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Regarding past-life memories in children, you could try reading Jim Tucker’s book “Before”. This is a combination of his two earlier books: “Life Before Life” and “Return to Life” expanding on the work done by his colleague Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia. I have not read the Tom Schroder book mentioned earlier but have heard from others that it doesn’t contain much detail about actual past life memory cases.
There are many very interesting and useful articles about rebirth on Alex Berzin’s site in his Karma & Rebirth section: https://studybuddhism.com/en/tibetan-buddhism/path-to-enlightenment#karma-rebirth
An argument that’s used within Buddhist tradition is around the idea that an origin of conscious experience from a material basis is not plausible and the existence of consciousness in the present is best explained as being a continuation of its immediately prior existence, as something fundamental rather than as something emergent. Why exactly it has been argued that emergence is not plausible is a big topic but some modern philosophers have also defined the problem well, like David Chalmers in his paper “Facing up to the hard problem of consciousness” and also Thomas Nagel in “What is it like to be a bat?”
Finally it is worth remembering that direct knowledge of one’s previous births is claimed to be available through the attainment of a high level of meditative concentration. Buddha himself as well as many other accomplished masters throughout history have attested to the truth of rebirth through their own experience, not through reasoning or speculation, reporting direct knowledge of both their own and others’ previous births. For example, the account from the Thai master Acariya Maha Boowa (from Arahattamagga Arahattaphala, also you can find a recording of the teaching this is originally from on YouTube titled “Shedding tears in amazement with Dhamma”):
“So I turned my attention to investigating my own past births. My goodness! If the corpses of this one individual were scattered across the length and breadth of Thailand, there would not be an empty space left. Just this one individual! Imagine the amount of time it took to be born and to die that many times! It would be impossible to count all the births and deaths. There were far, far too many to even try. My thoughts also spread to all the innumerable corpses of each person in the world. Each and every citta of each and every living being has exactly the same history of repeated births and deaths. Everyone is equal in this respect. Stretching back indefinitely, everyone’s past is crowded with countless corpses. It was an unbearable sight.”
Although most practitioners at this level won’t talk about their experience, it happens enough that we can see that practicing concentration in this way leads reliably to this kind of certainty through direct experience. If we don’t have that kind of direct experience ourselves we can examine carefully the words of those who do, also looking at their other teachings, conduct etc and decide for ourselves whether they are intentionally misleading us, deluded, or reporting accurately beyond our current perception.
Hi Giorgia
Elementals normally refers to what is called “chungpo” in Tibetan or “bhuta” in Sanskrit, a type of harmful spirit in the preta realm.
The 84000 project actually just published a new Sutra translation this week listing all the 31 realms and the lifespans of beings in each, called the Limit of Life Sutra.
Another source on the 31 realms is here: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sagga/loka.html. This lists each of them together with sources from the Pali Canon.
Hope this helps.
JanHi Jeff
There is a fairly detailed explanation of this on Alex Berzin’s website:
The Sixteen Distorted Ways of Embracing the Four Noble Truths
Hope this helps.
Jan
