(3) Wonderfully Wild

Visiting Charlottesville was a pleasure. A really nice place!
And the campus of the University of Virginia was an old
"familiar" for me, in that my father had studied there and later
took me for occasional visits. This was the university that
Thomas Jefferson founded, and it was still very focused on
its history. It took some time, but eventually I found where
the building was that housed the University of Virginia Health
System.

Inside, I made additional inquiries as to where I might find
the Division of Perceptual Studies. Pointed out, I walked into
their office and again introduced myself, asked if any of the
researchers might be willing to spend some time with me.
Again, my reputation as a Jungian analyst held me in good
stead. A couple of these fellows came forth--and we had
a fine session. Again, no scientific proof when it came to
reincarnation. However, they were trying to get theirs arms
around it.

For example, they were famous for interviewing children from
all around the world--at least those children at a young age,
usually from ages two-to-five who claimed that they had been
others persons during another time. In India, for example, kids
who inferred that they had a past life sometimes could be taken
to a nearby village. And having never been there, they could
point out familiar people and features that actually were present.
As for American children, at first they were hard to discover;
but, eventually, more and more "past life" cases were showing-
up in this group. Overall the Division had compiled lots of cases
concerning children and reincarnation, having been engaged
in this research since 1961.

The interviewers mostly noticed that the children's past life
memories seemed ordinary, unless there was some trauma
connected with their death in a given past life. Also, usually
by the time they were seven, children who talked of these past
lives started to forget them. The memories began to fade away.

Again, I left with a large bibliographic handout of scientifically
oriented studies about reincarnation. I knew that I was going to
spend a lot of money securing all these books, but I was glad
to do it. Somehow I had a feeling that all this effort on my part,
about reincarnation, was going to play into my life in some sort
of special way.