Researcher Michael Nahm, in his Bigelow award-winning essay, "Climbing Mount Evidence: A Strategic Assessment of the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death," writes:
I suspect we are still at the beginning of a thrilling expedition of endeavor, leading to the compilation of ever more compelling data, also regarding CORT.* Potentially researchable new cases—of highly variable initial quality, of course—keep on being reported constantly, even in the West. Jim Tucker at the University of Virginia is contacted 10–15 times each month by American families, and Jim Matlock’s over 17,000-member reincarnation group on Facebook also receives promising case reports [personal communication]. Currently, I am aware of two new intriguing and still unreported Western before-cases that are being investigated. One of them includes audio and video recordings plus a written list of statements taken down before the previous personality was identified—a boy who was killed in a tornado. Without doubt, there are many more cases out there that can be studied. Establishing an international network linking CORT researchers across the globe to develop a systematic research program is therefore highly desirable, and respective plans are currently in the making.
CORT are not only important because they constitute the best and the most researchable survival evidence, thereby evidencing that consciousness and memories are not produced by the brain. In addition, studying CORT might provide new insights into personality and character development, and a better understanding of post-traumatic stress symptoms or phobias in early childhood, but also of potential reasons for birthmarks and birth defects, and so forth. Growing public awareness of CORT could furthermore lead to increased acceptance of children who talk about past lives. Rather than ridiculing or trying to silence them, adults could progressively acknowledge them and appreciate that we can learn important lessons from our children.
From a more nature-philosophical perspective of biology, investigating CORT also bears considerable value for understanding the development of an organism. Given that experiences from past lives can contribute not only to shaping our character but also the development of bodily traits via psychically mediated carry-over effects, we must again take into account additional modes of causation, such as Aristotle’s “final causes”, Driesch’s concept of “wholeness-causality”, and other ideas of systemic and holistic top-down causation. CORT also raise intriguing questions for evolutionary biology: Given that psychological and bodily traits can be transmitted to other individuals of later generations without relying on genetic inheritance, does this process perhaps influence the development of instincts and bodily traits over the course of evolution?
Obviously, CORT open multiple lines of further scientific exploration. Their facets build bridges to different branches of biology, surmounting the current physicalist notion of most mainstream biologists that rests on an outdated understanding of nature and life. CORT provide solid arguments for developing modern versions of vitalism. Exploring phenomena such as CORT, which directly relate to nature’s background reality, might well lead to a breakthrough regarding our understanding of the nature of nature, of life, and of the question of what happens after we die.
*CORT is an abbreviation for Cases of the Reincarnation Type.
Michael Nahm is a German biologist and parapsychologist whose psi research has focused on terminal lucidity, near-death experiences, cases of the reincarnation type, physical mediumship, hauntings, the history of parapsychology, and various other riddles of the mind and the evolution of life. In 2018 he accepted an appointment at the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene (IGPP) (Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health) in Freiburg, Germany. His publications are available at http://www.michaelnahm.com/publications-and-downloads and his Bigelow essay may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Footnotes have been deleted in these excerpts but are available in his text posted on the Bigelow website.
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