June 16, 2022 • 50 mins
Today we welcome Dr. Jim Tucker who is a child psychiatrist and the Bonner-Lowry Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. He is Director of the UVA Division of Perceptual Studies, where he is continuing the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson on reincarnation. He has been invited to speak about his research on Good Morning America, Larry King Live, and CBS Sunday Morning. He recently published BEFORE: Children's Memories of Previous Lives, a 2-in-1 edition of his previous books.
In this episode, I talk to Dr. Jim Tucker about the science of reincarnation. We delve into his research findings and methodology on children who claim to remember their previous lives. Dr. Tucker notes that these children don’t just recall biographical details of their past, but they also retain feelings and emotions. His findings have important implications for how we understand consciousness. We also touch on the topics of mortality, trauma, quantum physics, and panpsychism.
Website: www.uvadops.org
Facebook: /jimbtuckermd
Topics
02:15 Dr. Ian Stevenson’s research
04:59 Psychophore
06:39 Dr. Jim Tucker’s interest in reincarnation
10:01 Past life statements and unusual play
18:34 Announcing dreams, predictions, birthmarks
25:13 Fraud, self-deception, fantasy
30:18 Genetic memory
34:21 Transfer of consciousness
39:07 Why are past memories so fleeting?
41:10 Are we all reincarnated?
42:20 Death, trauma, and growth across lifetimes
48:08 Panpsychism and multiverses
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
But if it's true that the physical grows out of
the mental essentially, then I don't see why an individual
consciousness would be dependent on a physical brain, because in fact,
the physical world is growing out our consciousness. Hello, and
(00:21):
welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome doctor Jim
Tucker on the show. Doctor Jim Tucker is a child
psychiatrist and the Bonner Lowry Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral
Sciences at the University of Virginia. He is director of
the UVA Division of Perceptual Studies, where he's continuing the
work of doctor Ian Stephenson on reincarnation. He's been invited
(00:43):
to speak about his research on Good Morning America, Larry Kinglive,
and CBS Sunday Morning. And he recently published the book
called Before Children's Memories of Previous Lives, a two to
one edition of his previous books. This is a really
fascinating episode, folks. In this episode, I talked to doctor
Jim about the science of reincarnation. Yes, there's a science
(01:03):
behind this. We dwelve into his research findings and methodology
on children who clean to remember their prior lives. Doctor
Tucker notes that these children don't just recall biological details
of their past, but they also retain feelings and emotions.
His finding have important implications for how we understand consciousness.
We also touch on the topics of morality, trauma, quantum physics,
(01:23):
and pan psychism. The implications of this really run deep,
and while there's still a lot of questions that remain,
I had a lot of fun chatting with doctor Tucker
about what's possible. I hope you enjoy this episode just
as much as I do. So now I bring you
Doctor Jim Tucker. Really, nice to meet you. Nice to
meet you you. I am utterly fascinated with your work
(01:43):
and don't know why it's not more mainstream. Quite frankly,
there's so many implications of it for so many areas
of cognoive science that I study, and it runs deep
to consciousness, issues of consciousness, issues of even free will.
You know, so there's so much to discuss. Well, that's right,
but yeah, it's not more mainstream because it challenges a
(02:05):
lot of the mainstream assumptions, so it's easy for people
to ignore it. Yeah. So, well, before we jump into
the deep end, I wanted to get a sense of
some of your biggest influences. I do get the sense
of the doctor Ian Stevenson played a huge role in
your work, and even to the extent that you're kind
(02:26):
of carrying the baton like I like to think I'm
carrying the baton from Abraham Maslow, You're carrying the baton
from doctor Ian Stevenson. So I can you talk a
little about his work and the work he initiated in
like nineteen fifty eight, I believe, right. So, yeah, he
came to Uva in the late fifties to be a
chairman of the Department Psychiatry and had never done any
(02:47):
had he had an interest in parapsychology, but he had
never done any and he was still in his late
thirties when he came here to be chair. I mean,
he's feeling quite a successful mainstream career mostly or much
of it, looking at Sarkis kinds of things. But then
he got intrigued by this phenomenon of young children in
different parts of the world who said that they had
(03:09):
membories of a past life, and he started trying to
investigate those cases and find out exactly what the child
said and whether they in fact matched a life from
the past. His work. Ian once said, on the obsessive
compulsive scale went to ten, he was in eleven, and
he liked to get all the details right, So he
(03:32):
was he was very methodical in studying these cases and
eventually stepped down his chairman of the department to focus
full time on them, and then spent the bulk of
the next few decades studying these cases. And we continue
to do that, so doctor Ian Stevenson. Yeah, so that's
that's interesting. I didn't know that he would score high
(03:53):
on OCD, so he was really Do you get the
sense from reading his writings that he really wasn't biased
to a certain conclusion, that he really wanted to admass
as much evidence as possible to before he made up
his mind. You know, I don't even know if he
ever made up his mind completely, but yeah, do you
get that sense that he really wanted to get as
much data as possible. Yeah, he, I mean, he was
(04:15):
basically trying to determine for himself. So yeah, as we
all are, I mean, were research questions are ones that
were questioning In his case, he had become persuaded that
the strongest cases that reincarnation was the best explanation for them,
but not the only So he's certainly left that door
(04:38):
open that he could be wrong about it, but he
was persuaded that, you know, there was people no longer
had to accept reincarnation on faith. They could accept it
on evidence that they chose to. Well, he coined the
term psycho for right ps y c h O p
h O R soul bearing. What was his thought about that?
(05:01):
Why did he find the need to coin such a term? Well, right,
so he was His idea was that if he had
these memories and emotions and behavioral characteristics in a life,
that if they continued on into another life, as these
cases appeared to suggest, then there would have to be
(05:22):
some sort of vehicle to carry them. So, rather than
use a term like soul or spirit, you know, some
sort of religious term, he felt that he should coin
a new term that didn't have connotations that were not
necessarily consistent with the work, or certainly not consistent with
the attempt to look at this in sort of a
(05:43):
serious objective way as opposed to a religious way. Yeah. Yeah,
because even just people listening to this conversation, even they're like, oh,
they're talking about recarnation, reincarnation, it might be hard for
people to even have a model in their head that
one can discuss this in a scientific way. So we're
gonna let's change some people's minds here today in the
sense that we can show them that we can have
(06:04):
this discussion in a in a way that is evidence based.
And so, Doc, what I find interest is Doctor Stevens,
he gives this quote, reincarnation is the best, even though
not the only, explanation for the stronger cases we have investigated.
That was the quote that got to the closest when
I wanted to know what his conclusion was. And you're
(06:25):
not Ian Stevens's you're your own human. So as a
jumping point from that, I want to, you know, continue
the rest of this conversation day on what you've discovered
and what you've concluded, maybe have similarly end differently from
doctor Ian Stevenson, even though he was a huge mentor
of yours. So you kind of popped on the scene
in nineteen ninety six on the reincarnation scene. You reincarnated
(06:45):
in nineteen ninety six. Let right, you left your private
practice in psychiatry to go all in on this. So
this this was this was a motivation, like there was
a moment like a Hoard Gardner calls it a crystallizing
experience right where you're like, this is it, this is
what I want to do with my life moving forward.
So how did that happen? Yeah, it was a real
fork in the road for sure, and I think we
(07:07):
took back up for a step. It basically the big
fork in the road when my wife and I got together.
It opened me up to, I mean to be frank,
to experiencing life in sort of a different way, a
more fuller way or a fuller way. And she was
open to these kinds of things in a way that
I had not been, so that got me intrigued. So
(07:29):
I was reading about different things, and it was actually
reading one of these seams and books I learned that
his research division here at University of Virginia had gotten
a grant to do a new study on near death experiences,
not reincarnation, but new death experiences. So I just called
them up to see if they needed help with that study,
and sort of one thing led to another. But when
(07:49):
I left my private practice to come on here, I
have continued to be a child psychiatrist. So about half
of my time roughly is spent doing clinical work, patient
care work, helping to train the residence and the fellows.
So it's not like I left it all behind, but
I did decide that I was going to do the
work that I wanted to do, and you know, if
(08:12):
it didn't work out, I could always go back into
private practice, but in the meantime, I was going to
explore this area. Again. I mean, the question of life
after death is something that you know, interests all of
us at least to some extent. But what really appealed
to me was the serious minded sort of scientific approach,
(08:32):
evidence based approach that was going on at UVA and
that I wanted to be a part of. Yeah, I
mean it must have also felt a little bit like
a rebel, right, like there must be some bone in
your body that like, you know, maybe like just a
personality trait you maybe have had your whole life for
you to like, you know, like I'm gonna, you know,
(08:53):
take on the establishment a little bit. Yeah. Actually I'm
quite the opposite. I've alway fascinating, fascinatingretty much a straight
row rule follower kind of person. So yeah, it was
a step out of my comfort zone. But but again,
the approach is mainstream. I mean it's at it's looking
(09:13):
at a topic that people don't usually apply these methods to,
but that it's the same end goal. I've seen what
we can see, what we can discover. Yeah, I mean,
I bet you see all sorts of explanations for things
that make you roll your eyes, you know, like that
are just so outside of the evidence space and you're like, well,
(09:35):
you know, I don't think that it's suggests that's true enough.
But here's a fact, a fascinating fact. Some young children
say they have been here before. Okay, that's the fact.
Now what derives from that? Well, lots of things can
be investigated to try to understand that, and you probably
always get asked, well, what's the mechanism, what's the right
(09:55):
And there's all sorts of explanations. I would like to
go through in a systematic way and discuss first of
all the mean characteristics that you see, and we'll go
through to have the list, and then I also want
to discuss the potential explanations for it, and then I
want to end with your your thoughts on what's what's
going on based on the totality of the evidence. So
one thing you often see are just the most simplest,
(10:18):
most conceptually associated with this idea, which are past life statements. Right. So,
these kids, usually between the ages of two and five,
talk about someone else's whole life, right, and they seem
to have memories of it, right, So can you elucidate
a little bit what exactly the nature of that? It
looks like. Yeah, it's very much memory in the sense
(10:40):
that is, from one person's point of view. They're not
just spouting facts, but more of what to them feel
like memories and often focused on the end of the life.
So three quarters of the kids talk about how they
died in the past life. They remember at death, and
most of those are sort of violent death or unnatural
(11:02):
death anyway, murder, suicide, accident, combat, that sort of thing.
And with those sort of traumatic memories can come other
memories to about family. They may express a lot of
emotional attachment toward previous parents that they may tell their parents,
you're not really my parents, my parents live in such
and such place, and they at times will give enough
(11:26):
specific details which pretty much have to include names of
places or names of people, but give enough where people
then verify that their apparent memories do in fact match
a life from the past. A lot of them will
also show a lot of emotions. I mentioned that the
attachment to the previous family, many of them will show
(11:49):
phobias toward the mode of death the previous person had.
That the kids may act out various aspects of the
past life and their play. But you know, again, it's
not just information that they seem to be connecting to
or that seems to have carried on, but the whole
that feelings and emotions have carried on as well. It
(12:11):
seems these kids do this spontaneously. It doesn't involve hypnotic
regression or anything like that. And they come from all
over the world that we've studied over twenty five hundred cases,
and while they're easiest to find in cultures with the
general belief in or reincarnation, they happen everywhere. So it's
(12:32):
with the American cases, most of the parents did not
believe in past lives before their kids started talking about one.
So it's not like anyone created this or led them
to believe these things. It's just something that arises from them.
That they have these emotional memories that they describe great
(12:53):
and few of them are famous people. It's not like
they're really prominent cases. Would you say that the one
hundreds of these cases can't be explained away by somehow
the kid finding a news article you know somewhere or
watching something on television about a really violent death of someone.
Can you say that you have investigated that systematically and
(13:15):
one hundred percent of the cases can't be explained away
by that. Well, I wouldn't necessarily say one hundred percent
for anything, but in the strongest cases, for instance, some
of the kids will talk about either a deceased family
member or a deceased person from the same town or village.
So those you know, you always wondered did they learn
(13:36):
about the previous person by natural means? But with the
stranger cases, I mean they're or they remember being a stranger.
There are plenty of those where it it's essentially inconceivable
that they learned about this stuff through normal means. That
there may be other explanations for the cases, but not
that they somehow read a news article about this person
who lived fifty years before and that you know, died
(13:58):
in without anyone knowing that dog. I mean that that's
just not a reasonable explanation for most fascinating and you know,
children have wild imaginations, right, and you have enough people
on the earth, you know, I could I bet I
could imagine something right now, and then statistically it probably
would match up to some you know, I could make
(14:21):
up something right now, be like I'm Johnny. I'm Johnny
who died of a bullet to the head in the war.
I bet there's someone named Johnny who died with a
bullethead of the war. So just it just statistically, Now,
do you think that can fully explain as a rich,
rich imagination that just happens to match a prior life. Well,
(14:41):
it depends on the statement. So yeah, like you said,
you know, if someone says I was Bob and I
was killed in a car accident in California, all right,
well they're going to be a lot, right, So you
have to look at how this specificity of the statements
so there where it can only fit one person. So
(15:01):
you know, there's a well known American case of a
kid who talked about being a World War Two pilot
who was shot in the Pacific and gave the name
of the aircraft carrier, first and last name of a
friend of his, describe where he died, described how he died,
and there was only one person in history whose life
matched those details. So you know, you could say it's
(15:24):
a coincidence, but that I don't think is plausible. I mean,
that would be one heck of a coincidence. Yeah, one
heck of a coincidence. And you tend to find that
these individuals come from not necessarily the person's bloodline, but
a certain vicinity to where they live. Right, You don't
(15:46):
tend to have prior lives of someone on the other
end of the world. That's true, although we do occasionally
get those reports. And you know, if a child, if
an American child says my last life was in Africa, well,
I mean, there's no way to verify that without a
whole lot more details. But with the ones that do
have verifiable details, even the ones who describe a past
(16:07):
life as a member of another country, there was often
a geographical connection. So for instance, Burmese children who said
they were Japanese soldiers killed in burrowing during World War Two.
So right, most of them are not related. They're not
describing the life of an ancestor, so there's not a
genetic connection, but there is it is for intact memories
(16:33):
to come through. Typically the past life was one that
was reasonably close by, usually in the same country. And
then you also tend to see some past life behaviors,
like unusual play among these children. Can you kind of
celebrate what you see there? Yeah, the most common is
actually acting now the previous occupation, So I mean not
(16:54):
just playing war like all kids do, but specific things
like a kid who played repeatedly hours on end at
being a biscuit and soda a shopkeeper, which the person
had done. Some of them will kind of reenact the
death scene over and over. That's not as common as
the occupation, but we do have some of those cases.
(17:16):
But sometimes the occupation ones quite precise as well. So
there's this kid to remember it being a nightclub owner
and would even put out seats for his two wives,
And it turned out the previous person was somebody who
fit that kind of description. So just taken on its own,
(17:39):
the play may not necessarily be that impressive, but when
you put it in with the whole picture, then it
looks like it is connected to the memories the child.
That's a great point, and I should have stepped back
and asked about your methodology, because it is true that
when you collect these reports, you tend to further investigate
(17:59):
ones that show two out of a list of behaviors
that there are multiple these things that when I was
reading inter methodology, is that correct, right, Yeah, there are
a number of features that we look for. The most
obvious is claiming to remember a past life. But then yeah,
there are behaviors that are associated a peer associated with
(18:20):
the memories there are These are not common, but are
cases where the previous person made a prediction about where
they would be born the next time around. They're also
what we call announcing dreams, where usually the mom when
she's pregnant, we'll have a dream about a previous person
saying I'm coming to be born to you. And it
(18:40):
seems like there are one or two other features that
make the list for you. We have to have at
least two of those to register it in our cases
of birthmarks and birth defects. That Matt, I was going
to bring that up on the previous person. So the
most common are the statements and the behaviors, but we
get the others as well. I thought it was interesting
that like in Indiana, where reincarnation is a idea that's
(19:05):
in the consciousness there of the culture a third of
your cases from India include birthmarks or birth defects. They
are thought to correspond to wounds on the previous personalities,
with eighteen percent of those including medical records that confirm
the match. My gosh, what are things going on with
the birthmarks? Well, I will say, like the child intentionally
(19:26):
branded themselves, right, Yeah, No, I think we've ruled that out.
But I will say the percentage is a little bit
misleading in the sense that Ian Steinson was really fascinated
by those cases, so those that would affect which ones
he would fully investigate. But yes, there are plenty of
those cases out there, and yet it's once where the
child is born with the birthmark er full birth defects
(19:49):
that match wounds, usually the fatal wounds on the body
of the previous person. And they include eighteen cases where
they have both entrants and exit wounds of somebody who
is a gunshot victim. Deformity is like there's a case
of a little boy who the previous boy lost the
fingers that his right hand in the foder chopping machine,
(20:10):
and then the second board is then born with missing
the fingers on the right hand. Uh. And there are
lots of those picking out there. We get some American
ones like that as well, that they're not as common here,
but we've certainly had ones, including a one with heart defect,
others with work marks, So yeah, they're there. It seems
(20:31):
that if I mean, if we accept the cases there,
if there is this sort of carryover of mind or
consciousness that sometimes traumatic either memories or even traumatic wounds
can affect the developing fetus in the way that they
show up in Yeah, you talk about that in the
in your in one of your books about the fascinating
(20:51):
nature of how our mind can affect our bodies. You know,
how these things are intertwined and maybe the consciousness creates
the birthmarks. But it, you know, it makes one question,
you know, where do birthmarks come from in any of us?
Like I have birthmarks? Right? Like? Why do I have
birth marks? What's what's the developmental explanation of that? What
(21:11):
a would a biologist be able to explain that? To me?
Confab I think most of them did. The cause is unnearned.
I mean, not that I'm an expert on birth marks,
but there you know, there are some birth defects, in
particular where there's a syndrome that's been identified. But but
for most of them it's unknown. And you know, it's
not necessarily a ton of research on birth marks because
they're nine and and Ian never claimed that all birth
(21:35):
marks were related to past lives, But is that in
some of these notes? But but it makes me wonder, Yeah, doctor,
doctor Tucker. I have a confession. When I was three
years old or so, we were in Disneyland and we
were I still remember this vividly. I remember this vividly.
We're in Disneyland and we were at the hotel afterwards,
(21:59):
and I went into the bathroom and I remember I
was standing in front of the toilet and suddenly I
saw I was like an old man in my head,
and I saw my whole life, my whole life flashed
before my eyes, like I saw, like like suddenly, like
I wasn't three year old, Scott. I was literally like
a mature old man with like and all the things
(22:20):
that come along with that, Like I had lots of
mature thoughts like the three year old you know, wouldn't
tend to have. And it freaked me out and so
much so that I remember this moment even even today.
And I but it just disappeared. It just disappeared. When
I like walked back into the room. It was just
this like moment where I just I was, I was
(22:42):
a I witterly felt like I was this old man
now and it couldn't feel like an old man Scott
or I mean couldn't tell hard to tell, but I
still remember it vividly, like I remember that memory vividly.
I mean, that's crazy, like I was three or four,
but I uh uh, it felt like like I was
(23:04):
that they're both both both were in me at the
same time. I was the old Scott be like knowing
everything like that an old man knows and being like,
oh gosh, but I have this three year old body
that has to like live it, live, live it through,
like I have to like go through the motions of
living a life. But I see it at the end
of the life. I see the whole life lived. It
(23:26):
was the weirdest thing. Yeah. Yeah, it's the kind of
thing that I mean, these experiences do happen people, And
I mean with our cases, we do have some where
the child will talk with grave emotion about it past
like just one time and then they parents were asking
them about a week later they don't even remember. But
then there are others, you know, where people will have
(23:48):
sort of transcendental experiences, which you know, as a three
year old, sort of being able to seemingly stepping back
from your day to day experience and seeing the big picture.
It's something that happens to people. And you know, what
do we make of that? It sounds like you sort
of stepped out of time for yeah, yeah, yeah, just
(24:10):
had a very like mature way of I mean, I
wasn't a three year old at that moment, you know.
Just so, it's so, it's so interesting. So these are
some explanations to consider, and I wanted to go through this.
There are normal explanations and then, of course there are
paranormal explanations. Let's just let's let's start with the normal,
normal ones. You say, quote, we approach the cases with
(24:32):
an attitude of scientific curiosity. We were open to all possibilities.
I mean, gosh, what a great scientific approach. I wish
all scientists had that approach. Quite frankly, I can't say
I'll do so. Normal explanations include things like, well, maybe
these kids have fraud. Maybe it's fraud, wold fraud. It's
not like the kids are creating the fraud, but they're
broad conditions that make it look like those kids are
(24:54):
saying those things, right, is that? Is that one of
that potentially? Yeah? Actually, Ian Simpson published a case of
I mean published a paper on I think of seven
cases of either deception or self deception. Sometimes very rarely,
where the child's family may be trying to get say
(25:14):
money out of a wealthy family and say that their
child was the previously family member. What's more common, I
think is self deception, where the families may make sort
of too much of what of the child's statements and
then kind of build this story that the child was
either a deceased family member in a past life or
(25:35):
occasionally famous, a famous person. I mean, I've gotten ones
for famous people like Babe Ruth and people like that,
which I mean, the child wasn't Babe Ruth. I'm pretty skeptical. Well,
what do you do. What if you get five kids
and they all say that they were Babe Ruth, do
you got to like they got to fight that out
amongst themselves, like you know, which is the real one? Yeah?
(25:56):
Well right, so, I mean that almost never happens with
but we do get some reports from adults who feel
like they were someone famous in the past, often not
because they have specific memories, but because of other aspects
or coincidence or similarities. So yeah, we've had a number
of Thomas Jefferson's. I think that's the leading one, you know,
(26:18):
the University of Virginia, and I mean the adult cases
we tend to look at with a fairly skeptical eye anyway,
because if you don't have specific memories, I think it's
very hard to even speculate about who you were in
a past life. But again, I mean that's a tiny
minority of these cases. For the most part, there's no
(26:41):
reason to think that the parents or the child that
they're committing deception, and typically there's not even any grounds
to think they would be committing self deception. You actually
just made me think of a question that have you
ever had two children claimed to have memories of this
person not famous? You know, would that be interesting? Yeah,
(27:03):
there are cases. One of our colleagues, Antonia Mills, up
in Northern British Columbia, study cases of with the tribal
people's up there, and there were there are some communities
where they will not a sign but recognize the child
(27:24):
as being a past life person on very limited grounds.
I mean, they say a dream and they may decide, okay,
this child was that person. And it's usually like a
village elder or somebody that was well respected in the community,
so not a famous person, but somebody that people looked
up to. So there may be three or four kids
(27:45):
who are all identify as being that person in the
past line. But again that that's a real exception to do, real, rare,
real rare. Yeah. Another potential explanation is, well, we already
discussed this one, which is fantasy. Yeah, but I think
we already discussed on you kind of meet well yeah,
I mean I will say, if none of these memories
(28:08):
could be verified, then I would have a great belief
in the likelihood that this could be fantasy. And when
kids certainly are capable of fantasy and say all kinds
of things. Again, we don't pay that at face values,
whether we can determine that these statements actually matched a
past life, but before we would think that it's more
than just fantasy. Yeah, and then faulty memory by informants,
(28:35):
how much could that explain the findings? Right? So, the
idea is that the child makes some perhaps general statements
about a past life, that the family finds someone whose
life more or less match those statements, and then after
the families meet and exchange information, then the child gets
credited with more information than they actually had, and currently
(28:58):
cases for it that warrant serious consideration. But then there
are all the cases where we've written documentation of what
the child said before anyone knew if there was a
previous person, so we can be sure that they're not
faulty memory in those because we've got documentation. And then
this one is very interesting for a number of reasons.
(29:19):
Genetic memory. This one kind of gets to the heart
of a lot of a lot of things that I
personally study. Our worlds were going to are about to
intersect in a second. You'll see why. But can you
tell me a little bit about what that is? What
is genetic memory? Yeah, that the thought is that the
idea is that the memories would be transferred in the
(29:39):
genes to the child, so it would not be some
sort of paranormal kind of thing, but a physical transfer
through the genes. But that does not explain could not
explain most of our cases, partly because most of the
time the child is not talking about a direct ancestor,
which they would have to be for the genes to comfort.
(30:01):
And also most of the children have memories of how
they died, which, of course people die after they've already
passed on their genetic material. So you know, there are
a lot of very interesting facets to what can be
transferred in genes or at least epigenetically, but what kinds
of memories crafts can be transferred. But it doesn't seem
(30:23):
to be a factor in these cases. Well, hold up,
hold up my own area of research. This is where
our world's intersect. And I've long been thinking about this.
I've studied prodigies, and I've studied savants, and I'm very
dear friends with a man named Daryld Trufford who passed
(30:46):
away pretty recently, and he was he was the scientific
advisor to the movie rain Man. But he was also
the most knowledgeable, well known scientists studying savants, and he
had this idea of genetic memory. He thought that was
the only explanation. He thought that was the best explanation
(31:07):
for how a lot of these individuals with very low
IQs even could sit down and paint something for photorealistic
or sit down at the piano and play something amazing.
And even in the Prodigies realm, there's a lot of
trying to understand how children under the age of ten
(31:28):
can just have a fully formed talent. You know, it
takes a little bit of practice, but it doesn't take
that much input for them to learn. It's not like
the parents are pushing these kids. It's the kids are
pushing the parents. And then I've studied at great length
the idea of gifted children and the idea of prodigies,
and my friend David Henry Feldman wrote a book about prodigies,
(31:52):
and specifically, in there he noted that there seemed to
be a higher than greater chance of these kids somewhere
in their ancestry there was someone who had a talent
that resembled it, and he didn't rule out the possibility
that there was some sort of genetic memory. So genetic
memory has been brought into the discussion of these other
(32:14):
demeans like prodigies and savants. I didn't know. I don't
know if you're familiar with any of these two individuals
that I mentioned, or their work or writings about this,
but I'd love to bring all these worlds together because
I think there's something really really, there's something going on. Yeah,
there's something going on. Yeah, And I mean I don't
doubt that at all. And it may be it's conceivable
(32:36):
that there's a genetic disposition for recalling past lives and
that they do seem more common in some communities than others.
But my point is for the memories of one specific life,
I don't see how that could be happening through genetic
transfer in these cases. But because they're recalling lives, that
(32:59):
is not. But you know, if you consider these children
to be svants or or whatever, they have this special ability.
Now it may well be that that special ability may
have a genetic Yeah. It gets, it gets really, you know,
(33:20):
it gets it starts to get metaphysical, right. I mean,
I'm not trying to go out all Ancient Aliens out
on this and be like, could it be that the
Chaka record has all these things and that we're tapping
into Now, I'm not going I'm not that guy. I
actually was on an episode of Ancient Aliens, but I wasn't.
I was the scientist and I made some very clear,
(33:40):
factual statements about where genius comes from. The whole episode
was where does genius come from and I and I
made some statement like, well, we can't reduce genius entirely
to the brain, and then the guy with the big
hair said, what she means is could it be that
it's from the Ashakk record. So I think that's not
(34:00):
what you meant. That's not what I meant. But but
I think that, you know, I think at this point
in our conversation would be fun to play around in
the space of what what's the what is possible? What
is going on now? Of course there are I didn't
mention the paranormal explanations. Extra sensory perception has been one
that has been put forward, but as you note, that
(34:22):
doesn't explain the birthmarks possession. I'm fascinated with that one
as well. I you know, you look get. You know
people who who who do GET feel like they're possessed
by the devil for instance, you know, and then you
start to look at those cases more scientifically, you see
there's mental illness, schizophrenia, aspects that are that are more
reasonable explanations than they were just possessed by the devil.
(34:42):
It's not as cut and dry as that they were
just possessed by the devil, and then of course the
paranormal explanation of reincarnation, and you say that doesn't explain
fully why the memory is so fleeting. For instance, let's
you know, for remaining moments here. Lets let's really play
in the space of what is going on, doctor Jim Tucker.
Let's just get right down to it. You know, what
(35:04):
could be going on in a way that science can
explain someday. I mean, maybe we don't have the tools yet.
Maybe that's that's part of the problem. Yeah, I think
there are anomalies that in order to explain them you
don't start over with science, but you may have to
sort of broaden some things, you know, just like quantum
(35:27):
theory broad and classical physics. And not that I'm saying
this is like quantum theory, but you can't just if
you accept these cases, you can't just map them on
to a materialist understanding of reality, because they involve some
sort of transfer of mind, even if you don't accept
(35:49):
it as reincarnation, but some sort of transfer separate from
the physical and taking sort of a larger view. As
time has gone on, I've become more of a scientific
or philosophical idealist. The idea that ultimately consciousness is at
(36:10):
the core of reality and the physical grows out of it.
And there are people a lot smarterer than me, like
next Plank, the founder of quantum theory, who said the
same thing, that ultimately reality comes down to consciousness, and
that can be sort of mind bending thing, can be
hard to sometimes to kind of make sense of it.
(36:33):
But if it's true that the physical grows out of
the mental essentially, then I don't see why an individual
consciousness would be dependent on a physical brain, because in fact,
the physical world is growing out of consciousness. So it
would make sense that this piece of consciousness or mind
(36:54):
that each of us has can continue on regardless of
what happens to the physical body weren't having And then
in our cases at least I have never said as universal,
but in our cases at least, it seems that this
mind has been attached to a new physical body and
then continued on with a new model. So are you
(37:17):
are you atally literally saying that you think the only
way to fully explain the totality evidence is one where
we're going to have to disassociate the mind from or
consciousness from the physical brain in some capacity in some way. Yeah,
I mean, if you accept these cases, then yes, I
(37:38):
think you're pretty much forced to conclude that. And you know,
each person can decide for themselves whether they should accept
the cases. But I think if you look at our
strongest ones as a group, I mean, they do provide
good evidence that something's going on here, that these children
do actually have memories of a life from the past.
(37:58):
I mean, there's so many deep implications of this if
this is if this is true, But what I want
to really understand is why they're so fleeting, Why the
memories so fleeting. Why don't people when they get recarnated
just get recarnated as the total person for the rest
of their life. Could it there be mechanisms at play
where that's just the way, Like when you have a
(38:19):
human psychology of immediate memories, it just inhibits past life
memories like that. There's a huge conflict there, and the
way the biological system reconciles that conflict is by, you know,
by prioritizing the current immediate experience. Yeah, I mean, typically
these kids lose these memories or most of these memories
(38:40):
at the same time that all kids lose memories of
early childhood. So you know, infantile anagor early childhood amnesia
where that's not sure. Now that their brain is undergoing
tremendous changes during this period of a lot of pruning,
and you know, memories and sometimes of skills or whatever,
(39:01):
it's sort of get left behind because others get prioritized.
It would make sense that for most of these kids
they lose those memories at the same time they lose
memories of real child. Now another related question is why
there's such glimpses why you know, like you said, it's
not like suddenly they remember everything from the past life.
You know, the person hasn't just continued on. It's it's
(39:23):
almost more like when you wake up and you've got
glimpses of a dream and sometimes you remember a lot
of details, and then other times you've got kind of images,
but it's pretty hard to put them together, and you know,
they can fade. That's how it is for some of
these kids that they will come out with certain details
at certain times, but it's not like they can suddenly
(39:43):
spell out the whole past line. So it's I mean,
it's amazing that any memories would come through, right, but
it's it's usually not a full complete thing, but it
really varies from child to child. So do you think
it's Does your gut tell you that that we're all
reincarnated from from some assemblage of prior things outside of
(40:09):
our own genetic ancestry, or do you think there are
only special cases like the ones you're discovering so not.
There's so many questions to be asked about this. That's
one I'll stop there. Yeah, Well, I feel like our
cases again do provide evidence that there can be this continuation,
and I think that coming out of speculating, but I
(40:31):
think that would apply to all of us. But it
doesn't mean that all of us have lived here before,
or that we would be reborn here in this reality.
You know, consciousness that is the core of all. I
don't know why we couldn't have very different kinds of
experiences in very different kinds of realities. So my own
personal guess is that reincarnation is not universal in the
(40:54):
sense that we all come back here, but that that
mind or consciousness there is a piece that does continue
on for all of us. What do you think happens
after we die? Well, I don't know that it's universal.
I mean, I don't know that we all have the
same experience. I think that there are probably a lot
of factors that go into what we experience next. And
(41:19):
for some that may be immediately coming back here, but
for others and make you very different. And you know,
if you look at near death experiences, people who where
their hearts stop and then they have these experiences, there
can be real variability. I mean, there are similarities, but
there can also be real individual differences. And I suspect
(41:39):
that that it's true for any of the afterlife kinds
of experiences. Well, what if you want to increase the
chances that you're going to live after you die, should
you die of violent death? I mean, is that what
your research suggests. I mean, that's what it suggests now
that you should have some dramatic ending. Make sure you
have a dramatic ending, folks, well to have the memories
(42:01):
come through. That may well be true. But you know,
it's just like traumatic memories in this life. I mean,
there are memories when people have PTSD, memories that they
wish they didn't have, but they couldn't get rid of them.
There's a real strength, unfortunately to traumatic memories. That may
well be the case across lifetimes. Wow. But as far
(42:22):
as the kind of experience you have next, I mean
I would guess that it relates to the kind of
experiences you have here and also the kind of life
that you lead. I mean not in a heaven and
hell kind of sense, but just if you're focused on
love and connecting with others and giving to others, you know,
(42:42):
it seems to me that would affect your whatever it
is that survives, and if we call it a soul,
that would have an effect on your soul. And then
what affect what comes next? Well, this is the right
I'm a scientist, and I really am curious what patterns
you found among the all the if you look at
(43:03):
all the people, all the cases of the past lines,
and you look at that like, I'm a personality psychologist.
I want to like do the I want to crunch
the numbers, like of the big five personality traits? Is
there are there certain characteristics that they all have in common?
Is there some like I feel like we can like
get this mystery, like this would this would get us
to the like this this is real deep stuff. If
(43:25):
we can discover who what personality traits are more likely
to make you move on? After you die, and mean,
that's that's some pretty heavy stuff there. Well, we aren't
doing a study now where we are interviewing adults, so
we originally study as children because this work's been done
on so long and we are administering Big Five questionnaires
to them. Perfect we haven't gotten where we're done with
(43:47):
the analysis yet, but we'll see if anything comes from that.
I mean, my guess is, again there's a difference between
having memories versus surviving at all. I would be disappointed
if it turns out certain personality all these survive while
others done, you know, for certain personality, people's personality characteristics.
But who knows what. We'll have to see where the
(44:09):
where the data leads us. I guess we wait. I
think we might be talking about different things. I'm not
talking about the Big five traits of the person who
is alive right now, is now what I'm talking about,
What are the common characteristics of all the past lives,
like what's the personality? You can do that analysis, right of.
I mean, you can't physically administer the Big Five to them,
but I'm saying you can do the qualitative sort of
(44:31):
impressions like are they are these do youse tend to
be good people? Do they live good lives? Like? Is
there a pattern there or some of them? Do you
know what I'm saying, Well, I do. I mean with
the Big five, yes, we don't have enough information for
most of them to do any sort of reasonable assessment
of that. As far as whether they were good people
or not, there's quite a range. I mean, they're you know,
(44:54):
if you're more likely to die violently if that life
is remembered. There are plenty of people die violently through
no far of their own, but there are others who
you know, are involved in knife fights or you know whatever.
So some of the people have been fairly nasty people.
It did some fairly nasty things, But then there are
other people who are you know, just kind of typical
(45:16):
that people do in their best Well, that's it. That's
really important information in itself. I mean you're basically you know,
they're what if their like listeners who are saying like,
I want to increase the chances that like some five
year old remembers my life, you know, for two years. Yeah,
that's all we get. But there's another part of this
that's a bit disappointing, right, Like with the reincarnation stuff
(45:38):
is like, what what are you saying? Like, the best
extension we get is some you know, annoying four year
old like you know, being like, oh I'm Scarborough Kolfman,
you know, and then it's like no one believes them,
and then you know, two years later they don't remember
me the rest of their life. Like you're saying, that's
the best I got in terms of extending my consciousness, Well,
it's sort of you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I
do know what you're saying, but I I'd like to
(46:01):
view this as there may be sort of a larger
self as well as the personalities that we have in
each life. So yeah, I mean, you know, if kid
comes back and remembers your life and then by the
time they're school age they've forgotten it. If there's a
larger self that is part of your existence this time
as well as the next time, then you hope that
(46:22):
this larger self grows or learns or becomes more evolved
however you want to put it. You hopes that each
lifetime that there can be progress made, and you know
that that is just part of our journey. My gosh,
there's just so many implications even for theories of consciousness.
(46:42):
I'm sure you're aware of panpsychism. I think that's the
most compatible with what your theory is. My prior guest.
My current episode that's up right now you might want
to listen to. It is with Antonio Dimasio on the
nature of consciousness. So you're going to be a really
interesting counter from a very different view. Yes, he's not
(47:04):
a big fan of panpsychism, but some people are some
people that I'm friends with, are you know. It's I
don't have a card in this horse personally. I want
to know the truth. There's so many just deep implications
of this, you know, and it makes you just think
about how does it all tie together? What does it
all mean? Now? If we zoom out even further right,
(47:24):
like to the universe, we zoom out, you know, is
the universe finite? Is the universe not findite? You know?
I have this kind of intuition that physicists would probably
disagree with, is probably not possible. But I have this
intuition that that time just keeps whooping back on itself,
that like that we're going to like it'll get to
some point of the universe, even if it's like thirty
(47:47):
trillion years from now. They're kind of like, whoops, back again,
because I don't, you know, like and that I'm going
to live this life again, you know, like I I
really kind of feel that's that's that's the way it works.
There are businessists who talk about basically new universes bubbling
out of current ones, where it's an infinite number of universes,
(48:09):
and if it's truly infinite, it means that at some
point there'd be this same existence we have now that
would be redone. So yeah, it all gets rather mind modeling.
It does get mind boggling, and you can kind of see, like,
you know, the error error in the system, like maybe
it's not a full proof system, and that's what you're
(48:30):
seeing in your cases where like it starts to like,
you know, it's like whoops, we put that person's consciousness
over in that person's body for a couple of years. Whoops.
You know, maybe it's not even like a like a
conscious entity that's doing it, but a process, a process.
Well that's right, and yeah, the process may it sort
of short circuited, sometimes particulated with sudden violent deaths where
(48:55):
things don't go the way they typically do and then
you have my friend David Chalmers a book Are we
living in a simulation? And here he puts it as
a greater than fifty probability that we are. What I'm
saying is we need to tie all this stuff together
and come with a unitary theory of whatever with a
scientific basis. And it's just funny even talk about Doctor Tucker.
(49:17):
If there are people listening to this episode who have
cases of their children or even the kids themselves, will
if if I were listening to my podcast and they
want to report this to you, what can they do? Well,
they can contact us through our website which is www
dot uva DOPS, which is Division of Personalities that is
theops dot org, or they just google my name and
(49:41):
find this that way. But yeah, what we'd love to
hear from families if their children are talking about past
on wonderful. Thank you so much for approaching a taboo
topic with such a scientific rigor. It's really it's really
refreshing to see that. And thanks for channeling me today
on my podcast. It's been my pleasure. Beautiful. Thanks for
(50:02):
listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd
like to react in some way to something you heard.
I encourage you to join in the discussion at thusycology
podcast dot com or on our YouTube page thus Psychology Podcast.
We also put up some videos of some episodes on
our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check
that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of
(50:22):
the show, and tune in next time for more on
the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.
But if it's true that the physical grows out of
the mental essentially, then I don't see why an individual
consciousness would be dependent on a physical brain, because in fact,
the physical world is growing out our consciousness. Hello, and
(00:21):
welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome doctor Jim
Tucker on the show. Doctor Jim Tucker is a child
psychiatrist and the Bonner Lowry Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral
Sciences at the University of Virginia. He is director of
the UVA Division of Perceptual Studies, where he's continuing the
work of doctor Ian Stephenson on reincarnation. He's been invited
(00:43):
to speak about his research on Good Morning America, Larry Kinglive,
and CBS Sunday Morning. And he recently published the book
called Before Children's Memories of Previous Lives, a two to
one edition of his previous books. This is a really
fascinating episode, folks. In this episode, I talked to doctor
Jim about the science of reincarnation. Yes, there's a science
(01:03):
behind this. We dwelve into his research findings and methodology
on children who clean to remember their prior lives. Doctor
Tucker notes that these children don't just recall biological details
of their past, but they also retain feelings and emotions.
His finding have important implications for how we understand consciousness.
We also touch on the topics of morality, trauma, quantum physics,
(01:23):
and pan psychism. The implications of this really run deep,
and while there's still a lot of questions that remain,
I had a lot of fun chatting with doctor Tucker
about what's possible. I hope you enjoy this episode just
as much as I do. So now I bring you
Doctor Jim Tucker. Really, nice to meet you. Nice to
meet you you. I am utterly fascinated with your work
(01:43):
and don't know why it's not more mainstream. Quite frankly,
there's so many implications of it for so many areas
of cognoive science that I study, and it runs deep
to consciousness, issues of consciousness, issues of even free will.
You know, so there's so much to discuss. Well, that's right,
but yeah, it's not more mainstream because it challenges a
(02:05):
lot of the mainstream assumptions, so it's easy for people
to ignore it. Yeah. So, well, before we jump into
the deep end, I wanted to get a sense of
some of your biggest influences. I do get the sense
of the doctor Ian Stevenson played a huge role in
your work, and even to the extent that you're kind
(02:26):
of carrying the baton like I like to think I'm
carrying the baton from Abraham Maslow, You're carrying the baton
from doctor Ian Stevenson. So I can you talk a
little about his work and the work he initiated in
like nineteen fifty eight, I believe, right. So, yeah, he
came to Uva in the late fifties to be a
chairman of the Department Psychiatry and had never done any
(02:47):
had he had an interest in parapsychology, but he had
never done any and he was still in his late
thirties when he came here to be chair. I mean,
he's feeling quite a successful mainstream career mostly or much
of it, looking at Sarkis kinds of things. But then
he got intrigued by this phenomenon of young children in
different parts of the world who said that they had
(03:09):
membories of a past life, and he started trying to
investigate those cases and find out exactly what the child
said and whether they in fact matched a life from
the past. His work. Ian once said, on the obsessive
compulsive scale went to ten, he was in eleven, and
he liked to get all the details right, So he
(03:32):
was he was very methodical in studying these cases and
eventually stepped down his chairman of the department to focus
full time on them, and then spent the bulk of
the next few decades studying these cases. And we continue
to do that, so doctor Ian Stevenson. Yeah, so that's
that's interesting. I didn't know that he would score high
(03:53):
on OCD, so he was really Do you get the
sense from reading his writings that he really wasn't biased
to a certain conclusion, that he really wanted to admass
as much evidence as possible to before he made up
his mind. You know, I don't even know if he
ever made up his mind completely, but yeah, do you
get that sense that he really wanted to get as
much data as possible. Yeah, he, I mean, he was
(04:15):
basically trying to determine for himself. So yeah, as we
all are, I mean, were research questions are ones that
were questioning In his case, he had become persuaded that
the strongest cases that reincarnation was the best explanation for them,
but not the only So he's certainly left that door
(04:38):
open that he could be wrong about it, but he
was persuaded that, you know, there was people no longer
had to accept reincarnation on faith. They could accept it
on evidence that they chose to. Well, he coined the
term psycho for right ps y c h O p
h O R soul bearing. What was his thought about that?
(05:01):
Why did he find the need to coin such a term? Well, right,
so he was His idea was that if he had
these memories and emotions and behavioral characteristics in a life,
that if they continued on into another life, as these
cases appeared to suggest, then there would have to be
(05:22):
some sort of vehicle to carry them. So, rather than
use a term like soul or spirit, you know, some
sort of religious term, he felt that he should coin
a new term that didn't have connotations that were not
necessarily consistent with the work, or certainly not consistent with
the attempt to look at this in sort of a
(05:43):
serious objective way as opposed to a religious way. Yeah. Yeah,
because even just people listening to this conversation, even they're like, oh,
they're talking about recarnation, reincarnation, it might be hard for
people to even have a model in their head that
one can discuss this in a scientific way. So we're
gonna let's change some people's minds here today in the
sense that we can show them that we can have
(06:04):
this discussion in a in a way that is evidence based.
And so, Doc, what I find interest is Doctor Stevens,
he gives this quote, reincarnation is the best, even though
not the only, explanation for the stronger cases we have investigated.
That was the quote that got to the closest when
I wanted to know what his conclusion was. And you're
(06:25):
not Ian Stevens's you're your own human. So as a
jumping point from that, I want to, you know, continue
the rest of this conversation day on what you've discovered
and what you've concluded, maybe have similarly end differently from
doctor Ian Stevenson, even though he was a huge mentor
of yours. So you kind of popped on the scene
in nineteen ninety six on the reincarnation scene. You reincarnated
(06:45):
in nineteen ninety six. Let right, you left your private
practice in psychiatry to go all in on this. So
this this was this was a motivation, like there was
a moment like a Hoard Gardner calls it a crystallizing
experience right where you're like, this is it, this is
what I want to do with my life moving forward.
So how did that happen? Yeah, it was a real
fork in the road for sure, and I think we
(07:07):
took back up for a step. It basically the big
fork in the road when my wife and I got together.
It opened me up to, I mean to be frank,
to experiencing life in sort of a different way, a
more fuller way or a fuller way. And she was
open to these kinds of things in a way that
I had not been, so that got me intrigued. So
(07:29):
I was reading about different things, and it was actually
reading one of these seams and books I learned that
his research division here at University of Virginia had gotten
a grant to do a new study on near death experiences,
not reincarnation, but new death experiences. So I just called
them up to see if they needed help with that study,
and sort of one thing led to another. But when
(07:49):
I left my private practice to come on here, I
have continued to be a child psychiatrist. So about half
of my time roughly is spent doing clinical work, patient
care work, helping to train the residence and the fellows.
So it's not like I left it all behind, but
I did decide that I was going to do the
work that I wanted to do, and you know, if
(08:12):
it didn't work out, I could always go back into
private practice, but in the meantime, I was going to
explore this area. Again. I mean, the question of life
after death is something that you know, interests all of
us at least to some extent. But what really appealed
to me was the serious minded sort of scientific approach,
(08:32):
evidence based approach that was going on at UVA and
that I wanted to be a part of. Yeah, I
mean it must have also felt a little bit like
a rebel, right, like there must be some bone in
your body that like, you know, maybe like just a
personality trait you maybe have had your whole life for
you to like, you know, like I'm gonna, you know,
(08:53):
take on the establishment a little bit. Yeah. Actually I'm
quite the opposite. I've alway fascinating, fascinatingretty much a straight
row rule follower kind of person. So yeah, it was
a step out of my comfort zone. But but again,
the approach is mainstream. I mean it's at it's looking
(09:13):
at a topic that people don't usually apply these methods to,
but that it's the same end goal. I've seen what
we can see, what we can discover. Yeah, I mean,
I bet you see all sorts of explanations for things
that make you roll your eyes, you know, like that
are just so outside of the evidence space and you're like, well,
(09:35):
you know, I don't think that it's suggests that's true enough.
But here's a fact, a fascinating fact. Some young children
say they have been here before. Okay, that's the fact.
Now what derives from that? Well, lots of things can
be investigated to try to understand that, and you probably
always get asked, well, what's the mechanism, what's the right
(09:55):
And there's all sorts of explanations. I would like to
go through in a systematic way and discuss first of
all the mean characteristics that you see, and we'll go
through to have the list, and then I also want
to discuss the potential explanations for it, and then I
want to end with your your thoughts on what's what's
going on based on the totality of the evidence. So
one thing you often see are just the most simplest,
(10:18):
most conceptually associated with this idea, which are past life statements. Right. So,
these kids, usually between the ages of two and five,
talk about someone else's whole life, right, and they seem
to have memories of it, right, So can you elucidate
a little bit what exactly the nature of that? It
looks like. Yeah, it's very much memory in the sense
(10:40):
that is, from one person's point of view. They're not
just spouting facts, but more of what to them feel
like memories and often focused on the end of the life.
So three quarters of the kids talk about how they
died in the past life. They remember at death, and
most of those are sort of violent death or unnatural
(11:02):
death anyway, murder, suicide, accident, combat, that sort of thing.
And with those sort of traumatic memories can come other
memories to about family. They may express a lot of
emotional attachment toward previous parents that they may tell their parents,
you're not really my parents, my parents live in such
and such place, and they at times will give enough
(11:26):
specific details which pretty much have to include names of
places or names of people, but give enough where people
then verify that their apparent memories do in fact match
a life from the past. A lot of them will
also show a lot of emotions. I mentioned that the
attachment to the previous family, many of them will show
(11:49):
phobias toward the mode of death the previous person had.
That the kids may act out various aspects of the
past life and their play. But you know, again, it's
not just information that they seem to be connecting to
or that seems to have carried on, but the whole
that feelings and emotions have carried on as well. It
(12:11):
seems these kids do this spontaneously. It doesn't involve hypnotic
regression or anything like that. And they come from all
over the world that we've studied over twenty five hundred cases,
and while they're easiest to find in cultures with the
general belief in or reincarnation, they happen everywhere. So it's
(12:32):
with the American cases, most of the parents did not
believe in past lives before their kids started talking about one.
So it's not like anyone created this or led them
to believe these things. It's just something that arises from them.
That they have these emotional memories that they describe great
(12:53):
and few of them are famous people. It's not like
they're really prominent cases. Would you say that the one
hundreds of these cases can't be explained away by somehow
the kid finding a news article you know somewhere or
watching something on television about a really violent death of someone.
Can you say that you have investigated that systematically and
(13:15):
one hundred percent of the cases can't be explained away
by that. Well, I wouldn't necessarily say one hundred percent
for anything, but in the strongest cases, for instance, some
of the kids will talk about either a deceased family
member or a deceased person from the same town or village.
So those you know, you always wondered did they learn
(13:36):
about the previous person by natural means? But with the
stranger cases, I mean they're or they remember being a stranger.
There are plenty of those where it it's essentially inconceivable
that they learned about this stuff through normal means. That
there may be other explanations for the cases, but not
that they somehow read a news article about this person
who lived fifty years before and that you know, died
(13:58):
in without anyone knowing that dog. I mean that that's
just not a reasonable explanation for most fascinating and you know,
children have wild imaginations, right, and you have enough people
on the earth, you know, I could I bet I
could imagine something right now, and then statistically it probably
would match up to some you know, I could make
(14:21):
up something right now, be like I'm Johnny. I'm Johnny
who died of a bullet to the head in the war.
I bet there's someone named Johnny who died with a
bullethead of the war. So just it just statistically, Now,
do you think that can fully explain as a rich,
rich imagination that just happens to match a prior life. Well,
(14:41):
it depends on the statement. So yeah, like you said,
you know, if someone says I was Bob and I
was killed in a car accident in California, all right,
well they're going to be a lot, right, So you
have to look at how this specificity of the statements
so there where it can only fit one person. So
(15:01):
you know, there's a well known American case of a
kid who talked about being a World War Two pilot
who was shot in the Pacific and gave the name
of the aircraft carrier, first and last name of a
friend of his, describe where he died, described how he died,
and there was only one person in history whose life
matched those details. So you know, you could say it's
(15:24):
a coincidence, but that I don't think is plausible. I mean,
that would be one heck of a coincidence. Yeah, one
heck of a coincidence. And you tend to find that
these individuals come from not necessarily the person's bloodline, but
a certain vicinity to where they live. Right, You don't
(15:46):
tend to have prior lives of someone on the other
end of the world. That's true, although we do occasionally
get those reports. And you know, if a child, if
an American child says my last life was in Africa, well,
I mean, there's no way to verify that without a
whole lot more details. But with the ones that do
have verifiable details, even the ones who describe a past
(16:07):
life as a member of another country, there was often
a geographical connection. So for instance, Burmese children who said
they were Japanese soldiers killed in burrowing during World War Two.
So right, most of them are not related. They're not
describing the life of an ancestor, so there's not a
genetic connection, but there is it is for intact memories
(16:33):
to come through. Typically the past life was one that
was reasonably close by, usually in the same country. And
then you also tend to see some past life behaviors,
like unusual play among these children. Can you kind of
celebrate what you see there? Yeah, the most common is
actually acting now the previous occupation, So I mean not
(16:54):
just playing war like all kids do, but specific things
like a kid who played repeatedly hours on end at
being a biscuit and soda a shopkeeper, which the person
had done. Some of them will kind of reenact the
death scene over and over. That's not as common as
the occupation, but we do have some of those cases.
(17:16):
But sometimes the occupation ones quite precise as well. So
there's this kid to remember it being a nightclub owner
and would even put out seats for his two wives,
And it turned out the previous person was somebody who
fit that kind of description. So just taken on its own,
(17:39):
the play may not necessarily be that impressive, but when
you put it in with the whole picture, then it
looks like it is connected to the memories the child.
That's a great point, and I should have stepped back
and asked about your methodology, because it is true that
when you collect these reports, you tend to further investigate
(17:59):
ones that show two out of a list of behaviors
that there are multiple these things that when I was
reading inter methodology, is that correct, right, Yeah, there are
a number of features that we look for. The most
obvious is claiming to remember a past life. But then yeah,
there are behaviors that are associated a peer associated with
(18:20):
the memories there are These are not common, but are
cases where the previous person made a prediction about where
they would be born the next time around. They're also
what we call announcing dreams, where usually the mom when
she's pregnant, we'll have a dream about a previous person
saying I'm coming to be born to you. And it
(18:40):
seems like there are one or two other features that
make the list for you. We have to have at
least two of those to register it in our cases
of birthmarks and birth defects. That Matt, I was going
to bring that up on the previous person. So the
most common are the statements and the behaviors, but we
get the others as well. I thought it was interesting
that like in Indiana, where reincarnation is a idea that's
(19:05):
in the consciousness there of the culture a third of
your cases from India include birthmarks or birth defects. They
are thought to correspond to wounds on the previous personalities,
with eighteen percent of those including medical records that confirm
the match. My gosh, what are things going on with
the birthmarks? Well, I will say, like the child intentionally
(19:26):
branded themselves, right, Yeah, No, I think we've ruled that out.
But I will say the percentage is a little bit
misleading in the sense that Ian Steinson was really fascinated
by those cases, so those that would affect which ones
he would fully investigate. But yes, there are plenty of
those cases out there, and yet it's once where the
child is born with the birthmark er full birth defects
(19:49):
that match wounds, usually the fatal wounds on the body
of the previous person. And they include eighteen cases where
they have both entrants and exit wounds of somebody who
is a gunshot victim. Deformity is like there's a case
of a little boy who the previous boy lost the
fingers that his right hand in the foder chopping machine,
(20:10):
and then the second board is then born with missing
the fingers on the right hand. Uh. And there are
lots of those picking out there. We get some American
ones like that as well, that they're not as common here,
but we've certainly had ones, including a one with heart defect,
others with work marks, So yeah, they're there. It seems
(20:31):
that if I mean, if we accept the cases there,
if there is this sort of carryover of mind or
consciousness that sometimes traumatic either memories or even traumatic wounds
can affect the developing fetus in the way that they
show up in Yeah, you talk about that in the
in your in one of your books about the fascinating
(20:51):
nature of how our mind can affect our bodies. You know,
how these things are intertwined and maybe the consciousness creates
the birthmarks. But it, you know, it makes one question,
you know, where do birthmarks come from in any of us?
Like I have birthmarks? Right? Like? Why do I have
birth marks? What's what's the developmental explanation of that? What
(21:11):
a would a biologist be able to explain that? To me?
Confab I think most of them did. The cause is unnearned.
I mean, not that I'm an expert on birth marks,
but there you know, there are some birth defects, in
particular where there's a syndrome that's been identified. But but
for most of them it's unknown. And you know, it's
not necessarily a ton of research on birth marks because
they're nine and and Ian never claimed that all birth
(21:35):
marks were related to past lives, But is that in
some of these notes? But but it makes me wonder, Yeah, doctor,
doctor Tucker. I have a confession. When I was three
years old or so, we were in Disneyland and we
were I still remember this vividly. I remember this vividly.
We're in Disneyland and we were at the hotel afterwards,
(21:59):
and I went into the bathroom and I remember I
was standing in front of the toilet and suddenly I
saw I was like an old man in my head,
and I saw my whole life, my whole life flashed
before my eyes, like I saw, like like suddenly, like
I wasn't three year old, Scott. I was literally like
a mature old man with like and all the things
(22:20):
that come along with that, Like I had lots of
mature thoughts like the three year old you know, wouldn't
tend to have. And it freaked me out and so
much so that I remember this moment even even today.
And I but it just disappeared. It just disappeared. When
I like walked back into the room. It was just
this like moment where I just I was, I was
(22:42):
a I witterly felt like I was this old man
now and it couldn't feel like an old man Scott
or I mean couldn't tell hard to tell, but I
still remember it vividly, like I remember that memory vividly.
I mean, that's crazy, like I was three or four,
but I uh uh, it felt like like I was
(23:04):
that they're both both both were in me at the
same time. I was the old Scott be like knowing
everything like that an old man knows and being like,
oh gosh, but I have this three year old body
that has to like live it, live, live it through,
like I have to like go through the motions of
living a life. But I see it at the end
of the life. I see the whole life lived. It
(23:26):
was the weirdest thing. Yeah. Yeah, it's the kind of
thing that I mean, these experiences do happen people, And
I mean with our cases, we do have some where
the child will talk with grave emotion about it past
like just one time and then they parents were asking
them about a week later they don't even remember. But
then there are others, you know, where people will have
(23:48):
sort of transcendental experiences, which you know, as a three
year old, sort of being able to seemingly stepping back
from your day to day experience and seeing the big picture.
It's something that happens to people. And you know, what
do we make of that? It sounds like you sort
of stepped out of time for yeah, yeah, yeah, just
(24:10):
had a very like mature way of I mean, I
wasn't a three year old at that moment, you know.
Just so, it's so, it's so interesting. So these are
some explanations to consider, and I wanted to go through this.
There are normal explanations and then, of course there are
paranormal explanations. Let's just let's let's start with the normal,
normal ones. You say, quote, we approach the cases with
(24:32):
an attitude of scientific curiosity. We were open to all possibilities.
I mean, gosh, what a great scientific approach. I wish
all scientists had that approach. Quite frankly, I can't say
I'll do so. Normal explanations include things like, well, maybe
these kids have fraud. Maybe it's fraud, wold fraud. It's
not like the kids are creating the fraud, but they're
broad conditions that make it look like those kids are
(24:54):
saying those things, right, is that? Is that one of
that potentially? Yeah? Actually, Ian Simpson published a case of
I mean published a paper on I think of seven
cases of either deception or self deception. Sometimes very rarely,
where the child's family may be trying to get say
(25:14):
money out of a wealthy family and say that their
child was the previously family member. What's more common, I
think is self deception, where the families may make sort
of too much of what of the child's statements and
then kind of build this story that the child was
either a deceased family member in a past life or
(25:35):
occasionally famous, a famous person. I mean, I've gotten ones
for famous people like Babe Ruth and people like that,
which I mean, the child wasn't Babe Ruth. I'm pretty skeptical. Well,
what do you do. What if you get five kids
and they all say that they were Babe Ruth, do
you got to like they got to fight that out
amongst themselves, like you know, which is the real one? Yeah?
(25:56):
Well right, so, I mean that almost never happens with
but we do get some reports from adults who feel
like they were someone famous in the past, often not
because they have specific memories, but because of other aspects
or coincidence or similarities. So yeah, we've had a number
of Thomas Jefferson's. I think that's the leading one, you know,
(26:18):
the University of Virginia, and I mean the adult cases
we tend to look at with a fairly skeptical eye anyway,
because if you don't have specific memories, I think it's
very hard to even speculate about who you were in
a past life. But again, I mean that's a tiny
minority of these cases. For the most part, there's no
(26:41):
reason to think that the parents or the child that
they're committing deception, and typically there's not even any grounds
to think they would be committing self deception. You actually
just made me think of a question that have you
ever had two children claimed to have memories of this
person not famous? You know, would that be interesting? Yeah,
(27:03):
there are cases. One of our colleagues, Antonia Mills, up
in Northern British Columbia, study cases of with the tribal
people's up there, and there were there are some communities
where they will not a sign but recognize the child
(27:24):
as being a past life person on very limited grounds.
I mean, they say a dream and they may decide, okay,
this child was that person. And it's usually like a
village elder or somebody that was well respected in the community,
so not a famous person, but somebody that people looked
up to. So there may be three or four kids
(27:45):
who are all identify as being that person in the
past line. But again that that's a real exception to do, real, rare,
real rare. Yeah. Another potential explanation is, well, we already
discussed this one, which is fantasy. Yeah, but I think
we already discussed on you kind of meet well yeah,
I mean I will say, if none of these memories
(28:08):
could be verified, then I would have a great belief
in the likelihood that this could be fantasy. And when
kids certainly are capable of fantasy and say all kinds
of things. Again, we don't pay that at face values,
whether we can determine that these statements actually matched a
past life, but before we would think that it's more
than just fantasy. Yeah, and then faulty memory by informants,
(28:35):
how much could that explain the findings? Right? So, the
idea is that the child makes some perhaps general statements
about a past life, that the family finds someone whose
life more or less match those statements, and then after
the families meet and exchange information, then the child gets
credited with more information than they actually had, and currently
(28:58):
cases for it that warrant serious consideration. But then there
are all the cases where we've written documentation of what
the child said before anyone knew if there was a
previous person, so we can be sure that they're not
faulty memory in those because we've got documentation. And then
this one is very interesting for a number of reasons.
(29:19):
Genetic memory. This one kind of gets to the heart
of a lot of a lot of things that I
personally study. Our worlds were going to are about to
intersect in a second. You'll see why. But can you
tell me a little bit about what that is? What
is genetic memory? Yeah, that the thought is that the
idea is that the memories would be transferred in the
(29:39):
genes to the child, so it would not be some
sort of paranormal kind of thing, but a physical transfer
through the genes. But that does not explain could not
explain most of our cases, partly because most of the
time the child is not talking about a direct ancestor,
which they would have to be for the genes to comfort.
(30:01):
And also most of the children have memories of how
they died, which, of course people die after they've already
passed on their genetic material. So you know, there are
a lot of very interesting facets to what can be
transferred in genes or at least epigenetically, but what kinds
of memories crafts can be transferred. But it doesn't seem
(30:23):
to be a factor in these cases. Well, hold up,
hold up my own area of research. This is where
our world's intersect. And I've long been thinking about this.
I've studied prodigies, and I've studied savants, and I'm very
dear friends with a man named Daryld Trufford who passed
(30:46):
away pretty recently, and he was he was the scientific
advisor to the movie rain Man. But he was also
the most knowledgeable, well known scientists studying savants, and he
had this idea of genetic memory. He thought that was
the only explanation. He thought that was the best explanation
(31:07):
for how a lot of these individuals with very low
IQs even could sit down and paint something for photorealistic
or sit down at the piano and play something amazing.
And even in the Prodigies realm, there's a lot of
trying to understand how children under the age of ten
(31:28):
can just have a fully formed talent. You know, it
takes a little bit of practice, but it doesn't take
that much input for them to learn. It's not like
the parents are pushing these kids. It's the kids are
pushing the parents. And then I've studied at great length
the idea of gifted children and the idea of prodigies,
and my friend David Henry Feldman wrote a book about prodigies,
(31:52):
and specifically, in there he noted that there seemed to
be a higher than greater chance of these kids somewhere
in their ancestry there was someone who had a talent
that resembled it, and he didn't rule out the possibility
that there was some sort of genetic memory. So genetic
memory has been brought into the discussion of these other
(32:14):
demeans like prodigies and savants. I didn't know. I don't
know if you're familiar with any of these two individuals
that I mentioned, or their work or writings about this,
but I'd love to bring all these worlds together because
I think there's something really really, there's something going on. Yeah,
there's something going on. Yeah, And I mean I don't
doubt that at all. And it may be it's conceivable
(32:36):
that there's a genetic disposition for recalling past lives and
that they do seem more common in some communities than others.
But my point is for the memories of one specific life,
I don't see how that could be happening through genetic
transfer in these cases. But because they're recalling lives, that
(32:59):
is not. But you know, if you consider these children
to be svants or or whatever, they have this special ability.
Now it may well be that that special ability may
have a genetic Yeah. It gets, it gets really, you know,
(33:20):
it gets it starts to get metaphysical, right. I mean,
I'm not trying to go out all Ancient Aliens out
on this and be like, could it be that the
Chaka record has all these things and that we're tapping
into Now, I'm not going I'm not that guy. I
actually was on an episode of Ancient Aliens, but I wasn't.
I was the scientist and I made some very clear,
(33:40):
factual statements about where genius comes from. The whole episode
was where does genius come from and I and I
made some statement like, well, we can't reduce genius entirely
to the brain, and then the guy with the big
hair said, what she means is could it be that
it's from the Ashakk record. So I think that's not
(34:00):
what you meant. That's not what I meant. But but
I think that, you know, I think at this point
in our conversation would be fun to play around in
the space of what what's the what is possible? What
is going on now? Of course there are I didn't
mention the paranormal explanations. Extra sensory perception has been one
that has been put forward, but as you note, that
(34:22):
doesn't explain the birthmarks possession. I'm fascinated with that one
as well. I you know, you look get. You know
people who who who do GET feel like they're possessed
by the devil for instance, you know, and then you
start to look at those cases more scientifically, you see
there's mental illness, schizophrenia, aspects that are that are more
reasonable explanations than they were just possessed by the devil.
(34:42):
It's not as cut and dry as that they were
just possessed by the devil, and then of course the
paranormal explanation of reincarnation, and you say that doesn't explain
fully why the memory is so fleeting. For instance, let's
you know, for remaining moments here. Lets let's really play
in the space of what is going on, doctor Jim Tucker.
Let's just get right down to it. You know, what
(35:04):
could be going on in a way that science can
explain someday. I mean, maybe we don't have the tools yet.
Maybe that's that's part of the problem. Yeah, I think
there are anomalies that in order to explain them you
don't start over with science, but you may have to
sort of broaden some things, you know, just like quantum
(35:27):
theory broad and classical physics. And not that I'm saying
this is like quantum theory, but you can't just if
you accept these cases, you can't just map them on
to a materialist understanding of reality, because they involve some
sort of transfer of mind, even if you don't accept
(35:49):
it as reincarnation, but some sort of transfer separate from
the physical and taking sort of a larger view. As
time has gone on, I've become more of a scientific
or philosophical idealist. The idea that ultimately consciousness is at
(36:10):
the core of reality and the physical grows out of it.
And there are people a lot smarterer than me, like
next Plank, the founder of quantum theory, who said the
same thing, that ultimately reality comes down to consciousness, and
that can be sort of mind bending thing, can be
hard to sometimes to kind of make sense of it.
(36:33):
But if it's true that the physical grows out of
the mental essentially, then I don't see why an individual
consciousness would be dependent on a physical brain, because in fact,
the physical world is growing out of consciousness. So it
would make sense that this piece of consciousness or mind
(36:54):
that each of us has can continue on regardless of
what happens to the physical body weren't having And then
in our cases at least I have never said as universal,
but in our cases at least, it seems that this
mind has been attached to a new physical body and
then continued on with a new model. So are you
(37:17):
are you atally literally saying that you think the only
way to fully explain the totality evidence is one where
we're going to have to disassociate the mind from or
consciousness from the physical brain in some capacity in some way. Yeah,
I mean, if you accept these cases, then yes, I
(37:38):
think you're pretty much forced to conclude that. And you know,
each person can decide for themselves whether they should accept
the cases. But I think if you look at our
strongest ones as a group, I mean, they do provide
good evidence that something's going on here, that these children
do actually have memories of a life from the past.
(37:58):
I mean, there's so many deep implications of this if
this is if this is true, But what I want
to really understand is why they're so fleeting, Why the
memories so fleeting. Why don't people when they get recarnated
just get recarnated as the total person for the rest
of their life. Could it there be mechanisms at play
where that's just the way, Like when you have a
(38:19):
human psychology of immediate memories, it just inhibits past life
memories like that. There's a huge conflict there, and the
way the biological system reconciles that conflict is by, you know,
by prioritizing the current immediate experience. Yeah, I mean, typically
these kids lose these memories or most of these memories
(38:40):
at the same time that all kids lose memories of
early childhood. So you know, infantile anagor early childhood amnesia
where that's not sure. Now that their brain is undergoing
tremendous changes during this period of a lot of pruning,
and you know, memories and sometimes of skills or whatever,
(39:01):
it's sort of get left behind because others get prioritized.
It would make sense that for most of these kids
they lose those memories at the same time they lose
memories of real child. Now another related question is why
there's such glimpses why you know, like you said, it's
not like suddenly they remember everything from the past life.
You know, the person hasn't just continued on. It's it's
(39:23):
almost more like when you wake up and you've got
glimpses of a dream and sometimes you remember a lot
of details, and then other times you've got kind of images,
but it's pretty hard to put them together, and you know,
they can fade. That's how it is for some of
these kids that they will come out with certain details
at certain times, but it's not like they can suddenly
(39:43):
spell out the whole past line. So it's I mean,
it's amazing that any memories would come through, right, but
it's it's usually not a full complete thing, but it
really varies from child to child. So do you think
it's Does your gut tell you that that we're all
reincarnated from from some assemblage of prior things outside of
(40:09):
our own genetic ancestry, or do you think there are
only special cases like the ones you're discovering so not.
There's so many questions to be asked about this. That's
one I'll stop there. Yeah, Well, I feel like our
cases again do provide evidence that there can be this continuation,
and I think that coming out of speculating, but I
(40:31):
think that would apply to all of us. But it
doesn't mean that all of us have lived here before,
or that we would be reborn here in this reality.
You know, consciousness that is the core of all. I
don't know why we couldn't have very different kinds of
experiences in very different kinds of realities. So my own
personal guess is that reincarnation is not universal in the
(40:54):
sense that we all come back here, but that that
mind or consciousness there is a piece that does continue
on for all of us. What do you think happens
after we die? Well, I don't know that it's universal.
I mean, I don't know that we all have the
same experience. I think that there are probably a lot
of factors that go into what we experience next. And
(41:19):
for some that may be immediately coming back here, but
for others and make you very different. And you know,
if you look at near death experiences, people who where
their hearts stop and then they have these experiences, there
can be real variability. I mean, there are similarities, but
there can also be real individual differences. And I suspect
(41:39):
that that it's true for any of the afterlife kinds
of experiences. Well, what if you want to increase the
chances that you're going to live after you die, should
you die of violent death? I mean, is that what
your research suggests. I mean, that's what it suggests now
that you should have some dramatic ending. Make sure you
have a dramatic ending, folks, well to have the memories
(42:01):
come through. That may well be true. But you know,
it's just like traumatic memories in this life. I mean,
there are memories when people have PTSD, memories that they
wish they didn't have, but they couldn't get rid of them.
There's a real strength, unfortunately to traumatic memories. That may
well be the case across lifetimes. Wow. But as far
(42:22):
as the kind of experience you have next, I mean
I would guess that it relates to the kind of
experiences you have here and also the kind of life
that you lead. I mean not in a heaven and
hell kind of sense, but just if you're focused on
love and connecting with others and giving to others, you know,
(42:42):
it seems to me that would affect your whatever it
is that survives, and if we call it a soul,
that would have an effect on your soul. And then
what affect what comes next? Well, this is the right
I'm a scientist, and I really am curious what patterns
you found among the all the if you look at
(43:03):
all the people, all the cases of the past lines,
and you look at that like, I'm a personality psychologist.
I want to like do the I want to crunch
the numbers, like of the big five personality traits? Is
there are there certain characteristics that they all have in common?
Is there some like I feel like we can like
get this mystery, like this would this would get us
to the like this this is real deep stuff. If
(43:25):
we can discover who what personality traits are more likely
to make you move on? After you die, and mean,
that's that's some pretty heavy stuff there. Well, we aren't
doing a study now where we are interviewing adults, so
we originally study as children because this work's been done
on so long and we are administering Big Five questionnaires
to them. Perfect we haven't gotten where we're done with
(43:47):
the analysis yet, but we'll see if anything comes from that.
I mean, my guess is, again there's a difference between
having memories versus surviving at all. I would be disappointed
if it turns out certain personality all these survive while
others done, you know, for certain personality, people's personality characteristics.
But who knows what. We'll have to see where the
(44:09):
where the data leads us. I guess we wait. I
think we might be talking about different things. I'm not
talking about the Big five traits of the person who
is alive right now, is now what I'm talking about,
What are the common characteristics of all the past lives,
like what's the personality? You can do that analysis, right of.
I mean, you can't physically administer the Big Five to them,
but I'm saying you can do the qualitative sort of
(44:31):
impressions like are they are these do youse tend to
be good people? Do they live good lives? Like? Is
there a pattern there or some of them? Do you
know what I'm saying, Well, I do. I mean with
the Big five, yes, we don't have enough information for
most of them to do any sort of reasonable assessment
of that. As far as whether they were good people
or not, there's quite a range. I mean, they're you know,
(44:54):
if you're more likely to die violently if that life
is remembered. There are plenty of people die violently through
no far of their own, but there are others who
you know, are involved in knife fights or you know whatever.
So some of the people have been fairly nasty people.
It did some fairly nasty things, But then there are
other people who are you know, just kind of typical
(45:16):
that people do in their best Well, that's it. That's
really important information in itself. I mean you're basically you know,
they're what if their like listeners who are saying like,
I want to increase the chances that like some five
year old remembers my life, you know, for two years. Yeah,
that's all we get. But there's another part of this
that's a bit disappointing, right, Like with the reincarnation stuff
(45:38):
is like, what what are you saying? Like, the best
extension we get is some you know, annoying four year
old like you know, being like, oh I'm Scarborough Kolfman,
you know, and then it's like no one believes them,
and then you know, two years later they don't remember
me the rest of their life. Like you're saying, that's
the best I got in terms of extending my consciousness, Well,
it's sort of you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I
do know what you're saying, but I I'd like to
(46:01):
view this as there may be sort of a larger
self as well as the personalities that we have in
each life. So yeah, I mean, you know, if kid
comes back and remembers your life and then by the
time they're school age they've forgotten it. If there's a
larger self that is part of your existence this time
as well as the next time, then you hope that
(46:22):
this larger self grows or learns or becomes more evolved
however you want to put it. You hopes that each
lifetime that there can be progress made, and you know
that that is just part of our journey. My gosh,
there's just so many implications even for theories of consciousness.
(46:42):
I'm sure you're aware of panpsychism. I think that's the
most compatible with what your theory is. My prior guest.
My current episode that's up right now you might want
to listen to. It is with Antonio Dimasio on the
nature of consciousness. So you're going to be a really
interesting counter from a very different view. Yes, he's not
(47:04):
a big fan of panpsychism, but some people are some
people that I'm friends with, are you know. It's I
don't have a card in this horse personally. I want
to know the truth. There's so many just deep implications
of this, you know, and it makes you just think
about how does it all tie together? What does it
all mean? Now? If we zoom out even further right,
(47:24):
like to the universe, we zoom out, you know, is
the universe finite? Is the universe not findite? You know?
I have this kind of intuition that physicists would probably
disagree with, is probably not possible. But I have this
intuition that that time just keeps whooping back on itself,
that like that we're going to like it'll get to
some point of the universe, even if it's like thirty
(47:47):
trillion years from now. They're kind of like, whoops, back again,
because I don't, you know, like and that I'm going
to live this life again, you know, like I I
really kind of feel that's that's that's the way it works.
There are businessists who talk about basically new universes bubbling
out of current ones, where it's an infinite number of universes,
(48:09):
and if it's truly infinite, it means that at some
point there'd be this same existence we have now that
would be redone. So yeah, it all gets rather mind modeling.
It does get mind boggling, and you can kind of see, like,
you know, the error error in the system, like maybe
it's not a full proof system, and that's what you're
(48:30):
seeing in your cases where like it starts to like,
you know, it's like whoops, we put that person's consciousness
over in that person's body for a couple of years. Whoops.
You know, maybe it's not even like a like a
conscious entity that's doing it, but a process, a process.
Well that's right, and yeah, the process may it sort
of short circuited, sometimes particulated with sudden violent deaths where
(48:55):
things don't go the way they typically do and then
you have my friend David Chalmers a book Are we
living in a simulation? And here he puts it as
a greater than fifty probability that we are. What I'm
saying is we need to tie all this stuff together
and come with a unitary theory of whatever with a
scientific basis. And it's just funny even talk about Doctor Tucker.
(49:17):
If there are people listening to this episode who have
cases of their children or even the kids themselves, will
if if I were listening to my podcast and they
want to report this to you, what can they do? Well,
they can contact us through our website which is www
dot uva DOPS, which is Division of Personalities that is
theops dot org, or they just google my name and
(49:41):
find this that way. But yeah, what we'd love to
hear from families if their children are talking about past
on wonderful. Thank you so much for approaching a taboo
topic with such a scientific rigor. It's really it's really
refreshing to see that. And thanks for channeling me today
on my podcast. It's been my pleasure. Beautiful. Thanks for
(50:02):
listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd
like to react in some way to something you heard.
I encourage you to join in the discussion at thusycology
podcast dot com or on our YouTube page thus Psychology Podcast.
We also put up some videos of some episodes on
our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check
that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of
(50:22):
the show, and tune in next time for more on
the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.
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