Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Flow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and J Douglas. Recently we
Speaker 1: did an episode titled The Problem of Immortality where we
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about humanity's fear of death and
Speaker 1: how a quest for some form of immortality permeates just
Speaker 1: about everything we do as a species and as a civilization.
Speaker 1: So it seems like a really good idea to cover
Speaker 1: reincarnation in its own episode. And so that's what we're
Speaker 1: talking about today. Reincarnation, which here in the Western world
Speaker 1: is kind of a slightly different animal than it is
Speaker 1: in the East, but it's but it's still an idea
Speaker 1: that you find pretty in worldviews around the world and
Speaker 1: uh and has a certain amount of uh, well, let's
Speaker 1: just say truthiness to it. To borrow word from Stephen Colbert.
Speaker 1: A lot of people find something in reincarnation that jives
Speaker 1: with their worldview. Okay, I was thinking about this, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking that reincarnation, at least on a symbolic level,
Speaker 1: it couldn't help but work itself into the human psyche.
Speaker 1: Given that nature performs a sort of reincarnation at the
Speaker 1: molecular level every single day, right and at the most
Speaker 1: basic level, we are informed by nature in the physical
Speaker 1: world around us. And I was thinking about Berne Heinrich.
Speaker 1: He is the author from Life Everlasting, the Animal Way
Speaker 1: of Death. He says, we come from life, and we
Speaker 1: are the conduit into other life. We come from and
Speaker 1: return to incomparably amazing plants and animals, even while we
Speaker 1: are alive, are wastes are recycled directly into beetles, grass
Speaker 1: and trees, which are further recycled into beef, butterflies, and
Speaker 1: onto flycatchers, finches and hawks, and back into grass and
Speaker 1: on into deer, cows, goats, and us. And he even
Speaker 1: goes on to say that you could have a decaying
Speaker 1: elephant or an arctic poppies molecules which might have been
Speaker 1: released into the air the previous day, but they all
Speaker 1: came from plants and animals that lived millions of years ago.
Speaker 1: And he says all of life is linked through a
Speaker 1: physical exchange on the cellular level. So that is a
Speaker 1: that's a deep ancient trope being played out in the
Speaker 1: drama of nature before our very eyes. So it makes
Speaker 1: sense that we would as humans look to that cyclical
Speaker 1: nature and and somehow involve it in our somewhat linear
Speaker 1: timelines that we have set out as humans. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons that the Plato, the famous philosopher,
Speaker 1: looked around in the natural world and and and thought
Speaker 1: that the reincarnation jibe with what he was saying he saw.
Speaker 1: He saw cycles and opposites in nature as being one
Speaker 1: of the the leading arguments for reincarnation. Like you say,
Speaker 1: you see these cycles all around you. And then if
Speaker 1: we were to try and imagine things, uh, the the
Speaker 1: unseen world, we can do attribute similar shapes and similar
Speaker 1: cycles to those energies as well. Yeah, and reincarnation And
Speaker 1: just to factrack a little bit too, immortality, it really
Speaker 1: does fulfill that um immortality narrative that is so important
Speaker 1: for humans. It does three things. Helps to manage that
Speaker 1: terror we sometimes feel when we realize that our lives
Speaker 1: are ephemeral and fleeting. The second thing is it provides
Speaker 1: a blueprint for acceptable behavior, which we'll talk about more
Speaker 1: while on Earth. And three in extends that assurance of
Speaker 1: immortality that you live on in some way. Now, reincarnation
Speaker 1: goes by other names as well. You might know it
Speaker 1: as a transmigration of the soul or metal psychosis. Uh.
Speaker 1: But the idea again is truly ancient. You look back
Speaker 1: to Africa, the birthplace of humanity, you'll find reincartercarnation traditions
Speaker 1: such as that of the West African vote in religion,
Speaker 1: and given the migrations of early Man that the next
Speaker 1: great homeland of the humanity is of course the Indian subcontinent.
Speaker 1: And that's where we see the most famous model of
Speaker 1: recurrent reincarnation emerge and come to dominate Eastern cultures. Uh So,
Speaker 1: really you have to start with Hinduism. And just to
Speaker 1: give a quick refresher on Hinduism, it's the oldest of
Speaker 1: the dominant world religions and arguably the most difficult to summarize. Okay,
Speaker 1: It's it's roots stretch back a good five thousand years
Speaker 1: through human history, and along the way you find all
Speaker 1: of these. It's varied texts, poetic epics, different sets, different diversions.
Speaker 1: God's Goddess is religious rituals, and all of it comes
Speaker 1: into this. Uh, this, this form that is really difficult
Speaker 1: to nail down. Hinduism is kind of a just a
Speaker 1: chasm that that that dives down through human history, a
Speaker 1: lot of ideas wrapped up in it. Yeah, at the
Speaker 1: at the very basic level, though, we're talking about something
Speaker 1: called some sorrow, which is a chain of birth and
Speaker 1: death linked by reincarnation, and controlling some sorrow is the
Speaker 1: law of karma. So Hindus believe that all individuals accumulate
Speaker 1: karma over a given course of a lifetime, and then
Speaker 1: good actions create good karma and evil actions create negative karma.
Speaker 1: And by the way, we have a wonderful article by
Speaker 1: Sarah Dowdy called How Reincarnation Works and it goes a
Speaker 1: bit more into this. Yeah, and the wheel of Samsar
Speaker 1: is often used as a visual reminder of how of
Speaker 1: how this system works in Hinduism and Buddhism. We have
Speaker 1: a cool interactive version of that in the article about
Speaker 1: Tibetan sky Burial on the website. But in essence, it's
Speaker 1: a big wheel, like a big pizza. It's gripped by
Speaker 1: a big monster uh generally called Yama, and Yama is
Speaker 1: the embodiment of impermanence and death, this big demon and
Speaker 1: he's he's holding this giant pizza chart that has a
Speaker 1: has these different states of being that a soul may
Speaker 1: travel through as it's reincarnated, and those include a human realm,
Speaker 1: the realm that we are in now. It includes an
Speaker 1: animal realm. It includes lower realms where you'll see hungry ghosts,
Speaker 1: where you'll see raging demons as well. It's higher realms
Speaker 1: where you'll see demi gods and gods. It kind of
Speaker 1: reminds me of a board game like dice may land
Speaker 1: on you know, an angry god or or a creature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of shoots and ladders, imagine it's really it is.
Speaker 1: It is shoots and ladders as a model of existence,
Speaker 1: except it's a game of shoots and ladders that never ends,
Speaker 1: all right, And even when a game of shoots and
Speaker 1: ladders ends, it's a pretty tedious game to play. And
Speaker 1: that's sort of the whole point in Hinduism and Buddhism
Speaker 1: is that the game is tiresome. The game is just
Speaker 1: gonna be ups and downs just forever unless you stop
Speaker 1: playing it. And that's ultimately what what the goal of
Speaker 1: of Hinduism and Buddhism is. To free yourself from that,
Speaker 1: from that game altogether, to free yourself from the cycle,
Speaker 1: uh the endless cycle of death. And rebirth and reincarnation
Speaker 1: into various forms, and that creates that blueprint of behavior
Speaker 1: for your time here on earth that we've talked about,
Speaker 1: which is so important to the immortality narrative. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: come back to this string of karma, this idea that
Speaker 1: that no matter what form you're in, there is something
Speaker 1: there that that is immortal. There is this uh, this string,
Speaker 1: this thread that continues throughout it and you can just
Speaker 1: you know, think of it as the human soul, as
Speaker 1: some sort of soul energy. That's the general idea here.
Speaker 1: And it's uh, it's it's the piece on the board
Speaker 1: of shoots and ladders that's going up, that's going down,
Speaker 1: and eventually you want to remove from the board altogether. Now,
Speaker 1: in shoots and ladders, of course, it's just luck if
Speaker 1: you're going up or down. But in reincarnation, that's driven
Speaker 1: by karma. Uh, there's the there is, of course a
Speaker 1: moral aspect to all of this. Um. How you act
Speaker 1: in this life depends on where you'll be in the
Speaker 1: next and the life after that and the life after that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And this interpretation of reincarnation really varies widely depending on
Speaker 1: the philosophy or the religion In fact. In Native American culture,
Speaker 1: it is a feature. Reincarnation is in it. It makes
Speaker 1: sense here if you ask me, because you really see
Speaker 1: that reincarnation is essential to the belief in the connectedness,
Speaker 1: the continuity, in the interdependence of all life. In some
Speaker 1: Native American cultures and for the Northern Arthur past candn
Speaker 1: a thought the soul. I think it's really interested interesting.
Speaker 1: The soul is regarded as a dual entity. The soul
Speaker 1: is believed to remain in the after world and can
Speaker 1: be prayed to, and at the same time it exists
Speaker 1: in the human form of the reincarnate reincarnated individual also
Speaker 1: known as those made again. So you've got one foot
Speaker 1: here and the present and one foot in the past. Yes,
Speaker 1: reincarnation often sort of bleeds over into these other ideas
Speaker 1: of say, for instance, the ancestor. Worship or or at
Speaker 1: least holding up the ancestor is an extremely important part
Speaker 1: of not only the past but the present, and in
Speaker 1: that you see some of these models of reincarnation are
Speaker 1: more of a family model of reincarnation. People are reincarnated
Speaker 1: within the bloodline, and of course that makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense because we know how genetics work. We know
Speaker 1: how how genes are passed on from one generation to
Speaker 1: the next. So in a sense, there is something in
Speaker 1: your grandfather that's living on in this bloodline. Now, on
Speaker 1: the same note, you also find uh mythic reincarnation, the
Speaker 1: idea that gods are reborn as kings and the other
Speaker 1: important you know, figures. And in this we see a
Speaker 1: lot of cyclical time and archetypes. We've talked to a
Speaker 1: lot before about how when you look at this older
Speaker 1: model of time, before the linear time um, everything was
Speaker 1: a cycle and independent individual moments and even individuals were
Speaker 1: only important insofar as how they uh recaptured some sort
Speaker 1: of archetype from the past. Because in some ways these
Speaker 1: are delusions, right, So if you claim that a pharaoh
Speaker 1: is you are reincarnate of Pharaoh, then you are trying
Speaker 1: to assume that Pharaoh's power. And I'm thinking about Sodom Hussein,
Speaker 1: who claimed to have been the reincarnation of a Babylonian king.
Speaker 1: And we see this, you know, not just in present day,
Speaker 1: but throughout history, people claiming to have the sort of
Speaker 1: powers of these um very important ancestors or historical figures
Speaker 1: throughout time. Yeah, and you always hear about the king
Speaker 1: that somebody was in their past life. People tend not
Speaker 1: to focus on the uh, the you know, the the
Speaker 1: street bum or the or or the or some sort
Speaker 1: of a war criminal or anything of that nature, or
Speaker 1: does the common goatherd. But you know, that makes sense
Speaker 1: if you want to fasten your yourself to some you know,
Speaker 1: imagine figure in the past, you want to do something inspiring,
Speaker 1: I guess. But and that kind of falls into another
Speaker 1: version of reincarnation. You find sort of, especially in the West,
Speaker 1: a kind of casual, feel good reincarnation where we just
Speaker 1: kind of just a quick path on the back to say, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe when I die, I'm gonna be reborn as an eagle.
Speaker 1: Maybe you don't die, maybe you're reincarnated as as this
Speaker 1: plant or this person. And it's just there's not even
Speaker 1: like any kind of real religion or world view or
Speaker 1: structure to the idea is just sort of a comforting
Speaker 1: possible notion, a whimsical reincarnation. Yeah, but nothing could be
Speaker 1: further from the idea of karmic reincarnation that we've discussed
Speaker 1: so far. You know that, because this is serious business.
Speaker 1: This is about for the for the practitioner of Buddhism,
Speaker 1: or Hinduism. This is about where I'm going to land
Speaker 1: in the next life, avoiding some sort of hellish reincarnation
Speaker 1: and also eventually freeing myself from the cycle altogether. So
Speaker 1: it's not just a you know, a pad on the back.
Speaker 1: It's it's considered serious business. That's right. It's very rich
Speaker 1: in rituals and steps are to be taken. It's not
Speaker 1: just as you say, the casual association with if I
Speaker 1: do this one good day, perhaps I will not be
Speaker 1: a cockroach in the next life. Yeah, I mean, the
Speaker 1: Tibetan Book of the Dead is all about the steps
Speaker 1: that one can take as this traveling soul, as the psychonaut,
Speaker 1: and the steps that your that the your survivors can
Speaker 1: take to help guide you through that gray area into
Speaker 1: the next life. It's it's it's a dangerous voyage for
Speaker 1: the practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism. And then there's one more
Speaker 1: version of reincarnation, one more take on it. That's uh,
Speaker 1: that that has a lot of Lusser to it, and
Speaker 1: that's kind of a metaphoric interpretation. Okay, this is the
Speaker 1: idea that that the idea that Buddhist reincarnation is not
Speaker 1: a literal model of rebirth through various forums and a
Speaker 1: karmic cycle, but rather a model for our moment to
Speaker 1: moment reincarnation. And and I tend to really like this interpretation.
Speaker 1: It's the idea that instead of oh, if you leave
Speaker 1: a lead a peaceful human life, then maybe you'll have
Speaker 1: more peace in the next moment. Or if you have
Speaker 1: a sort of an out of controlled, lavish demi god life, uh,
Speaker 1: then your next life might see you cast down into
Speaker 1: the hells. But rather, what am I How do I
Speaker 1: feel right now? Am I peaceful? Now? Well? Then that
Speaker 1: means in the next moment I may be peaceful as
Speaker 1: well if I am sort of if I'm on one
Speaker 1: end of the pendulum now, if I'm you know, angry,
Speaker 1: then maybe I'll swing back to something a little more
Speaker 1: reasonable in the next It's a about that moment to
Speaker 1: moment change in our our psyche and and in the
Speaker 1: way we're experiencing the world around us. I like that.
Speaker 1: I like that sense that if you're tending your own
Speaker 1: garden at that very moment, then you're also converging on
Speaker 1: the all points of time past, present, in future, and
Speaker 1: that that tending of that garden now reaps its rewards
Speaker 1: metaphorically throughout this ripple of time. Yeah, Alan Watts put
Speaker 1: it really well. He said that, Okay, look at a flame.
Speaker 1: A flame is a process and not a thing. He said, said,
Speaker 1: every human being is also a process, just as a
Speaker 1: flame is a conversion of wax into gas. Because who
Speaker 1: are you right the at any given moment, You're a
Speaker 1: different person than than who you were five minutes ago,
Speaker 1: a month ago, a year ago. We're perpetually changing where
Speaker 1: there We're just this this vast storm of ideas and
Speaker 1: memories and and uh and interpretations of the world around us,
Speaker 1: and so that that changes all the time. And we
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about that in the Problem of
Speaker 1: Immortality and as well as in our episodes on Hell,
Speaker 1: like who who's judged when it comes to heaven? In hell?
Speaker 1: The person you are now the person you were when
Speaker 1: you die. It really gets problematic when you look at it.
Speaker 1: It gets problematic even when you look at it in
Speaker 1: terms of of crime and punishment here in the real world,
Speaker 1: like how what happens when you judge somebody for a
Speaker 1: crime they committed uh ten years ago? Is this the
Speaker 1: same person that committed that crime? I was thinking about
Speaker 1: this the other day. I thought, you know, so much
Speaker 1: of life is about rutinization, about habits and about how
Speaker 1: you know, you do wake up and you do you
Speaker 1: feel maybe a little bit different from the person you
Speaker 1: were the day before. And the things that keep us
Speaker 1: the person that we are, or those uh cages of
Speaker 1: habit that we create around us, those cues that, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: my name is Julie, I live in this house. These
Speaker 1: are the things that surround me. These are the associations
Speaker 1: that I have in this world. If all of those
Speaker 1: cues fell away, would you be that same person? So
Speaker 1: so again, metaphoric interpretation of reincarnation is very much the
Speaker 1: idea that the person I am now is reincarnating into
Speaker 1: the person I'm going to be a second from now,
Speaker 1: and a second from from there, and and on and
Speaker 1: on through the course of your life. Let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break, and when we get back, where we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about a little bit more about ancestral reincarnation
Speaker 1: is something called the persistence of personality. Reppy, all right,
Speaker 1: we're back, and indeed this is gonna be the segment
Speaker 1: of the episode where we get into a little more
Speaker 1: of the skeptical views of reincarnation and indeed what happens
Speaker 1: when science gets involved and science is involved. In fact,
Speaker 1: in two thou twelve, a five million dollar grant was
Speaker 1: awarded to you see, a University of California Riverside to
Speaker 1: study immortality, including reincarnation and resurrection by the John Templeton Foundation.
Speaker 1: So that's really interesting and just a side note one
Speaker 1: of the things that they want to try to figure
Speaker 1: out our near death experiences because culturally, say, in the
Speaker 1: United States, it's very different from Japan because in the
Speaker 1: United States we have the little trope of you see
Speaker 1: a light at the end of the tunnel, whereas in
Speaker 1: Japan it's that people are seen tending a garden, huh,
Speaker 1: which plays into this idea of well, how much of
Speaker 1: it is just this mental construct that we play into.
Speaker 1: Is there any sort of way that we can get
Speaker 1: to it scientifically and figure out if there's a basis
Speaker 1: to reincarnation. Yeah, because that that brings to mind episodes
Speaker 1: we've done about alien encounters and abduction experiences and ghosts,
Speaker 1: ghost encounters and any kind of paranormal experience one might
Speaker 1: have the the at the core of it there might
Speaker 1: be something similar, but a lot of it seems to
Speaker 1: be based on the cultural script you're bringing into the experience.
Speaker 1: So you're experiencing sleep paralysis of very real condition. But then,
Speaker 1: what kind of myth do you lay on top of,
Speaker 1: what kind of religion do you lay on top of,
Speaker 1: what kind of uh, you know, cultural sci fi reference
Speaker 1: do you lay on top of it? To interpret the
Speaker 1: the this other worldly experience. Right, you're you're sleeping, you're
Speaker 1: in a dream, you're paralyzed, and you're starting to wake
Speaker 1: and your your brain is confused about what state to
Speaker 1: be in. Maybe there's some sort of green light emanating
Speaker 1: from the hallway, you know, that becomes interpreted into, as
Speaker 1: you say, the cultural script that's put before us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so that's very much a part of the scientific
Speaker 1: analysis of reincarnation as well. Now, when we talk about
Speaker 1: studying reincarnation, obviously there's very little that science can do
Speaker 1: to study reincarnation. Reincarnation largely exists as an idea outside
Speaker 1: of the observable universe, outside of of science. It's uh,
Speaker 1: it's like trying to scientifically prove the existence of God.
Speaker 1: It can't be done. It's not a provable thing. It's
Speaker 1: a matter of faith and worldview and all that. Uh So,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing with reincarnation. The studies that we
Speaker 1: look at tend to be based in interviews with children
Speaker 1: with their parents, rigorous note taking, and then trying to
Speaker 1: to compare different experiences in different accounts of of not
Speaker 1: only this life but the life before. Yeah. Dr Ian Stevenson,
Speaker 1: an academic psychiatrist, led the study of reincarnation in the
Speaker 1: US until his death in two thousand and seven, and
Speaker 1: he founded the Division of Personality Studies under the University
Speaker 1: of Virginia's Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences. He conducted
Speaker 1: thousands of interviews. As you say, he took rigorous notes, um,
Speaker 1: and his studies focused really on young children, usually between
Speaker 1: the ages of two and five, who had inexplicable phobias
Speaker 1: or detailed memories about a previous life as reported by
Speaker 1: the parent. Yeah, and these cases generally, generally they broke
Speaker 1: down about like this, like, here's the kid again, some
Speaker 1: sort of weird phobia. They're afraid of busses or something,
Speaker 1: you know, or they're suddenly talking about Ron all the time. Well,
Speaker 1: who's wrong. There's no Ron in the immediate family. Why
Speaker 1: is Ron such a character in this three year old's life.
Speaker 1: And then you start to you start comparing notes, and
Speaker 1: you find out, oh, well, there's a family in the
Speaker 1: next town and uh and and this uh, this woman
Speaker 1: died and her husband's name was Ron. Or here's this uh,
Speaker 1: this case just like a few streets over where somebody
Speaker 1: was hit by a car. And so maybe that explains
Speaker 1: the phobia. It's the idea that the soul has moved
Speaker 1: on from one body to another, and in doing so,
Speaker 1: has brought over at least some aspect of that previous
Speaker 1: personality enough to carry over a severe phobia or a
Speaker 1: severe or a or a significant attachment to another person.
Speaker 1: You know, we're doing our next podcast episode on the
Speaker 1: illusion of continuity. And I just realized the overlap here,
Speaker 1: because if you have all of these details, and we
Speaker 1: already know that our brains are pattern recognition machines, it
Speaker 1: can't help but sees on these details and say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: four or five kilometers away, there was a girl who
Speaker 1: died in a rice patty when she was eight years old,
Speaker 1: And perhaps it's that girl's soul reincarnated into this other
Speaker 1: little girl who's having these very serious phobias of water
Speaker 1: and drowning. Yeah, Stevenson studied about different cases over the
Speaker 1: course about four decades. He published several books and articles
Speaker 1: about it. Really, it's a it's an intimidating amount of
Speaker 1: information that he put together and and it's and it's
Speaker 1: all all of it is coming down to individual cases
Speaker 1: where they went out and analyzed that, they talked to
Speaker 1: the parents, they talked to the child, and uh. At
Speaker 1: the end of it, though, you ultimately have this this huge,
Speaker 1: massive information that science largely rejects because again it's it's
Speaker 1: just based in it's it's more like a police case
Speaker 1: really than anything. It's more about about the just asking
Speaker 1: people when pairing accounts of the situation, rather than than
Speaker 1: any kind of actual scientific investigation. And we'll get to
Speaker 1: why that process has flawed in a moment. But I
Speaker 1: wanted to mention someone named Jim Techer. He is a
Speaker 1: professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of
Speaker 1: Virginia who really picked up where Stevenson left off and
Speaker 1: he and I believe this was an interview with PDS.
Speaker 1: He he said this about reincarnation. He said, some leading
Speaker 1: scientists in the past, like Max Plank, who's the father
Speaker 1: quantum theory, said that he viewed consciousness as fundamental and
Speaker 1: that matter was derived from it. So in that case,
Speaker 1: it would mean that consciousness would not necessarily be dependent
Speaker 1: on a physical brain in order to survive, and could
Speaker 1: continue after the physical brain and after the body dies.
Speaker 1: In these cases it seems, at least on the face
Speaker 1: of it, that a consciousness has then become attached to
Speaker 1: a new brain and has shown up as past life memories.
Speaker 1: And then he goes on to say, I think these
Speaker 1: cases can tr ribute to the body of evidence that consciousness,
Speaker 1: at least in some circumstances, can survive the death of
Speaker 1: the body, that life after death isn't necessarily just a
Speaker 1: fantasy or something to be considered on faith, but can
Speaker 1: be approached in an analytical way, and the idea can
Speaker 1: be judged on its own merits. That's pretty that's a
Speaker 1: heavy statement. That is that it goes right into the
Speaker 1: mind body problem that we discussed in some past episodes.
Speaker 1: The idea that we have this physical brain and then
Speaker 1: we have this mind, and when we compare the two,
Speaker 1: they don't seem to match up, uh, you know, one
Speaker 1: to one. So we come into to all these various theories,
Speaker 1: these philosophical models for what the relationship is. Is the
Speaker 1: is the mind merely the shadow cast by the brain,
Speaker 1: or does the does the mind exist independently of the brain.
Speaker 1: And that's the case that Tucker is making here, the
Speaker 1: idea that that the mind doesn't need a physical brain
Speaker 1: in order to exist. But perhaps uh is like this
Speaker 1: sort of psychic energy ghost that merely haunts and inhabits
Speaker 1: physical brains, like the physical brain is a little hotel
Speaker 1: room that nature has prepared for this visiting neugget of
Speaker 1: soul energy, if you will. The problem, of course, is
Speaker 1: just runs counter to Acam's razer. Right. This is not
Speaker 1: the simplest explanation, Right, You're building an increasingly elaborate explanation
Speaker 1: for the metaphysics of of an immortal soul. And it's fascinating,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's very cool. I I really like
Speaker 1: the idea. But but yeah, you're creating something that's more
Speaker 1: complex than the than the immediate answer. And again, it's
Speaker 1: nothing you can prove, it's nothing that can be scientifically studied.
Speaker 1: It is ultimately Tucker is having to accept this as
Speaker 1: an article of personal faith and just like any other
Speaker 1: model that one might assume of what happens to an
Speaker 1: immortal soul after death or before it. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and it's just not showing up.
Speaker 1: There's compelling the interesting evidence. I guess if you can
Speaker 1: call that with you know, those interviews. Um, but I
Speaker 1: believe that those interviews, only twenty of them have written
Speaker 1: accounts by the parents immediately afterwards. Now what's the problem
Speaker 1: with that, Because because when you have only twenty cases
Speaker 1: where the parents wrote the record before the match was made,
Speaker 1: that means you only have twenty cases where the where
Speaker 1: the information was not yet corrupted by the match. And
Speaker 1: he discussed right to the fouible nature of memory, uh
Speaker 1: and our our tendency to to rewrite and reinterpret our
Speaker 1: memories in light of new evidence. UM. For instance, UH,
Speaker 1: that the child is talking about an imaginary friend named Ron. Um.
Speaker 1: If if you are telling the investigator about Ron after
Speaker 1: you found out about the uh, the Ron whose wife
Speaker 1: died in a neighboring city, then that potentially colors the
Speaker 1: story that you give the the interrogator not to mention
Speaker 1: that child might have been watching parks and rec and
Speaker 1: then watching Ron, I do keep imagining Ron Swanson and
Speaker 1: all I do to the mustache hero of parks and
Speaker 1: rec Now, these ideas were explored a little bit more
Speaker 1: in Mary Rich's Spook. She has a chapter on this,
Speaker 1: I believe the chapter is called You Again, and she
Speaker 1: goes to India, where, um, these sort of narratives, these
Speaker 1: reincarnation narratives are somewhat common, I mean, at least uh
Speaker 1: in comparison to the United States. And she says that
Speaker 1: by the time the researcher arrives on the scene, the
Speaker 1: family has usually found a likely candidate for the child's
Speaker 1: former incarnation. Most Indian villagers accept reincarnation is fact, and
Speaker 1: word of a child remembering a past like travels quickly
Speaker 1: to neighboring villages. Yeah. So, on one hand, you have
Speaker 1: the pre existing cultural script for what is happening and
Speaker 1: why the child is talking about Ron. And then by
Speaker 1: the time the investigator gets there, they've already begun to uh,
Speaker 1: to piece together the story to form their own answer
Speaker 1: of what's happening and UH and and where this particular
Speaker 1: soul has come from and UH, and that's just gonna
Speaker 1: color everything that they pass on to to the to
Speaker 1: the interrogator. Yeah, and even if it was written down,
Speaker 1: we know that memory is fallible, and I will tell
Speaker 1: you just as completely anecdotal. But you know, I write
Speaker 1: down a lot of things that my daughter says, and
Speaker 1: even right that split second after she says that, I
Speaker 1: go and I grab a pen. I will write it
Speaker 1: down and then I will read it back to her
Speaker 1: and say did you say this? And she'll say, no,
Speaker 1: I said this because I have inadvertently rearranged from the
Speaker 1: words you know, or in it. And when you once
Speaker 1: you do that, you know that you have changed the
Speaker 1: context of a sentence. So that's in a split second.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine trying to get that trickle of babble
Speaker 1: that comes out of toddler's and makes sense of it,
Speaker 1: you know, five minutes after the fact. Yeah, Like, uh,
Speaker 1: my son will suddenly start off singing this little song
Speaker 1: and he's kind of going a mingo, mingo, mingo, But
Speaker 1: we eventually started interpreting it is mango mango, and now
Speaker 1: it's the mango mango song. Uh, which is all pointless,
Speaker 1: but again where you just instantly start forming, taking what
Speaker 1: they've given you and forming it into something that makes
Speaker 1: a little more narrative sense and as Dr Kiri S. Robert,
Speaker 1: that's the director of International Center for Survival and Reincarnation
Speaker 1: Researches that Mary Roach spoke with in in her research
Speaker 1: for Spook, that the parents will latch onto almost anything,
Speaker 1: like any little little bit. Again, we we we crave
Speaker 1: synchronicity in life. We look for our pattern recognizing brains,
Speaker 1: look for those little uh you know, one or two
Speaker 1: uh bits of light that match up, not all the
Speaker 1: other ones that are out of place. So, you know,
Speaker 1: the mention of the name ron, the mention of fear
Speaker 1: of automobiles. Whatever, they'll take that, they'll run with it.
Speaker 1: They'll shape that without even really having without having any
Speaker 1: kind of mischief in mind. Uh, They'll they'll form the uh,
Speaker 1: they'll form a story that fits everything. They'll they'll edit
Speaker 1: it into a shape that that works with reincarnation. Which
Speaker 1: makes sense again if culturally this is a part of
Speaker 1: the fabric. And if your kid is is reincarnated, does
Speaker 1: that make your child special? You know? Is this this
Speaker 1: something that in a family that feels very special. Oh,
Speaker 1: my child is reincarnated, he or she is an old soul. Yeah,
Speaker 1: does that give you a higher position among your neighbors. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, as apparent, one of the things you inevitably
Speaker 1: fear and think about is what happens if my child dies? Right,
Speaker 1: and you're by by strengthening their bond to a a
Speaker 1: life before this one, you're of course also strengthening the
Speaker 1: existence of a life beyond this one. So you're kind
Speaker 1: of answering one question with another one. You know. You know,
Speaker 1: that's kind of interesting because that terror management system that
Speaker 1: we talked about in the immortality problem, really I think
Speaker 1: writes that those ages between two and five, at least
Speaker 1: it did for me as a parent, where you get
Speaker 1: to age two with your child and you've gotten past that.
Speaker 1: I have a baby, and I'm kind of you've got
Speaker 1: sleep deprivation, but now I have a toddler, and it
Speaker 1: almost feels like you have to create an even bigger
Speaker 1: swaddle around your your child to protect him or her.
Speaker 1: And this idea that it's not just getting your child
Speaker 1: to age two and aged five and age seven, you're
Speaker 1: gonna be worrying about your child age forty, age eighty,
Speaker 1: especially if you're I don't know, a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: at that point um for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: So I wonder if psychologically it's fertile ground those ages
Speaker 1: two to five to ascribe the sort of reincarnation narrative
Speaker 1: to a child in that culture. Yeah. And the the
Speaker 1: other big thing too, is, of course that you know
Speaker 1: I've already alluded to this, but young children age two
Speaker 1: to five here in the in the in the in
Speaker 1: the West, tend to have a proclivity for imaginary friends.
Speaker 1: We did a whole episode on imaginary ends in the past,
Speaker 1: and I'll try and push that back up back out
Speaker 1: on social media and on the website when this episode publishes.
Speaker 1: But kids are already bringing in unreal personalities into their
Speaker 1: imaginative play. They're bringing in ron or they're bringing in
Speaker 1: Uh didn't you said that your daughter had an image?
Speaker 1: I stopped counting after eight. But she has a couple now,
Speaker 1: twins that terrorize the house, um that show up, and
Speaker 1: then one that she dropped about six months ago, and
Speaker 1: her name was Delta, and she could see her in
Speaker 1: the mirror. And Delta lived in an abandoned house and
Speaker 1: on our street, and so that of course would kind
Speaker 1: of freak me out sometimes. But then I realized that
Speaker 1: our faucet is a Delta faucet um, and that was
Speaker 1: the mirror that she was looking in. You know, she
Speaker 1: was looking at the faucet was she was looking at
Speaker 1: the mirror. So anyway, again you can it's very easy
Speaker 1: for us to start to throw some of the stuff
Speaker 1: together and create these narratives. Yeah, and as Dr Rowitt
Speaker 1: points out, in any roaches spook uh in the West
Speaker 1: were likely to just look at these cases, to hear
Speaker 1: about Ron or delta and and just see it for
Speaker 1: what it is, right to say, oh, it's just imaginary
Speaker 1: friend and dismiss it. But in the East, where there
Speaker 1: is especially in India, where there's this cultural script of reincarnation,
Speaker 1: parents are more likely to not only say, hey, that's reincarnation, clearly,
Speaker 1: that's a sign of a past life. They're likely to
Speaker 1: encourage it to to nurture the child's story into something
Speaker 1: that that fits the reincarnation script even more, to say, oh,
Speaker 1: did you say Ron or do you mean Wren, because
Speaker 1: we know a wren died, a wren had a wife
Speaker 1: die in then the neighboring city or what have you.
Speaker 1: You know, they'll they'll begin to mold it, begin to
Speaker 1: edit it again into something that fits the story. Mingo
Speaker 1: mingo becomes mango mango because they have mango mango, and
Speaker 1: then it becomes mango for him, exactly right, the mingo mango.
Speaker 1: So these are just all examples of the problems with
Speaker 1: any kind of quote unquote scientific exploration of reincarnation. There's
Speaker 1: nothing about it you can actually prove in terms of
Speaker 1: the transfer of soul energy from one being to another.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to these interviews with parents and children,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're just flawed at several different levels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: information gathering, the perception of that information. UM. I wanted
Speaker 1: to go back real quickly to molecular reincarnation because Enrico Uvo,
Speaker 1: who was writing for Science to point oh, has a
Speaker 1: really interesting bit to say about it, just to kind
Speaker 1: of close out some of our thoughts on this. He says,
Speaker 1: we sit to eat molecules that were once part of
Speaker 1: fish and plants. We become the reincarnation of transient beings.
Speaker 1: When we drink ions and uncharged atoms, we borrow them
Speaker 1: and enrich them with nitrogenous compounds. Rivers then flow in
Speaker 1: ocean's ebb with parts of ourselves that will soon become
Speaker 1: parts of others. As thinking animals are molecules orchestrate into
Speaker 1: neurons and neurotransmitters. Strongly interwoven assemblies of neurons known as ideas,
Speaker 1: occasionally emerge. The best of these reincarnate themselves in the
Speaker 1: minds of others, and like the molecules that make them possible,
Speaker 1: they outlive the temporary shelters of individuals. Death is simply
Speaker 1: the final and largest repayment of a molecular debt, but
Speaker 1: a fair amount of caring and weaving can be done
Speaker 1: before then. Yeah, there you go. Or you know, another
Speaker 1: way to put it is the energy cannot be created
Speaker 1: or destroyed, and mass, uh, you and me included are
Speaker 1: just energy and energy transposed into matter, so on, you know,
Speaker 1: on varying levels. Reincarnation makes a lot of sense and
Speaker 1: and feels very solid and and is something that appeals
Speaker 1: to us because we see these cycles in the world
Speaker 1: around us. But when you shine the light of scientific
Speaker 1: inquiry on it, most of of of the structure doesn't
Speaker 1: show up, and what does show up is highly suspect.
Speaker 1: And I think it's a homage to how incredibly artistic
Speaker 1: our brains are and what great storytellers we are, and
Speaker 1: how we survive in this world which is so complex
Speaker 1: and through so many things at us um that we
Speaker 1: can weave these sort of narratives together which are actually
Speaker 1: kind of lovely and give us a lot of solace. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think reincarnation is is a beautiful idea, and I
Speaker 1: do want to stress even though we're saying, you know,
Speaker 1: when when you shine science on it, mostly nothing shows up.
Speaker 1: I don't want anyone to take that the wrong way
Speaker 1: because I think an idea like reincarnation, like like various
Speaker 1: metaphysical ideas about you know, what happens to the soul
Speaker 1: after death, you don't need science to prove that to you.
Speaker 1: That that should be a matter, in my opinion, that
Speaker 1: should be a matter uh, completely outside of science. Let's
Speaker 1: science prove the things that science can prove. Let science
Speaker 1: be your guide for the observable universe in the natural world,
Speaker 1: and in terms of anything that exists outside of that
Speaker 1: natural world for you, anything else in that worldview U
Speaker 1: you know, let that sort of float free. Indeed, all right, well,
Speaker 1: speaking of floating, if you want to float us any
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