I Wish To Be Reborn As Your Daughter
Maria Januaria Oliviero was the daughter of a wealthy Earl and landowner in south Brazil. Her friends called her Sinha (pronounced Sinja). Her friend Ida lived in far simpler conditions than she did. She was the wife of Mr. Lorenz, originally from German and now a schoolteacher in this area. Their homes were approximately 20 kilometres apart. In 1918 when Sinha was 28, she fell ill with tuberculosis, which in those days was a practically incurable disease. On her deathbed she told her friend Ida that she wished to be reborn as her daughter and informed her that, “When I return as your daughter I will tell you about the secret of rebirth. I will then tell you many things about my present life so that you will know the truth of it for yourself.”
Ten months later Ida Lorenz gave birth to a healthy daughter who was given the name Marta. When she was still very young and could only speak a few words, the landowner Mr. de Oliviero, accompanied by another man, came to visit the Lorenz family for a short while. Even though the man, who accompanied Mr. de Oliviero addressed the child in a friendly manner, she turned from him and immediately ran up to Mr. de Oliviero hugged him, lovingly stroked his beard and called him Papa.
When Marta was about two-and-a-half years old she asked her older sister Lola to carry her. When she refused the little girl said, “When I was big and you were little I often carried you.” “When were you big?” asked her sister in return. “I didn’t live here then. I lived far away from here where there were cows, oxen, oranges and goats which weren’t really goat’s.” (She meant sheep but didn’t know the right word.) When Lola told her parents about the things her younger sister had told her they were surprised, but put these statements down to imagination. They had not told their children anything about Sinha’s intension of being reborn to them as their daughter.
After this, Lorenz carried out his own investigation into his youngest daughter’s past. He told her he had never lived anywhere where there were ‘goat’s which were not goat’s’, to which the little girl replied, “Well, I had different parents in those days.” One of her sisters jokingly asked whether she used to have a black servant girl like the one they now have. Marta then told her that she used to have a male black servant, a female black cook and a black servant boy. One day the boy was beaten by her father for forgetting to fetch water. Her father interrupted her saying, “But I have never beaten a black boy.” “It was my other father who hit him,” the little girl added quickly. “The black boy begged me saying, “Sinhazinha help me!” I begged my father not to hit him. He let him go and the boy ran away to fetch water.” Her father inquired further, “Did he fetch the water from a stream?” “No, no,” explained the girl, “there was no stream only a spring.” Her father who knew what the de Olivieros family was like, knew that these statements were true. He then wanted to know who this Sinha or Sinhazinha was, (pronounced Sinjazinja, a shortened version of the first name, which means white cat.) “That was me. I also had another name. I was called Maria. I even had another name which I’ve forgotten now.”
As you can see, we are not dealing with Marta mind reading, since Mr. Lorenz did not know Maria’s full name. He also remembered nothing of the beatings that Mr. de Oliviero had dealt the coloured boy, but Maria’s father later confirmed this fact. In the light of this evidence we seem to be dealing with a genuine case of reincarnation.
Mr. Lorenz now began to write down all statements and information relating to Marta’s past life. It was only a matter of time before he had noted down 120 such pieces of information using German shorthand. Sadly someone in his family decided they were worthless pieces of paper and threw them away. Had this information been kept we would be dealing with one of the most thoroughly documented cases of a child’s past life memories. Mr. Lorenz later tried to write down some of these statements from memory. Much of what Marta talked about was new to the Lorenz family, since they rarely got to hear much about the relationships and events taking place at Sinha’s house.
One day Mrs. Lorenz asked her youngest daughter how she had welcomed her when she visited her as Sinha. Marta replied that she used to put the gramophone on just to please her. Only Mrs. Lorenz could have known of this incident since she had not talked to anyone else in the family about it. Another day when a woman belonging to her past family came to visit, the girl recognised her immediately calling her by her name. When the woman was then told that Marta was her recently deceased Aunt Maria she asked the girl, “If you were really Sinha, tell me how we were related to each other.” Marta then told her that she had been her cousin and also her Godchild.
Marta begged her parents to take her to visit her father. When she was 12 years old she was finally granted her wish. It was only on this occasion that Mr. De Oliviero discovered that the Lorenz’s youngest daughter was in fact his daughter Maria reborn. Finally he was completely convinced of this fact when he saw Marta going through the house making comments about all the changes, and stopping in front of a wall clock saying, “This used to be my clock. My name is engraved on the back in gold letters.” Later they took the clock down and to their amazement they found the name Maria Januaria de Oliviero on the back in gold letters.
Even though Marta had been 12 years old when she remembered those details in Mr. de Oliviero’s house, her memories of her past life as Maria had gradually begun to dry up from the age of seven onwards. When Professor Stevenson visited the now married Marta in Porto Allegre in 1962, she had apparently forgotten many things from her past life. None the less she was able to tell him the exact details of her last months as Maria, especially concerning the events surrounding her illness. This was of particular interest to him since he was a doctor.
When Marta had grown up, some of the older people who had known Maria noticed how similar the two were, even their handwriting was almost identical. Maria had died of tuberculosis as well as severe throat problems, and Marta seemed to have inherited these for the pain in her larynx was often so bad that even as a child she sometimes spoke with a very hoarse voice, or lost it altogether.
When Stevenson looked her up once more in 1972, in order to collect more evidence for his research, he was amazed how many details were still surfacing from her subconscious. For example, Maria’s teacher, whom she had fallen in love with and had wanted to marry, had taken his own life after Maria’s father had refused to consent to their marriage out of pure snobbery.
Even as a young girl Marta knew that one-day this beloved teacher named Florzinho would be reborn to her as her child. She did in fact bear two sons, but they both died shortly after birth. She is convinced that she gave birth to Florzinho twice in a row, because both babies had the same birthmarks in exactly the same place on their heads as her beloved Florzinho once had.