Reincarnation Story

The following case study is taken from Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children’s Memories of Previous Lives by Jim Tucker. These cases are an impressive overview of stories from all over the world, and provide insight into and proof of the existence of past lives.

Sujith Jayaratne: Reincarnation

Sujith Jayaratne, a boy from a suburb of the Sri Lanka capital Colombo, began showing an intense fear of trucks and even the word lorry, a British word for truck that has become part of the Sinhalese language, when he was only eight months old. When he became old enough to talk, he said that he had lived in Gorakana, a village seven miles away, and that he had died after being hit by a truck.

Sujith had also told his mother and grandmother a number of other things about the previous life that no one wrote down until after the previous personality had been identified.

He made numerous statements about that life. His great-uncle, a monk at a nearby temple, heard some of them and mentioned Sujith to a younger monk at the temple. The story interested this monk, so he talked with Sujith, who was a little more than two-and-a-half years old at the time, about his memories, and then wrote up notes of the conversations before he attempted to verify any of the statements. His notes document that Sujith said that he was from Gorakana and lived in the section of Gorakawatte, that his father was named Jamis and had a bad right eye, that he had attended the kabal iskole, which means “dilapidated school,” and had a teacher named Francis there, and that he gave money to a woman named Kusuma, who prepared string hoppers, a type of food, for him. He implied that he gave money to the Kale Pansala, or Forest Temple, and said two monks were there, one of whom was named Amitha. He said that his house was whitewashed, that its lavatory was beside a fence, and that he bathed in cool water.

Sujith had also told his mother and grandmother a number of other things about the previous life that no one wrote down until after the previous personality had been identified. He said his name was Sammy, and he sometimes called himself “Gorakana Sammy.” Kusuma, the woman he had mentioned to the monk, was his younger sister’s daughter, and she lived in Gorakana and had long, thick hair. He said that his wife’s name was Maggie and their daughter’s was Nandanie. He had worked for the railways and had once climbed Adam’s Peak, a high mountain in central Sri Lanka. He had transported arrack, a liquor that was illegally traded, in a boat that had once capsized, causing him to lose his entire shipment of arrack. He said that on the day he died, he and Maggie had quarreled. She left the house, and he then went out to the store. While he was crossing the road, a truck ran over him, and he died.

The young monk went to Gorakana to look for a family who had a deceased member whose life matched Sujith’s statements. After some effort, he discovered that a fifty-year-old man named Sammy Fernando, or “Gorakana Sammy” as he was sometimes called, had died after being hit by a truck six months before Sujith was born. All of Sujith’s statements proved to be correct for Sammy Fernando, with the only exception being when he said that he had died immediately when the truck hit him. Sammy Fernando died one to two hours after being admitted to a hospital following the accident.

Once Sammy Fernando was identified as the previous personality, Sujith was able to recognize several people from Sammy’s life and to comment on changes that had been made in the Fernando property. He made many of the recognitions when no witnesses outside of the two families were present, but the monk heard him give the name of Sammy Fernando’s nephew.

Dr. Stevenson interviewed witnesses a year after Sammy Fernando had first been identified as the previous personality. He interviewed thirty-five people as part of his investigation of the case, including Sujith, who was still talking about the previous life at an age of three-and-a-half. Dr. Stevenson discovered that though Sujith’s and Sammy’s families had not known each other before the case developed, two people in Sujith’s neighborhood had connections to Sammy Fernando. Sujith’s family knew one of them, a former drinking buddy of Sammy, slightly, and the other one, Sammy’s younger sister, not at all. The family had no idea of whom Sujith was talking until the monk went to Gorakana. In fact, neither Sujith’s mother nor the monk had heard of Gorakana before the case developed, as it was a fairly small village some distance away from the Colombo area.

Sujith displayed other behaviors along with the phobia of trucks that were consistent with Sammy Fernando’s life. He would pretend to drink arrack and then would act drunk. He also attempted to get arrack from neighbors, including one who obliged him until his grandmother intervened. In addition, he tried to smoke cigarettes. No one in his family drank arrack or smoked cigarettes, but Sammy Fernando consumed plenty of both. Sujith also asked for spicy foods Sammy Fernando frequently enjoyed, ones his family, who only ate them occasionally, would not normally have considered giving to a small child. In addition, he had a tendency as a toddler to be physically aggressive and to use obscenities, two habits that Sammy Fernando demonstrated when he was intoxicated. By the time Sujith was six years old, he had stopped talking about Sammy Fernando’s life and displayed less of the unusual behaviors that he had shown earlier. He still continued to ask for arrack if he saw others drinking it.

Share your Comments