It is being called the most documented case of reincarnation ever.  A little boy is able to recall over 50 memories from someone else’s life.  A World War II Pilot’s family believes it is their reincarnated brother based on the child’s memories.  The boy’s story is compelling, it has been published in a book called “Soul Survivor.”  Fox 8’s Suzanne Stratford spoke exclusively to the child and his family.

This story first broke in 2005 on ABC News Primetime, about a little boy, James Leininger, who was thought by many to be a reincarnated fighter pilot. The boy had plane crash nightmares and knew things about planes that a boy his age wouldn’t normally be familiar with. The detail in which James told his parents about airplanes and events during the war in which ‘he was shot down by a Japanese fighter’ were very realistic.

James even told his dad the name of the aircraft carrier he took off from prior to being shot and the name of a fellow pilot, Jack Larson. Turns out they were real, his pilot buddy was someone living in Arkansas. James knew the names of the men in the photos who had been in his company. The pilot’s sister was also located by James’ parents.  After talking to James, she said he knew things only she and her siblings would have known; he knew about an older sister named Ruth.

It is not extraordinary that this happens, but I think it is a kind of victory when a story like this makes it past Fox News.  Progress!  Some media reports failed to mention the details which the child knew about friends and family of the deceased, and instead chose to print the theories of several naysayers mis-labelled as skeptics.  A skeptic is someone whose knowledge about something is uncertain.  Someone who is open minded, yet unconvinced.

The only reason to omit the details that James knew about the friends and family of the deceased fighter pilot is that someone who had authority over the editing of the story did not believe in reincarnation, and so did not want to pass on any information that would lead others into believing it.  In the media, we call that editorial suppression.  Like the Bible, after every ruler and political head made their changes to it through the millenia.  References to reincarnation were edited at the Nicaean Council, etc.

I think it’s interesting that 1500+ years later, the same groups keep trying to suppress the same information.  Now with the internet, information AND misinformation can spread like wildfire. Some are afraid that if people believe in reincarnation, they will begin doing all crazy kinds of stuff, since they get a second chance, and a third.  But these people haven’t thought it through.  That’s where you have to let them believe in karma also, because otherwise it doesn’t make sense.  And for someone to believe in karma, they need to take a big giant look at where they’ve been and what they’ve been doing and that is scary for a lot of people.  Not everyone wants to take their own inventory.  Not everyone wants to step upon that path of personal inquiry.  It’s easier to say it doesn’t exist, so we never have to examine our own life.   It’s easier to say, “don’t teach it” so that no one else looks at their lives either, so no one asks the deeper questions.  That makes the people more manageable, too.

But when we decide to take that journey, it becomes increasingly evident to us that there is a purpose and a meaning to this life we live, and that it’s possible to make a difference.  When we begin contemplating the greater questions of, not “who was I” and “why?”, but “Who Am I?” then we begin getting the deeper answers.  And when we begin to get the answers from within, once we start that stream flowing, we don’t care what is said on the news, or on the internet, or at the dinner table, because we know what we know.

And when I see stories like the child who remembers being a fighter pilot, I am encouraged that – despite the best attempts on the part of some – our new generation is growing up having their memories a little closer to the surface than past generations did.  They are growing up a little more awake and a little more aware than we are, than our predecessors were.  A little more inclined to introspection.  So as this new generation begins to take over, and the older generations die off, the old lies will die away as well.  Jut like mother’s habit of cutting off the end of the roast before cooking simply because her mother always did that.  Without realizing it was simply due to the size of grandmother’s pan and oven.  Yet practised as a ritual every since, long past the time it was useful. These old thoughts and old ways will die away on their own, they will have outlived their usefulness.

And that’s evolution, right?