclusion that “normal”
explanations were not adequate for them. But unlike the other principal
reincarnation researchers, he is not confident that reincarnation
is the best possible answer. Keil believes that birthmarks can be
explained as maternal impressions (a mother’s influence on her
baby’s body in utero) and that rather than remembering previous
lives, the child subjects of these cases are somehow reaching out
and absorbing psychic “thought bundles” left by deceased
persons (Keil, 2010b).
Keil's publications on reincarnation are listed below.
Sources
Berger, A. S., & Berger, J. (1991). The
Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon
House.
Keil, J. (1987). Gaither
Pratt, a Life for Parapsychology. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland,
1987.
Pleasants, H. (Ed.) (1964).
Biographical Dictionary of Parapsychology. New York: Helix
Press.
Publications on Reincarnation
Keil, [H. H.] J. (1991). New cases in Burma, Thailand,
and Turkey: A limited field study replication of some aspects of Ian
Stevenson's research. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 5, 27-59.
Keil, [H. H.] J. (1996). Cases of the reincarnation
type: An evaluation of some indirect evidence with examples of “silent”
cases. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 10, 467-485.
Keil, [H. H.] J. (2010a). A case of the reincarnation
type in Turkey suggesting strong paranormal information involvements.
Journal of Scientific Exploration, 24, 71–77.
Keil, [H. H.] J. (2010b). Questions of the reincarnation
type. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 24, 79-99.
Keil, [H. H.] J., & Stevenson, I. (1999). Do cases
of the reincarnation type show similar features over many years? A study
of Turkish cases a generation apart. Journal of Scientific Exploration
13(2), 189-198.
Keil, [H. H.] J., & Tucker, J. B. (2000). An unusual
birthmark case linked to a person who had previously died. Psychological
Reports, 87, 1067-1074.
Keil, H. H. J., & Tucker, J. B. (2005). Children
who claim to remember previous lives: Cases with written records made
before the previous personality was identified. Journal of Scientific
Exploration, 19, 91–101.
Keil, H. H. J., & Tucker, J. B. (2010). Response
to “How to improve the study and documentation of cases of the
reincarnation type? A reappraisal of the case of Kemal Atasoy.”
Journal of Scientific Exploration, 24, 295–298.
Mills, A., Haraldsson, E., & Keil, H. H. J. (1994).
Replication studies of cases suggestive of reincarnation by three independent
investigators. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,
88, 207-219.
Pasricha, S. K., Keil, [H. H.] J., Tucker, J. B., &
Stevenson, I. (2005). Some bodily malformations attributed to previous
lives. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 19, 359-383.
Stevenson, I., & Keil, [H. H.] J. (2000). The stability
of assessments of paranormal connections in reincarnation cases. Journal
of Scientific Exploration, 14, 365-382.
Stevenson, I., & Keil, [H. H.] J. (2005). Children
of Myanmar who behave like Japanese soldiers: A possible third element
in personality. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 19, 172-183.
Tucker, J. B., & Keil, H. H. J. (2001). Can cultural
beliefs cause a gender identity disorder? Journal of Psychology and
Human Sexuality, 13, 21-30.
Tucker, J. B., & Keil, H. H. J. (2013). Experimental
birthmarks: New cases of an Asian practice. Journal of Scientific Exploration,
27, 269–282.
Fonte: http://jamesgmatlock.net/resources/researchers/keil/
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