How to explain the existence of child prodigies?
On focusing upon this theme, the magazine Superinteressante commits a new mistake with a covering text full of ironies and speculations

 
Unfortunately, the magazine Superinteressante has committed another mistake. The first one was in relation to the reporting text with the title "An investigation: Chico Xavier", published in the 27^th edition, of April 2010, in which Chico Xavier was called of an impostor, as it printed that the medium, upon receiving letters from dead relatives who communicated with their families, sent his advisers to talk to people beforehand, noting down information in order to give authenticity to the letters. Of course, if this were true, Chico would need to be a prodigy to quickly read all information, dates, names, etc., and insert them into the context of each message, of each Spirit, always cheating. Throughout the contents of the reporting text there is a lack of journalistic ethics, and it demonstrates a total absence of research with the aim of slandering the unparalleled personality of the medium.

The second occurred three months later, in the report entitled "Success and failure," of  the July 2010 edition, in which the magazine reveals itself to be anti-scientific when it tries to explain the cause of child prodigies using baseless arguments and not based on science, as we read in the following text:

"It's difficult to get used to the idea that we are all born with the same chances to shine. Especially when we look at those people who seem to have supernatural abilities – those that make you remember your limitation on a daily basis: child prodigies, for example. the most well known of all children prodigies was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (compared to him, the girl called Maysa is an amateur). At 3 years of age, the Austrian boy began playing the piano. At 5 years of age he was already composing. At 6 years of age he performed blindfolded to the King of Bavaria. At 12 years of age he finished his first opera. For centuries, he has been cited as absolute proof that talent is something that comes from birth to some chosen children ... ".

Initially, we must clarify that reincarnation, before being a mere philosophical question for Spiritism; relies on the verification of the reincarnation phenomenon through scientific research, today under broad public domain.

There are two arguments whereby academic science has sought to explain the existence of gifted children

The Indian parapsychologist Hamendra Banerjee has researched over 1,200 cases of people who had sharp memories of who they were in previous lives; from the place where they had lived, names of relatives, to their own names, nicknames and events which happened to them. The data has been duly checked by Banerjee, proving reincarnation, although he admitted that it is possible for someone to recall other lives through extra-cerebral memory. However, for us spiritists, this memory that survives the death of the physical body and returns to exist in another carnal clothing, is called reincarnated Spirit.

Due to the increasing number of children with an above-average degree of intelligence, research into the likely origins of this phenomenon has been much developed. On the subject, there are two theses whereby academic science has sought to explain the existence of gifted children.

The first one is to do with genetic inheritance, i.e. that super-intelligent parents would generate super-intelligent children. The second thesis assigns the phenomenon to cerebral hypoxaemia: children born through difficult deliveries would have as a result, their brain cells stimulated, and this would result in a higher intelligence quotient.

Both have a materialistic imprint and none goes to the bottom of the question. None has the courage to examine the problem in the light of a philosophy which considers man as something transcendent of matter.  

Only the theory of reincarnation can open to Science safer paths for an efficient research about this and other similar phenomena. With his millennial wisdom, Socrates stated that "to learn is to recall".

We want to highlight from the text "Success and Failure" the unfortunate comparison between Mozart, and the girl named Maysa, from the TV programmes of Raul Gil and Silvio Santos, because it is to do with comparing geniuses with a lively intelligence, a high degree of  sensitivity and with public entertainment.

Eugénie Colombe, then two years and eleven months old, already knew how to read and write perfectly

Now we see that Superinteressante magazine invented a theory which has no scientific basis, to explain Mozart´s intelligence, who played piano at three years of age, and who at four years of age played a sonata.  

Let the readers be amazed!

According to the magazine, he would have trained a lot to have this ability. But when did he practice?  

According to the theory invented by magazine, that is, by Hypothesis of Training, it happened between the age of 1 and, totalled 3,500 hours of training or teaching, in between baby bottles and dummies.

His musical ability developed so quickly that at 11 years of age he composed two small operas; besides playing the piano at the age of three, where did he train his "inspiration" and his "sensitivity" to compose? And from where did he take this predisposition, at such young age, to devote himself to exhaustive and complex musical studies? In truth, the theory proposed by the Magazine leans more towards the absurd than to the scientific.  

A musician, in fact, must practice a lot in order to obtain perfection.  Hours of practice are needed, on a relentless quest for the best form of interpretation. But what explains the sensitivity and the aptitude for music? How can we explain that fingers which are still in formation and growth are able to achieve with perfection, the keys of the piano?

Where did Jesus get so much wisdom to answer, at twelve years of age all questions posed by doctors of the Law, to the point of causing them to be surprised and puzzled at the wisdom of boy, the son of a Carpenter? Well, without  reincarnation, there is no way to explain the musical precocity of Mozart and of so many other children related by the researcher Gabriel Delanne, as well as wise men, painters, poets and literati. Since childhood, Pascal showed the taste for study, especially of geometry. At thirteen years of age, he discovered the first 32 propositions of Euclid and published a work on conical sections.

How to fit into the new theory of Superinteressante, that is, the "Hypothesis of Training", the fact mentioned by Allan Kardec in the Journal of Psychological Studies (Spiritist Magazine), February 1867, the precocity of Eugénie Colombe, reported by newspapers in Toulon. The girl, then two years and eleven months of age, already knew how to read and write perfectly. Furthermore, she was able to sustain a more serious examination of the principles of the Christian religion, French grammar, geography, the  history of France and the four arithmetic operations.

The one who was called the God of music, that is Beethoven, at ten years of age already differed himself
for his remarkable talent

Eugénie Colombe knew the rose of the winds and was able to perfectly maintain a scientific discussion on all these subjects. She started talking very distinctly when four months old. Eugénie Colombe  was presented in the halls of the town council of the maritime city of Toulon. She was endowed with a charming facial appearance and obtained "admirable" success. As for geography, the girl cited the five parts of the world, the capitals of countries, various capitals of the Departments of France. She also responded perfectly on the first notions of French grammar and the metric system. The girl gave all those answers unhesitatingly whilst having fun with toys that she had to hand. Her mother then said that she knew how to read since the age of two and a half and guaranteed that the girl was able to respond similarly to more than five hundred questions.

In the history of music, we find a series of child prodigies, called gifted children. Besides Mozart, Gabriel Delanee, in the book The Reincarnation, cites a list of them.

Here are some of the cases mentioned by the French writer:

The one who was called the God of music, Beethoven, at the age of ten had already distinguished himself for his remarkable talent as a performer. And, in another genre, the precocity of the great violinist Paganini was such that, at the age of nine, he was already being applauded at a concert in Genoa.

At the age of six, Meyerbeer had enough talent to give concerts which were greatly appreciated. Liszt, a wonderful virtuoso since early childhood, wrote, at the age of fourteen, an opera in one Act, "D. Sancho" or the "Castle of Love". Rubinstein, brought from Russia to Paris at the age of eleven, had universal admiration for the beauty of his playing of the piano.

Sarasate, at the age of eleven, already showed the qualities of pure sound and style which made him the greatest violinist of his time. Saint-Saëns, a precocious virtuoso at the age of eleven gave his first piano concert, and was only sixteen years old when he completed his first Symphony.

Gabriel Delanne also points out that he had the pleasure of watching the young Pepito Ariola at a Congress of Psychology in 1900, who at the age of three and a half played and improvised several Arias. Professor Charles Richet, also known as the father of Metaphysics published one of his cases study, which said that Ariola played, before the King and Queen of Spain, six compositions of own his creation, without knowing the notes, or knowing how to either read or write.

The Spirit exchanges clothing throughout successive reincarnations, but it never loses its acquired knowledge

One can observe that the origin of extraordinary faculties of an individual, without preliminary study, is an attribute of the Spirit that holds memories of the past. This occurs because of earlier acquired progress in the fields of painting, literature, poetry and in other branches of art and science.

But, where does the knowledge of aptitude and musical sensibility, as in the cases of Mozart and of other geniuses mentioned here, come from? The answer is simple, and we already have commented upon it. The Spirit exchanges its physical clothing (appearance) through successive reincarnations, but it never loses its immortal individuality or its moral and intellectual knowledge acquired along its experiences, in the course of its spiritual evolution, to conquer the condition of pure Spirit, the same obtained by Christ.

Still on the subject, Spiritist Doctrine, as a spiritualist philosophy, proves with irrefutable evidence, that intelligence is independent of the body, because it is an attribute of the Spirit, since the high degree of intellectual activity can show itself among those whose age has not reached full physical maturity, as in the several examples we mentioned.

In question 203 of The Book of Spirits, the Spiritual Benefactors, in response to Allan Kardec, clarified that the parents do not transmit to their children plots of their own souls, because the soul is indivisible. They just give them animal life, that is, genetic resources, transmitting to their children physical heredity such as the color of hair and eyes, the shape and size of certain parts of the face or body. Still on the same issue, the Benefactors have said that an obtuse father, i.e., an ignorant one, can have a smart son and vice versa, and that there are several examples in the history of people.

The puzzle that scientists have to show is incomplete.

They will never understand the role of DNA while not placing the Spirit and the perispirit in that context. They will, therefore, carry on looking at the effects as an explanation for everything, as if we were only an organic machine.

It is therefore surprising that a magazine such as Superinteressante, which is seen as a cutting edge scientific publication, publishes a text full of somewhat ironic ¨speculations, summarily dismissing the thesis of reincarnation, which is already widely studied by renowned scientists from several universities and research centers, such as the doctor psychiatrist Jim Tucker, who has been giving  continuity to the research on the subject held by renowned researcher Ian Stevenson, who has recently passed away, author of Twenty Cases suggestive of Reincarnation.

Author's  note: 

Click on this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeGkIzjxODY&NR=1  and see what the doctor psychiatrist American Jim Tucker said on the subject of reincarnation on the TV Globo program Fantastico shown on 8/8/2010.