Replacement reincarnation: Mishlove excerpt #7

Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove writes in “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” that - Possession, in its most extreme form, is also known as replacement reincarnation. A deceased person’s spirit enters someone else’s body, replacing – permanently or temporarily – the original personality. One interesting distinction between these cases and reincarnation is, in possession cases, the possessing personality’s memories don’t seem to fade over time. The replaced person’s memories, however, seem to vanish.

Replacement reincarnation is a rare phenomenon. I doubt there are more than a few dozen cases on record – compared to thousands of reincarnation cases starting at birth. However, in trance mediumship, short- term possession by controlling discarnate persons is common. To my knowledge, we haven’t fully cataloged nor understood the types and degrees of possession – as well as its relationship to obsession and spirit attachment.

The Shiva/Sumitra case shows the difference between possession and reincarnation cases.

Sumitra Singh was a woman living in India. She could barely read and write and had no formal schooling. In 1985, Sumitra, a married woman with children, began experiencing fits, going into altered states of consciousness, and illness. She feared she would die. At one point, after she had stopped breathing and her body was cold, the family was told by a doctor she was dead. As the family was preparing for cremation, she revived.

Upon reviving, she claimed her name was Shiva Tripati. She claimed Shiva’s sister-in-law had murdered her a few months earlier. She seemed to be an educated woman – and she wanted to reconnect with her original birth family, the Tripati family.

The Singh family, naturally, didn’t know what to make of this. This new personality, Shiva, didn’t even recognize the Singh family members.

Shiva was an individual who had apparently been murdered, died accidentally, or took her own life. They found her body on the railroad tracks, after a quarrel with her in-laws. She was cremated quickly thereafter. Three months elapsed before word of this strange occurrence reached the Shiva’s birth family.

The Tripati family sued Shiva’s in-laws – because they felt she had been murdered. Then the rumor reached them that, in another village about 100 kilometers away, a possession was taking place involving their deceased daughter. So, they arranged a visit.

As soon as they arrived, Shiva hugged and kissed them, treated them warmly, and called them by their nicknames. She wanted to see her children and make sure they were being taken care of.

Shiva gave sixteen facts about her life, not mentioned in any press reports. She named 22 relatives of Shiva from photographs. A video also has an interview with Shiva’s father and mother who explain how Shiva convinced them she was their daughter. The video shows Shiva five years after the original transformation, still adamantly insisting she has all of Shiva’s memories and none of Sumitra’s.

In 2010, Canadian anthropologist Antonia Mills went to India and conducted more research on this case, assisted by Kildip Dhiman. By interviewing witnesses, Mills learned that Shiva Tripati’s personality remained in Sumitra Singh’s body consistently for thirteen years.

Shiva had a college education and wrote letters. She expressed herself using much more sophisticated language than the uneducated Sumitra.

Shiva found herself married to a stranger. However, she kept Sumitra’s social status as the wife of Sumitra husband, Jagdish Singh. She was uncomfortable about this. Shiva would look at Sumitra’s body in the mirror and say, “This isn’t me. These people are not my family.” But she realized she had to accommodate herself to these new circumstances. She even had two more children before she died.

The case is strong evidence for survival. You have an intact personality surviving for a sustained period, with the deceased person’s full emotional expression and memories. For example, she insisted on being referred to as Shiva for the entire thirteen years. That’s who she felt she was.

Interestingly, in replacement reincarnation cases, the replaced person’s memories don’t appear to remain with the physical body.

Jeffrey Mishlove’s essay, “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” received first prize in the 2021 Bigelow Institute’s challenge to provide proof for the survival of human consciousness after death. Footnotes in Mishlove’s essay and videos he refers have been removed in this presentation but are available in his essay, which may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Mishlove is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and host on YouTube of “New Thinking Allowed.”