On and on they went, case after case, and when I looked at the clock, two hours had gone past. There was even a quote from the Dalai Lama, ‘There are incidents where people, in childhood, recollect and recognize past life experiences and environments. Furthermore a considerable number of scientists are taking a keen interest in this field.’ In another article, a scientist noted that ‘one area that deserves more study is when young children report details of a previous life which, upon checking, turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known any other way other than reincarnation.’ The article said the memories could begin as early as three years old and fade between five and seven years.

I didn’t know what to believe. My initial reaction had been they were all kids with overactive imaginations, but it appeared the evidence was there in some cases to say otherwise. I liked to think of myself as an open-minded but sensible person, but what I’d read had confounded me. Could there be anything in it? I wondered. Or maybe these children had a gift for tapping into a collective memory, including the memories of people who were deceased? Yes, that could be it. Carl Jung spoke about a collective unconscious tapped into by beings of the same species. Maybe it worked like iCloud; some sensitive souls could tune into that and remember other people’s lives in the process. Why not? Whatever the explanation, I wasn’t so sure of my position any more. Saranya Ji’s words played and replayed in my mind: ‘Allow for ideas that are ridiculous and preposterous.’ The case histories that I’d found were certainly that; it was hard to know what to think any more. No one really knows anything for sure, I thought.

I gazed out of the window at the bare branches on the tree outside and it struck me that there was so much evidence of rebirth in nature. In winter, there was no sign of the buds or leaves that would appear in spring, the colour that would follow, as pale green foliage became bright in summer then a last burst of glory in the autumn only to disappear without a trace as branches became bare once more. So much of nature is cyclical. Maybe it was all there in its ever-changing glory, trying to tell us something. Birth, life, death; birth, life, death.

Oh no, I thought as I closed my laptop, I’m turning into Marcia. I’ll be talking to fairies next.

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