Thoughts about Thought Bundles: A Commentary on Jürgen Keil’s Paper “Questions of the Reincarnation Type”, and Reply to the Nahm and Hassler Commentary on Jürgen Keil’s Paper “Questions of the Reincarnation Type”

Abstract

Last year, this Journal (JSE 24(1), Spring 2010) contained a Commentary in which Jürgen Keil proposed an explanatory model for cases of the reincarnation type (CORTs), suggesting that most and perhaps all CORTs can better be fitted into a framework of psi without the reincarnation or survival hypothesis. We present several features that should be considered in more detail before the pretension to explain all CORTs with the hypothesis outlined by Keil can be regarded as justified. Among others, such features include possible modes of how memories of a previous life might be selected and dramatized into ostensible personal memories of children, departure dreams, CORTs announced via mediumistic communications, cases of the possession type, ostensible memories of intermission periods between the two lives in question, CORTs which involve twins, maternal impressions, crisis apparitions, and the argument of cumulative force. Furthermore, we add comments on possible relations of CORTs with the Lamarckian theory of evolution.