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The Psychology Of Past Life Memories: Near-Death Research Explained | Dr. Philipp Cozzolino · The Smart Cookies podcast

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  Dr. Philip Cozzolino is a research associate
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  professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences
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  at University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual
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  Studies, where he investigates reports of past
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  life memories from children around the world.
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  Dr. Cozzolino, welcome to the program. Well,
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  thanks for having me. It's my pleasure. I mean,
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  wow, you probably have the single... coolest
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  job on the planet and i don't know whether to
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  be jealous or just in awe i mean there's people
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  out there doing data entry or watching the price
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  of some shitty stock go up and down every day
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  and then there's you literally doing research
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  that goes to the heart of probably the most meaningful
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  and intimate questions every single human being
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  grapples with but i want to ask you let's say
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  you're at a dinner party and you know People
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  are introducing themselves and then it's your
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  turn and you say, hi, I'm Philip and I work in
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  neurobehavioral science. And then they ask you,
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  oh, what exactly do you do? And you reply, I
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  study kids who maybe remember previous lives.
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  There's no way you don't get mobbed by everyone
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  and forced to speak about the subject the entire
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  evening. Yeah, it's a yes, absolutely. Everything
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  you said is pretty accurate. I am one of six
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  active researchers, faculty at the division,
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  and we all understand how unique and special
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  this is to have this opportunity. You don't back
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  your way into this kind of work. No one at DOPS
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  is there because it just worked out that way.
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  We all sort of have had. a lifetime of careers
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  worth of interest in ideas like this. And although
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  we're all professionally trained in a much more
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  traditional way, myself included in psychology,
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  we understand how rare it is to have this opportunity.
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  When I'm asked what I do, I tend to just say,
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  you know, I start very small. I work in a unique
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  division where we study extraordinary human experiences.
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  And sometimes people may ask, well, what do you
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  mean by that? And I'll describe. I'll start with,
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  because I've spent the bulk of my career working
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  on and thinking about and writing about near
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  -death experiences and translating what we can
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  learn from them. So I'll usually start with a
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  near -death experience because that is, I mean,
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  Homer Simpson's had a near -death experience,
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  right? So it's like they'll have heard that term
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  and they'll understand the tunnel, the light,
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  these kinds of classic sort of features of whatever
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  that is. And then eventually. I usually will
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  stop there because I realize I have my incense
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  burning here and it's making me look a little
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  bit like I'm in some weird... It's nice for the
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  atmosphere. Sorry about that. Eventually, I will
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  describe the children with past life memories
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  work if they keep pushing. It's fascinating to
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  see how people respond to that because the near
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  -death experience stuff is... It's very receptive.
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  Again, it's reached a point in sort of the zeitgeist
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  that it's just a known thing. Again, whether
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  it's what it appears to be or not isn't the issue.
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  There's just not a lot of surprise. When I talk
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  about or someone may know, like, don't they do
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  something about reincarnation there? Even though
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  I don't like that R word myself, particularly.
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  It is interesting. And I'll end quickly here.
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  what you said people want to they want to talk
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  and they have stories themselves or they or you
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  get the other one which is always immediately
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  you know what they mean when they go oh that
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  sounds interesting and then they just die and
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  you're like oh okay so we're just not gonna have
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  that conversation and that's fine your friends
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  must have stopped inviting you to things because
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  they probably can't get a wording because nobody
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  cares what they do No, well, no. I'm sorry. That's
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  too rough. No, no, no, no. I get what you're
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  saying. And it is, like I said, I really genuinely
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  try to be very understated about it because I
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  don't want, I mean, I'm an introvert by nature
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  anyway, so I tend to, I'm comfortable listening
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  more in those kinds of settings. But I also,
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  I do know for some people it's tricky. I mean,
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  even though I think that. I often, in my 20 years
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  of studying death anxiety and how to overcome
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  your fears of death using near -death experiences
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  and even this type of research, the past life
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  memory research, to sort of educate yourself
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  about the possibilities and how that can help
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  you deal with that fear anytime, anytime. Even
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  when you think you're doing it in a positive
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  way, anytime you start talking about mortality,
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  death, end of life stuff, you just have to be
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  careful. You learn right away not to just walk
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  into a room bringing death to the table. That's
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  just not necessarily the way forward. If they
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  keep pushing and if they keep pulling, then great.
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  But I try to take a very cautious. I'm definitely
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  going to. do some pushing and pulling here. Yeah,
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  fine. Great. Before you joined the Division of
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  Perceptual Studies, like you said, you were working
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  on psychological consequences of death awareness.
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  So how we react or deal with the knowledge that
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  our lives are finite. Personally, I deal with
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  it very poorly. And here's why. Oh boy, this
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  is going to turn into a therapy session real
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  quick. But what the hell? You can't run away
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  from me now. So I heard you say that most people
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  refuse to think about death because it's uncomfortable,
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  right? Makes total sense. Indeed, our whole culture
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  is kind of structured in a way that makes us
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  think that that's maybe not going to happen to
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  us or something. But what if you have the opposite
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  problem? Because I feel like I think about death
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  a bit too much. Like my brain is stuck trying
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  to get to the bottom of this crazy awareness
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  that I'm here today but might be gone tomorrow,
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  which of course it can't come to the bottom of.
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  So it just keeps spinning in circles like a dog
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  chasing its tail with no... end result. Do you
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  have any words of advice for me and my potential
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  fellow sufferers out there? Yeah, I think it's
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  a tricky balance between what I've, like I said,
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  I've spent the bulk of my career getting, trying
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  to demonstrate that thinking about facing our
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  mortal reality has beneficial psychological consequences
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  for us. And even though that does mean there
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  is an element, there is a an aspect of life that
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  requires, according to my work and my model,
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  engagement with our mortality. It doesn't mean
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  obsession with. It doesn't mean what I used to
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  do. I've told this story in other venues. When
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  I was at university many, many years ago, I always
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  want to say, it's like it's a natural thing to
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  say, I would wake up. But no, what I'm trying
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  to say is I would be awake as the sun was rising
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  because I couldn't sleep all night because I
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  was wrestling with what is nothingness? What
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  does that even mean? If all I've ever known is
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  everything, how is there nothing? What could
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  that possibly be? And trying to figure out a
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  solution meant some sort of... puzzle that just
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  is impossible to solve. That's not the kind of
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  engagement that my work demonstrates is required.
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  That actually feeds fear and anxiety and cycles
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  in a very bad way. What the trick is, is to find,
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  and it's different for everyone. There isn't
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  a pill that my research shows is required to
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  take. There's no Zempik for mortality awareness,
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  unfortunately. It requires an engagement and
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  an acceptance of it. And the key, the real key,
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  without getting too lost down that road, because
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  it isn't so much what I do at Dobson anymore,
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  but I've spent, like I said, 20 years publishing
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  on this. It is what the trick ends up, the trick,
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  the surprise sort of at the end of it, if it's
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  done properly, is that you're not actually thinking
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  about death anymore. What you're actually focused
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  on and worried about and thinking about is. the
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  life you're living like what am i doing here
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  today and uh you know that ends up being much
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  more of a mystery for most of us we spend so
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  much time do what you described and what i was
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  doing much more when i was at university that
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  it prevents you from fully living that sort of
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  obsession with what could death mean or what
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  will it be or how will it be And I wrote once
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  in a chapter on meaning that I contributed a
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  chapter to a book on meaning in life. And I wrote,
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  and I don't know, it's not just about quoting
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  something I've written, but I think it sums up
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  what I'm trying to say here fairly well, which
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  is the absence of life is probably the best definition
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  of death. But the absence of death utterly fails
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  to capture what it means to be fully alive. And
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  in that context, the mystery, the real mystery
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  is life. And if you spend all your time trying
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  to wrap your head around your fears and anxieties
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  of what it means to die, you're not fully living.
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  And I think that's what the core of my work is.
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  What you said, it's finite. This is it. And even
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  if we reincarnate, and I don't know that we do,
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  but even if we do, you're not coming back. as
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  Zaza you're coming back as Jane or who the hell
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  knows who you're coming back as right so in that
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  context you do you are annihilated right maybe
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  not at the conscious level if that's the way
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  consciousness works maybe you're aware of all
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  the lives you've lived but my point being right
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  now is what we know we have and if you spend
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  all your days staring into the abyss trying to
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  figure it out it's just it's just not fruitful
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  One more question, and then I'm going to stop
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  pursuing this line. Is there like a switch or
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  something, how to do that? No. No, again, I wish
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  there was. It'd be a lot easier, and I won't
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  take too long with this, but I think there's
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  not a switch. What there is is practice. What
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  there is is repetitive. What there is is commitment
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  to it. The way I sometimes frame it, and it's
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  more complicated than this, but I think it makes
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  my case, again, relatively easily. You have to
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  do something that's very difficult to make that
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  process work. You have to go against your evolutionarily
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  built sort of defense mechanisms. As I say, it's
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  more complicated than this, but the way I often
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  put it is you and I are sitting here talking
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  today because our evolutionary ancestors, when
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  they were out in a pack trying to get food and
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  they walked up to a new area they'd never been
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  before and there was a cave and they walked to
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  the cave and they heard some scary, growl come
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  from the cave. They didn't go, hey, let's go
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  in the cave. They said, well, all right, back
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  up. Hold on. What's this? This thing's probably
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  higher on the food chain than us. So we come
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  from fearful stock. We come from people who,
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  you know, our nature is, whoa, whoa, back up,
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  deny, walk away, you know, don't face that threat.
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  So it, but the problem is, is that there. There
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  is no threat in a cave anymore, right? It's backfiring.
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  That evolutionarily sound, once worked for us
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  sort of proclivity just is getting in our way,
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  existentially speaking. So what you have to do
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  is you have to fight through that instinct to
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  just not want to engage with the threat. It's
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  an existential threat, not a predator threat.
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  You can't do it with a switch. You have to really,
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  really dig in, start slow, small bites. As I
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  said earlier, I often recommend people read near
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  -death experience narratives. And I will often
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  say to them, look, you don't have to believe
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  this is real. Maybe you will. And I'm more likely
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  to think that this may actually be what's happening,
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  but I don't know. But it's a soft landing to
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  think about to at least get people to a place
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  of... okay, these are people who face death and
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  they are no longer afraid of it. And the descriptions
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  of it are comforting. And I feel like that's
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  a good place to start. Inevitably, eventually,
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  you have to get to something personal to you.
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  You have to get it practiced and rehearsed to
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  every once in a while, take stock. My life's
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  going to end someday. Where am I doing? What
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  choices am I making? What behaviors am I enacting?
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  Is this satisfying for me? Is this fulfilling
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  me? And if not, what can I do to change that?
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  Invaluable piece of advice. Thank you. Speaking
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  of near -death experiences, when I hosted Dr.
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  Bruce Grayson, one of the most famous researchers
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  of the phenomena, he talked about... Being just
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  a young psychiatry intern when he witnessed an
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  experience that made him begin to veer into more
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  uncharted territory. I believe it was a patient
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  who was in a coma, but who then accurately recounted
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  a conversation he had with her roommate in a
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  completely different part of the building. What
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  made you take the plunge into something as unconventional
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  as purported past life memories reported by children?
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  Well, I mean, for me, it started, I'll tell you,
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  I will be brief. I know I sometimes take longer
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  than I should. Not at all. Please take your time.
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  It is an honor for me now to have Bruce as my
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  colleague at DOTS, even though he is retired,
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  he is still around and working in an emeritus
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  fashion. And it is a true honor for me. So it's
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  remarkable in a sense. Sometimes I tell this
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  story when I was nine years old in 1978. So don't
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  do the math. But when I was nine years old in
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  1978, a movie, a documentary came out. This was
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  just a few, a handful of years after Raymond
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  Moody popularized the term near -death experience
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  in his book, Life After Life. A documentary called
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  Beyond and Back came out in American cinemas.
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  And as a nine -year -old, I remember making my
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  mother take me to the cinema to watch this documentary.
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  knew i had to see it um and as i've said before
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  i don't know that i was the only nine -year -old
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  but i have to assume it's a fairly rare thing
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  for a nine -year -old to say i need to see this
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  movie and i'm not i'm just making the case that
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  like somehow or another and you know maybe maybe
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  this has just always been my calling but it's
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  just been something that has mattered to me from
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  the very beginning. I told you about my university
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  experience. So I was still wrestling with those
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  ideas then. I eventually, I had a career in television.
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  I was a writer and producer in television in
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  Los Angeles, news, television news. And I quit
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  that career and re -educated myself with my PhD,
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  started my psychology career, discovered this
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  work on mortality awareness and death anxiety.
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  And brought to the conversation, brought to the
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  literature, the lessons from near -death experience
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  researchers, like I cited Bruce Grayson in my
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  very first publication as a grad student, along
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  with Kenneth Ring and Moody and all these others,
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  basically saying, look, you know, you guys have
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  been talking about fears of death and how it
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  affects us psychologically for all this time,
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  but you're not accounting for these other folks
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  who are confronting death or have seemingly confronted
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  death. think they have and look at what happens
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  to them. It's not necessarily as negative. They
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  actually overcome some of these fears and anxieties.
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  I did that for 20 years and I was citing them.
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  Even at one time, I was out of my mind when Bruce
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  and my now colleague Marietta cited me in some
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  of my papers. I was just like, this is so cool.
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  They don't know me. Long story ending, I was
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  ending my academic career. I had tenure. I'd
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  been there at a university in England for 17
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  years. lost my soul and heart for academics,
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  academia, as many people do. And I said, I'm
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  quitting. And basically, this is the basic nut
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  of it is on a Friday, I had been looking for
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  work and there was nothing there that was satisfying.
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  And on a Friday, I decided I would, on Monday,
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  I would become unemployed for the first time
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  in 25 years. And that Saturday morning, the next
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  morning on LinkedIn, a job at DOPS was open and
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  hadn't been there before. And it just was one
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  of those things where I was like, well, this
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  can't be real. This is just, this is bizarre.
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  It's like I've been searching for months as I've
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  been facing this crisis of conscience and jobs
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  and careers. And I decide on a Friday and Saturday
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  morning, there's this opportunity at DOPS. I
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  applied for it. I had no idea. I have to be honest.
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  When I applied for it, I didn't really know much
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  about this past left memory research. When I
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  got contacted by them as they were interested,
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  it was made clear to me that I could do some
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  MDE stuff, which I am doing with Bruce and Marietta,
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  but that the bulk of my work would be on these
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  children's past life memories. I started reading
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  everything I could about it, Jim Tucker's books,
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  papers that I could find from Ian Stevenson.
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  I have a lot more to learn. I've been there now
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  more than two years, but it's become my daily
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  focus. That's how I got there. Again, it's a
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  long story. um it it was if it's of course a
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  coincidence um but i also sometimes think we
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  use that word coincidence many times to think
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  that we've explained it when all we've really
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  done is describe what what's happened two things
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  two things coincided but it felt a little bit
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  too on the nose Yeah, like there's coincidence
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  in the world. And then there's like, okay, maybe
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  this is again, from that nine -year -old to now,
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  this is where someone's something is telling
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  me that this is what I'm supposed to be doing
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  now. The writers of this show jumped the shark.
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  Yes, exactly. It's like, okay, guys, come on.
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  No one's going to believe that. I literally,
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  I read the ad. I like refreshed it. I mean, I'm
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  not even trying to be dramatic, but I refreshed
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  him like this cannot be effing real. no out -of
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  -body experience near this is the division like
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  i couldn't believe like of for months i'd been
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  looking for work like maybe more than almost
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  a year actually and it just it just blew my mind
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  let's turn to your research assuming there are
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  commonalities here and you'll tell me if that's
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  the case who are these kids and what are they
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  saying Yeah, there are commonalities. That's
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  the thing. It is a thing, right? So I often use
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  that phrase. And what I mean by that is not to
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  say I don't know that it's reincarnation. It
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  could be something other than reincarnation.
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  And we could talk about those possibilities.
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  But it is a thing. It's a unique thing. It's
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  qualitatively different from other experiences
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  that children go through and that parents face
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  with their children. The most sort of overarching
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  sort of cluster of the phenomenon is At early,
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  sometimes as early as a year and a half, but
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  around two and a half is like the median age.
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  Two and a half years old, children will start
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  spontaneously. They're not asked from parents.
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  There's clearly no hypnotic regression. They'll
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  just be in the back of the seat. We have a case
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  right now. Marietta, my colleague, and I are
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  interviewing the mother and the father, and we're
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  eventually going to fly out to where they live
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  to meet the child. It's the most recent case
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  for us, actually. It's a really good one. And
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  this two -ish, two to three -year -old child
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  sitting in the back of the car, literally just
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  out of the blue, I'm going to use different names
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  and different locations just for anonymity, said,
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  you know, mommy, when I was married, Jane, Smith
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  and an accountant in Boston, I really loved seafood.
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  I mean, and of course, that's like I said, wrong
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  name, wrong location, wrong food, all that wrong
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  job. But what the child said, there is this person
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  who had that job who lived in that town in that
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  city. And this is a person not connected, not
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  famous. Yeah, not connected to the family, not
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  famous. But we have been able to verify that
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  that person actually was that person, had that
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  job, lived in that city. Now, whether they like
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  that food or not, eventually we're starting to,
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  that's what eventually starts having to happen
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  is you're going to have to get more information.
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  And then eventually you're going to have to try
• 20:04
  and contact people from the survivors of that
• 20:07
  person who once lived to start saying, hey, because
• 20:10
  this child also named relatives. So not to go
• 20:14
  too far down that road. The point being, they
• 20:16
  just say things. They will say names. They will
• 20:18
  say locations, geographic cities, countries.
• 20:22
  They will talk about jobs or children. One of
• 20:26
  the most common things they'll do. So we have
• 20:29
  a database from 60 plus years of this work, going
• 20:31
  way back to Ian Stevenson, who started it all
• 20:34
  to today, basically. There's 2 ,254 children
• 20:40
  cases in this database. all kinds, every country,
• 20:45
  every continent, not every country, but every
• 20:47
  continent other than Antarctica. And like I said,
• 20:50
  for more than 60 years. And of that 2 ,254, 61
• 20:56
  % of them will talk about, if you want to say
• 21:01
  they have memories, they purport to have a memory
• 21:03
  of how they died. And 75 % of those talk about
• 21:09
  an unnatural, often violent, traumatic death.
• 21:13
  So that to us is an interesting component to
• 21:16
  this, that that seems to be not entirely, not
• 21:19
  the whole database, but more than what you'd
• 21:22
  expect. Can you talk about a particular case
• 21:25
  that really... resonated or stayed with you?
• 21:27
  Or maybe there's several, I'll take that. There
• 21:29
  are several. Yeah. I mean, there are several.
• 21:32
  There are some famous cases that Jim Tucker,
• 21:34
  my former, Marietta and myself, we've replaced
• 21:38
  him as the court researchers at DOPS. I got to
• 21:40
  work with him for a year. He made a couple of
• 21:42
  cases very famous in America, in the United States
• 21:47
  of America. And one of them that's really fascinating,
• 21:50
  James Leininger gets a lot of talk and it's a
• 21:53
  great case. I've presented it. myself now at
• 21:55
  conferences and people can look that up. It's
• 21:57
  a boy who seems to have remembered dying - Pilot,
• 22:01
  right? As a pilot, right? In World War II. Yeah.
• 22:03
  Jack Larson. But I like, also I like as equally,
• 22:07
  the one that gets a little bit less attention
• 22:08
  is Ryan Hammons, that Jim - brought to bear.
• 22:12
  And Ryan Hammons is a really fun story because
• 22:15
  there's no trauma. And again, this is important.
• 22:18
  Like Leininger had nightmares dying in this fiery
• 22:21
  plane crash. And that's a thing that parents
• 22:23
  have to deal with. But with Ryan Hammons, it
• 22:26
  was one of those cases where there was no trauma.
• 22:29
  It was basically lived full life. He was a boy
• 22:33
  who started, he was looking at photo, a book
• 22:37
  of old Hollywood with his father. I believe it
• 22:40
  was his father, not his mother. And there was
• 22:42
  a black and white still from a film from the
• 22:45
  George Raft era of Hollywood. So very long time
• 22:48
  ago. And as a boy, he just pointed to the picture
• 22:51
  and said, oh, oh, that's George. And it was George
• 22:56
  Raft. And then he pointed to someone in sort
• 22:58
  of the background wearing a fedora in this scene
• 23:01
  from this movie. He goes, that's me. And he pointed
• 23:04
  to some extra in this scene. And eventually what
• 23:08
  happened was, is that the. Ryan Hammons started
• 23:11
  making statements. He made 48 verified statements,
• 23:16
  statements that investigators were able to determine
• 23:19
  were mostly or absolutely accurate to this life
• 23:24
  of a guy named Marty Martin, who was this little
• 23:27
  known, like that film that he was in. He had
• 23:29
  a tiny little moment of his life where he played
• 23:32
  extras in movies. Didn't work out for him as
• 23:35
  it does for most. people, as it doesn't work
• 23:37
  out for most people in Hollywood, eventually
• 23:39
  started an agency to work with actors and performers.
• 23:44
  Ryan Hammond said things that no one could know.
• 23:49
  Literally, one of them is the most fascinating.
• 23:51
  We call it private knowledge. It's a piece of
• 23:53
  information from one of these children that is,
• 23:55
  of course, this was at a time really even before
• 23:58
  the internet was what it was today. This is a
• 24:03
  great example of what private knowledge is. He
• 24:05
  claimed as Marty Martin that he died at the age
• 24:08
  of 61. Marty Martin's family, his surviving family
• 24:14
  told the investigators, no, that's not true.
• 24:17
  Our father and our grandfather died when he was
• 24:19
  58. And they actually had some documentation
• 24:22
  that suggested it was 58. And as much later in
• 24:26
  the investigation, Jim Tucker was able to discover
• 24:29
  a document in like... Los Angeles, Hollywood
• 24:32
  archives that showed the original birth date,
• 24:36
  which sits from like his birth certificate. That
• 24:39
  was the official one that Marty Martin actually
• 24:42
  died at the age of 61. So this little boy who
• 24:46
  had said these 48 things about having been Marty
• 24:48
  Martin that were accurate and were confirmed
• 24:51
  to have been true for Marty Martin was the only
• 24:55
  one who had the accurate age of death. Even Marty
• 24:58
  Martin's family didn't know. It was 61. They
• 25:01
  thought it was 58. And, you know, I don't know
• 25:05
  that this is a story the way I tell it is, is
• 25:07
  it could be one of those things where Marty Martin
• 25:08
  having been in Hollywood, having, you know, a
• 25:11
  lot of people in that business want to always
• 25:13
  be a little bit younger than they are. And maybe
• 25:15
  that was just why he was telling people he was
• 25:17
  slightly younger. But it was so much that even
• 25:19
  his family didn't know. And this little boy got
• 25:22
  it right. And to me, those are stunning pieces.
• 25:25
  He said, I lived on a road, Rock Road, Rocks
• 25:28
  Road. It turns out he lived on Roxbury Lane,
• 25:31
  Marty Martin. He said, I danced in Broadway.
• 25:34
  And it turned out when he was very young, not
• 25:37
  very young, but young as an adult, he had performed
• 25:41
  vaudeville dancing scenes in New York City. So
• 25:45
  it's just, none of this was... None of this,
• 25:48
  there weren't like books written or websites
• 25:50
  about Marty Martin. He was just a guy who lived
• 25:52
  in Hollywood. He had a short little moment as
• 25:54
  an extra and then he started a talent agency,
• 25:57
  a small little boutique agency. And so to me,
• 26:02
  that's the kind of case when you look at it and
• 26:04
  you think, I don't know what to do with this.
• 26:07
  It could all be chance. It could all be, there
• 26:11
  could be natural explanations. There could be
• 26:13
  fraud. You test for these things. The investigators
• 26:15
  look for these things. The private knowledge
• 26:18
  is pretty astounding to me. When it requires
• 26:22
  going into some sort of sealed archive to find
• 26:28
  out information that family members don't even
• 26:30
  know is accurate and a three or four -year -old
• 26:32
  boy gets it right. When you put that in the gestalt
• 26:35
  of the other 47 statements, it just feels like
• 26:39
  it's a... Now, I'll stop here as I want to be
• 26:42
  very clear. Does that mean I'm saying Ryan Hammons
• 26:44
  is the reincarnation of Marty Martin? No. It's,
• 26:48
  I don't know. I mean, I'm willing to be, I'm
• 26:51
  a researcher at DOPS. I'm willing to consider
• 26:52
  that, but I don't know that that's what it is.
• 26:56
  It could be something remarkable, but it has
• 26:58
  nothing to do with reincarnation. It'd be something
• 27:00
  called super psi is sort of a term people will
• 27:03
  use. It's also sometimes known as the Akashic
• 27:06
  record, which is that it could be that these
• 27:09
  children have access psychically to information,
• 27:13
  consciousness remnants that are available. And
• 27:17
  that maybe they're picking up on that. That's
• 27:20
  a common non -reincarnation hypothesis. Now,
• 27:23
  if that were true, that would still be remarkable.
• 27:27
  I think the question I always have when the Akashic
• 27:29
  Record or Super Sai, whatever you want to call
• 27:31
  it, comes up is, well, why is it just always
• 27:33
  or almost always just the one person, right?
• 27:36
  Like if they had somehow the ability to pick
• 27:39
  up on information that was in the air, the consciousness
• 27:43
  sort of record. um which is a hypothesis that
• 27:46
  people have had uh in the past i'm not saying
• 27:50
  it exists but if that's what it is well wouldn't
• 27:52
  it be more confusing than that why is it always
• 27:54
  so coherent why is it like you know it's very
• 27:57
  few people or children in our database reckon
• 27:59
  recall more than one life some do some claim
• 28:04
  to have more than one but even in those there's
• 28:06
  coherence they're able to go this was one lie
• 28:09
  and this was another lie but the majority of
• 28:12
  them are just saying i was this one person And
• 28:15
  they'll tell you about that life. And it just
• 28:17
  seems weird. Like if they're accessing that information,
• 28:19
  why is it so focused? How, how does that work?
• 28:22
  And that, that would be a question that no one
• 28:24
  seems to ask, but I would want to know. So sorry
• 28:27
  for the long answer, but. Not at all. It's fascinating
• 28:30
  stuff. These are small kids though. Like you
• 28:32
  said, two, three, four years old when they are.
• 28:37
  kind of recounting these statements, are they
• 28:39
  pretty much consistent? Are they like adding
• 28:41
  things, subtracting things, changing things?
• 28:44
  No, they are very consistent. They do add meaning
• 28:47
  like in the context, it's an additive process,
• 28:50
  right? Like, so that case I talked about with
• 28:52
  the child in the back seat saying, I'm Mary Jane
• 28:55
  Smith and I'm an accountant, whatever I made
• 28:56
  up. We've only just started that investigation.
• 29:00
  So that was the first thing we were told by the
• 29:04
  mother who reached out to us. We then got a follow
• 29:07
  up with the child said this, this and this now.
• 29:10
  And some of this is names and look. So there's
• 29:13
  other stuff that could be verified or checked
• 29:15
  on. And so it adds the case ads because the child
• 29:20
  is growing and developing and memories, so -called
• 29:22
  memories pop out as the life goes on. As a researcher,
• 29:26
  it's really frustrating, as beautiful as it is,
• 29:28
  because, you know, I have most researchers and
• 29:31
  it's how I spent the bulk of my career is you
• 29:33
  go out, you collect data. A couple months later,
• 29:35
  you analyze the data and you go, aha, we've got
• 29:37
  a finding. And this is, okay, what an exciting
• 29:41
  case. Your child said her first and last name
• 29:43
  and a job and a location and a name of a cousin.
• 29:47
  Okay, we'll get back in touch, you know, as the
• 29:50
  child ages and we'll just see what else happens.
• 29:52
  And you're just sort of waiting for life to occur,
• 29:55
  you know, in this family and just hoping, fingers
• 29:59
  crossed, that there will be some more things.
• 30:02
  spoken by the child. And so it adds up over time,
• 30:06
  but they, they very, it's very rare to hear them
• 30:09
  go back and change something that they said earlier.
• 30:11
  It's like, no, it's like the story ends up being
• 30:15
  fairly linear and they stick with what they say
• 30:18
  and they'll repeat it. They'll just keep saying,
• 30:19
  no, that's not what it was. I was like Ryan Hammons.
• 30:22
  I was 61. I know you're telling me it was 58.
• 30:25
  I'm saying it's 61, right? That it would make
• 30:28
  so much sense for a young child in that situation
• 30:30
  to just go. Oh, yeah, you're right. It's 58.
• 30:33
  I was 58. And that's a perfect example of what
• 30:35
  I'm talking about. Ryan Hammons didn't do that.
• 30:37
  When told, when confronted with the fact and
• 30:40
  his family was confronted with, well, that was
• 30:41
  one thing he got wrong. He kept insisting it
• 30:44
  was 61. Until someone discovered he was right.
• 30:49
  Right, right. Do these memories or images or
• 30:52
  visions or whatever, do they stay with people
• 30:55
  or do they eventually disappear as they age?
• 30:58
  A little bit of both. For a long time, the language
• 31:01
  that the people were using was the memories fade
• 31:05
  at around age seven. Marietta and myself recently
• 31:09
  have started changing that language a bit. We
• 31:11
  now say at the age of around at the age of seven,
• 31:14
  these children stop expressing the memories,
• 31:17
  stop talking about the memories, because it's
• 31:19
  become clear that some of them still remember,
• 31:22
  even as adults. Some don't. Some say I have no
• 31:27
  memory of that. My mom had to tell me that this
• 31:29
  happened to me. And others, there's basically
• 31:32
  three paths. I remember the memories. I don't
• 31:35
  remember anything. I remember, but I think I
• 31:37
  remember being told what I said. So it's not
• 31:42
  like they're still there. It's that, oh, yeah,
• 31:44
  that's right. I said I died in a plane crash
• 31:46
  once. But it's just me remembering my parents
• 31:49
  reminding me of that. So those seem to be the
• 31:51
  ways forward. I mean, we did a follow -up study
• 31:55
  of about 25, I think it's about 25 adults. Marietta
• 31:59
  published, she was the first author. I was fortunate
• 32:01
  to be on that paper a couple of years ago now
• 32:04
  with some kids who Ian Stevenson investigated
• 32:07
  36 years on average prior. And about 50%, roughly
• 32:14
  48%, I believe it was, said they still had some
• 32:16
  memories. The most common thing they could remember,
• 32:22
  I believe, is how they died. So again, that seems
• 32:26
  to be a key feature for this. And yeah, so I
• 32:32
  think some of them do. And I think there's a
• 32:34
  lot more to unpack in that question. Is there
• 32:37
  really a well -documented or a documented phenomenon
• 32:41
  when a child exhibits like a mark or a scar corresponding
• 32:45
  to the way they claim they died in their previous
• 32:48
  life? Yeah, there are many of them. There's Ian
• 32:52
  Stevenson. So I've said his name a few times.
• 32:54
  And just to be clear, Ian Stevenson was the person
• 32:58
  who founded what is DOPS today, the Division
• 33:00
  of Perceptual Studies. He was the chair of the
• 33:04
  psychiatry department at Virginia School of Medicine
• 33:06
  in the 60s. only 38 years old. He was the youngest
• 33:10
  chair of psychiatry in any department in the
• 33:13
  country at the time. He had some interesting
• 33:16
  upbringing. His mother was into mysticism and
• 33:19
  theosophy and these kinds of spiritual leanings,
• 33:25
  but he was a solid psych researcher, did normal,
• 33:29
  just I think he did psychosomatic research, psychosomatic
• 33:33
  illness. Chester Carlson, the guy who basically
• 33:39
  invented the Xerox machine. The Xerox process
• 33:41
  obviously made himself a ton of money doing that.
• 33:45
  His wife had heard about some cases of reincarnation,
• 33:48
  these kinds of cases overseas in the Middle East
• 33:51
  and in those types of cultures and said, I want
• 33:55
  someone to study this. And Carlson gave Stevenson
• 33:59
  a million dollars and said, I know you're interested
• 34:00
  in this. He had already started talking. He started
• 34:02
  writing about it a little bit. He'd done a case
• 34:04
  or two, I think. And Carlson came up and said,
• 34:07
  here's a million dollars, just go do it. And
• 34:09
  that's like, we tested this a few years ago with
• 34:12
  these online calculators. That's like someone
• 34:13
  basically giving you $9 million today. It's remarkable.
• 34:18
  Not a bad gig. Oh, I'm telling you, as someone
• 34:21
  who like constantly is. begging, granting agencies
• 34:24
  or private donors or just 99 % of DOPS work.
• 34:28
  Everything I'm talking about is all privately
• 34:30
  funded. We don't get, you can imagine, there's
• 34:32
  no federal funding for the possibility of reincarnation,
• 34:35
  right? It's like, so we need people who want
• 34:37
  this work to continue to please consider being
• 34:40
  philanthropic. But that was the incredible gift.
• 34:45
  And that's what he started that. He, Ian Stevenson,
• 34:49
  Locked right away into the birthmark birth defect
• 34:52
  phenomenon. And he published a full monograph.
• 34:59
  It comes out in two volumes of biology and reincarnation
• 35:03
  where he documents 225 cases of birthmarks and
• 35:08
  birth defects that he was able to verify and
• 35:12
  link to either actual autopsy reports and or.
• 35:18
  direct witnesses, family members who saw and
• 35:21
  knew that this person died this violent way and
• 35:25
  let's say lost their hands. Their hands were
• 35:29
  chopped off because they were a thief. And this
• 35:31
  is old. culture, old way of living. So there
• 35:35
  were some cultures where if you were found to
• 35:37
  be a fat thief, they would cut your hand off.
• 35:39
  And that might be how that person died in addition.
• 35:42
  And suddenly this child in another country or
• 35:44
  another village who's claiming to be that person
• 35:47
  is born without the hand. And there's a great
• 35:51
  case. I just literally dug into this last week.
• 35:54
  There's a case from Ceylon, which is I now believe
• 35:57
  Sri Lanka, that Ian did where a boy was Telling
• 36:02
  a story, telling memories, apparently purported
• 36:05
  memories of having been a cattle rustler in another
• 36:08
  village. And the town, the village people, folk
• 36:13
  understood that he was stealing cattle and they
• 36:16
  chased him down and they killed him. And the
• 36:19
  fatal blow was a sharp knife, almost like a machete
• 36:24
  hit to the back left of the head. And this child
• 36:28
  who was telling the story of having been this
• 36:30
  person. has this huge birthmark on the back left
• 36:35
  of his head that looks like what it would be
• 36:37
  like if a scar from a knife or a machete hit
• 36:40
  him there. And Ian actually found the post -mortem
• 36:43
  report to demonstrate that that person who was
• 36:45
  the cattle rusher had been hit with a knife right
• 36:48
  there. So I think he saw the utility in pursuing
• 36:55
  these cases because if you go back to what I
• 36:57
  talked about before, that super psi Akashic record
• 37:00
  hypothesis, it's not reincarnation. It's just
• 37:03
  maybe some psychic awareness, as remarkable as
• 37:06
  that might be. It's the birthmarks and birth
• 37:09
  defects that kind of challenges that because
• 37:13
  it's sort of, well, why? Would a child be born
• 37:16
  with a birthmark that matches someone's fatal
• 37:18
  wounds or injuries from a previous life? How
• 37:22
  could that come before the psychic connection
• 37:25
  potentially is even observed or manifests, right?
• 37:29
  So I think that was why he leaned so hard into
• 37:33
  the birthmarks and defects. What makes you lean
• 37:38
  more towards the possibility that what these
• 37:40
  kids are saying could be the truth and not that
• 37:42
  it's... invention or influence or a combination
• 37:46
  of both. Children's brains are so malleable as
• 37:49
  well as impressionable at those ages. I mean,
• 37:53
  like I said, I think I'm comfortable right now
• 37:56
  saying I know this is a thing. I know it's something
• 37:59
  qualitatively different. I don't know yet what
• 38:01
  it is. Am I willing to consider, do I think it's
• 38:04
  possible that this is reincarnation? Sure, it's
• 38:07
  possible because I'm comfortable saying that
• 38:09
  now in my career and I don't care if people think
• 38:11
  that makes me ridiculous. I think I'm proud of
• 38:13
  the work that we do and I'm proud of the way
• 38:15
  the research gets done. I think what makes me
• 38:19
  comfortable with saying this is something unique
• 38:21
  and we need to keep studying it is. Everything
• 38:25
  I've been talking about plus. So one of the things
• 38:28
  is we have this database, 2 ,254 cases. I'm a
• 38:32
  statistical, you know, that's part of what you
• 38:34
  do as a psychology researcher. You do a lot of
• 38:36
  statistical analyses. You look for patterns.
• 38:38
  You make predictions that are sound based on
• 38:42
  sound hypotheses that have been empirically derived.
• 38:44
  And then you say, okay, this hypothesis is very,
• 38:47
  makes sense. So let's look for evidence. And
• 38:49
  if it's there, that supports the theory and the
• 38:52
  model, et cetera, et cetera. Well, a perfect
• 38:54
  example of that. There are some cases in our
• 38:58
  database where the children have claimed and
• 39:03
  the parents claim that the children were exhibiting
• 39:05
  what's known as xenoglossy. Xenoglossy is people
• 39:09
  will potentially, if they don't know the word,
• 39:11
  they will probably heard of it in practice, which
• 39:13
  is someone speaking a foreign language that they
• 39:16
  shouldn't be able to speak, that they have no
• 39:18
  experience learning or exposure to. It's not
• 39:22
  uh speaking in tongues which is usually just
• 39:25
  nonsense utterances right it's xenoblase is a
• 39:28
  language you're speaking japanese and you're
• 39:30
  not from japan what's happening right you know
• 39:32
  how why are you doing that now it's controversial
• 39:34
  study japanese right you know exactly and you
• 39:37
  haven't been exposed to it you didn't study it
• 39:39
  right there's more than just you're not from
• 39:40
  because i'm studying japanese and it's really
• 39:42
  hard yes exactly right up yeah exactly and and
• 39:46
  that's one of the ones that's very common by
• 39:47
  the way from world war ii we've got a lot of
• 39:49
  cases of some of these cases no way Yeah. I'll
• 39:52
  tell you an example of some of them. That's what
• 39:55
  it is. We have 40 cases in our database. Now,
• 40:00
  it's not a lot of 2 ,254, it's 2%, but it's remarkable
• 40:05
  that there are 40 kids who had claimed to be
• 40:07
  speaking a language that they shouldn't be able
• 40:09
  to speak. I saw that in the database and I was
• 40:12
  really intrigued. Ian wrote, I pointed there
• 40:15
  for some reason, because there's literally, I'm
• 40:16
  looking at his book, Unlearned Language. He wrote
• 40:18
  two books on xenoglossy. I think he was fascinated
• 40:20
  with that as he was with the birthmarks. And
• 40:23
  I just knew, it's like, I want to dig into this.
• 40:25
  This is so exciting because I can't, I have no
• 40:29
  idea if these kids were speaking this language.
• 40:31
  I only have records. Where the interviews say,
• 40:34
  we spoke to the, you know, the interviewer spoke
• 40:36
  to the teacher, they spoke to the mother, they
• 40:37
  spoke to the brother. And they said, yeah, they
• 40:40
  were speaking something we didn't understand
• 40:41
  until someone else said, oh, I think that's Japanese.
• 40:45
  And the way I looked at it was, this is perfect.
• 40:48
  It's provocative, it's sexy, but it's 60 years
• 40:53
  of this in multiple cultures, multiple countries.
• 40:57
  If this was a fraud, if this was... Error, just
• 41:02
  a mistake. If this was a group of kids, 40 kids
• 41:07
  who were precocious and intelligent and their
• 41:10
  parents misinterpreted something, or they were
• 41:13
  just intelligent enough to have picked up something
• 41:16
  and spit it back out, well, then it should have
• 41:20
  distributed randomly. in the database over 60
• 41:24
  plus years. There should be no systematic predictive
• 41:26
  ability of what makes this group of kids xenoglossy
• 41:29
  versus this group, which are not xenoglossy.
• 41:32
  I want to be as statistically accurate, but also
• 41:36
  not get too into the weeds for folks. And that's
• 41:39
  what I set out to do. And the only thing I said
• 41:42
  was that prediction we made based on sound hypothesis.
• 41:45
  I've already mentioned it. Marietta and I have
• 41:47
  started realizing that this emotion trauma component
• 41:51
  So many of these cases seems to be an important
• 41:54
  mechanism, an important part of this process
• 41:57
  for these kids. Intense emotions and often violent
• 42:01
  trauma that they claim they experienced in the
• 42:05
  past life. So I set out to test that. And I tested,
• 42:09
  could I predict whether someone was in the xenoglossy
• 42:12
  group or the not xenoglossy group based on how
• 42:16
  early they started talking as a child? No, had
• 42:19
  nothing to do with predicting either. Could I
• 42:21
  use household income and or education, which
• 42:25
  would often predict more verbal skills, education,
• 42:30
  more likely to have watched or had some foreign
• 42:33
  language film on TV. I'm just making the point.
• 42:35
  No, that had nothing to do with, I couldn't predict
• 42:38
  xenoglossy or not xenoglossy with that. The only
• 42:41
  two variables that at the end of the day significantly
• 42:43
  predicted The group that was xenoglossy separate
• 42:46
  from the group that wasn't was the amount of
• 42:49
  emotional distress the children experienced while
• 42:51
  they were recalling memories. And if their memories
• 42:54
  involved a violent intentional death, emotion
• 42:58
  trauma. So to me, again, I'm unsatisfied and
• 43:03
  probably it's unsatisfactory to hear me talk
• 43:06
  about this because it means I'm still saying
• 43:07
  I don't know what it is. What I know is that
• 43:10
  there is a sound empirically derived hypothesis
• 43:12
  of emotion and trauma. that links to something
• 43:15
  about this phenomenon. And that is what predicted
• 43:19
  this remarkable over 60 years in multiple countries
• 43:23
  when it should just have been random noise in
• 43:27
  that database. That tells me something's going
• 43:30
  on here. That would be a nifty skill, but it's
• 43:34
  just my luck that I wasn't a Japanese pilot in
• 43:36
  my previous life. And now I have to study Japanese
• 43:39
  for years and still be kind of shitty at it.
• 43:42
  Oh, I can tell you. I don't mean to start talking.
• 43:44
  Here's one of the cases, one of the 40 cases.
• 43:47
  This is so cool. So some of them are really mundane,
• 43:50
  like simple, like a word or two. were said by
• 43:52
  some of the kids. Remember, these are two -and
• 43:54
  -a -half, three -year -old kids. One of the claims,
• 43:56
  and I've read the whole file and I've seen the
• 43:59
  interviews, this is what the claims were. Again,
• 44:00
  I wasn't there. I don't have audio tapes of it.
• 44:05
  They were Burmese twin sisters who claimed in
• 44:11
  their memories, this happens occasionally in
• 44:14
  the database, very rare. They claim They were
• 44:17
  both telling memories of a past life, and they
• 44:20
  were telling having been brothers in Japan in
• 44:25
  the past life. Not twins, but brothers who were
• 44:27
  fighting on a battlefield in World War II. And
• 44:31
  their memories were talking about how there were
• 44:33
  bombers in that region where they were bombing
• 44:36
  them at the time. And what's really fascinating
• 44:38
  about that case is that... People, when they
• 44:41
  first heard that, said, I don't think that's
• 44:42
  accurate. I don't think there was bombing there.
• 44:44
  And investigators, Ian and others who he had
• 44:47
  working with him, discovered that, no, in fact,
• 44:49
  the British were bombing in that exact region
• 44:51
  at that time, even though most people didn't
• 44:53
  know it. And the story that they tell is that
• 44:55
  these Japanese brothers, when they were these
• 44:57
  brothers, apparently, they didn't die from the
• 45:01
  bombs. They died. They were jumping to hide from
• 45:03
  the bombs. their hand grenades went off. So they
• 45:08
  kind of killed themselves almost in a sense in
• 45:10
  the trying to avoid the bombing. And these two
• 45:13
  Burmese twin girls would talk to each other in
• 45:16
  full sentences in Japanese. And no one in the
• 45:20
  family understood Japanese. No one knew it in
• 45:23
  the town. What was really fascinating is the
• 45:28
  reports in this, the investigators found that
• 45:31
  the teachers and the family said it took them
• 45:34
  significantly longer to learn Burmese than their
• 45:37
  siblings and anyone else in their class. And
• 45:40
  people would stop them and say, where are they
• 45:42
  from originally? Because they're not from here.
• 45:44
  They're speaking with an accent. So even as they
• 45:47
  developed their own sort of natural language
• 45:51
  in their current Burma. It always, it was as
• 45:55
  if they were trying to overcome and learn a second
• 45:59
  language, which is harder for people to do as
• 46:01
  you're experiencing, maybe you know more than
• 46:03
  two. And it always influenced the way they spoke,
• 46:07
  even as they aged, which to me is just fascinating.
• 46:10
  You can't fake that, right? That's my point.
• 46:12
  You can't fake an accent while you're, I mean,
• 46:17
  that's just too much for me. It's just too much.
• 46:21
  Are there sometimes clear -cut cases of when
• 46:24
  you feel like parents are pushing a narrative?
• 46:27
  Because I read like a skeptics account of the
• 46:29
  James Leininger case. I didn't read all of it
• 46:32
  because it was really long. And he sort of implied,
• 46:35
  this guy, I don't remember his name, unfortunately,
• 46:37
  that the parents kind of did push the kid into
• 46:40
  this direction, sort of. I mean, yeah, from everything
• 46:44
  I've read from Jim and another gentleman, Jim
• 46:47
  Matlock, has written about that as well. The
• 46:51
  father really wanted it not to be a thing. The
• 46:53
  father really didn't want his son's claims to
• 46:57
  be, he was like, what are you talking about?
• 46:59
  And he, I believe everything I've read from Jim's
• 47:02
  work, Jim Tucker's work, that the father was
• 47:04
  actually setting out to debunk this as soon as
• 47:07
  he could. He was like, I'm going to make this
• 47:09
  go away. I will say this. I, I, I, we, we are
• 47:14
  very sensitive to this and I want to, people
• 47:16
  may. come here skeptically and think, oh, this
• 47:19
  is all nonsense. And that's fair. That's their
• 47:21
  prerogative. It may be nonsense. Again, I'm not
• 47:24
  sure about it. Jim Tucker, before he left, he
• 47:28
  handed me a file and said, I want you to debunk
• 47:31
  this. I want you to debunk this case. And I said,
• 47:33
  what do you mean? He's like, my spidey senses
• 47:35
  aren't right. Something about one of the parents.
• 47:37
  And I really, it's a great case in some sense,
• 47:41
  but it's a... It's just rubbing me the wrong
• 47:44
  way. I feel like maybe there's just too much
• 47:46
  pushing going on. That literally is our first
• 47:49
  focus. It is exactly what we set out to do. I
• 47:52
  will say this. I published a paper since I've
• 47:56
  been at DOPS on the parents. Even though this
• 47:59
  doesn't mean there aren't one or two parents
• 48:01
  or that this has happened over the years, my
• 48:06
  first paper that I published at DOPS was all
• 48:07
  about the parents' perspective because we only
• 48:09
  have a handful of parents. data on the parents.
• 48:11
  It's all obviously on the child and or the past
• 48:14
  personality, whatever they could figure out for
• 48:15
  that person. That's what we call them, the past
• 48:18
  or previous personality. We have this variable
• 48:23
  in the database called the strength of case score.
• 48:26
  It adds up points over 22 different variables
• 48:31
  in the database. For all intents and purposes,
• 48:33
  it's just a continuous measure. It can be negative,
• 48:37
  actually, because you can lose points. can go
• 48:39
  pretty high and basically the higher your value
• 48:42
  on that the more difficult it is to explain the
• 48:46
  case or understand the case using conventional
• 48:48
  means if that's the best way right i don't want
• 48:50
  to get too like oh it means it's reincarnation
• 48:51
  that's not what i'm saying it's just like i don't
• 48:53
  know what to make of this there are birthmarks
• 48:55
  there right it's all the things we've been talking
• 48:56
  but they're speaking a foreign language what
• 48:58
  the fuck do we do with that right it's like it's
• 49:00
  like higher numbers means it's a strong case
• 49:02
  right just let's just leave it there well what
• 49:05
  i found was There was this huge correlation such
• 49:10
  that the stronger the case, the more we had a
• 49:15
  variable in the database that was, are you encouraging
• 49:17
  your child and their memories? And it was continuous
• 49:20
  all the way to, are you actively suppressing
• 49:23
  your child? Are you to the point where the final
• 49:24
  option at the high end of suppressing was involved
• 49:28
  capital punishment, like spanking them to stop
• 49:30
  saying these things. And the correlation was
• 49:33
  strong and clear. The stronger the case, the
• 49:36
  more likely parents were to be suppressing their
• 49:39
  child. So I know that's an aggregated effect
• 49:42
  over hundreds and hundreds of cases over dozens
• 49:45
  and decades, you know, 60 years. But it tells
• 49:51
  the opposite story of what that skeptic's perspective
• 49:54
  is. A strong case is the case you want to push,
• 49:57
  right? A strong case is one that's going to get
• 49:59
  you the documentary or the book deal or the attention
• 50:01
  on a podcast. Well. aggregated over the years,
• 50:05
  if the case is strong, parents want it to stop.
• 50:08
  They don't want to encourage their kids. And
• 50:10
  the reason is, is very clear. We have, as we
• 50:12
  ask, why are you suppressing your child? They're
• 50:14
  scared. They're scared for their children. When
• 50:18
  your child, let's go back to James Linegar, when
• 50:20
  you're having nightmares at night as a three
• 50:22
  or four -year -old boy talking about waking up
• 50:24
  saying, little man on fire, flames, fire, parents
• 50:28
  freak out. They don't want this to be a thing.
• 50:33
  You know, so again, I'm not saying there haven't
• 50:36
  been individual cases of parents. We try to find
• 50:39
  them. We try to debunk them. We look for these
• 50:41
  things. But the data aggregated does not, do
• 50:45
  not support the perspective that parents are
• 50:48
  just trying to gin up cases for attention. It's
• 50:50
  the opposite of that. If I think of my own reaction,
• 50:55
  I'm a parent. If that happened to my child, I
• 50:58
  would probably be like, hey. Chill out on that.
• 51:01
  Like we're good. We don't, you don't need to
• 51:04
  say that all the time. Exactly. And that's what
• 51:07
  parents do. Let's just have a nice life. Yes.
• 51:09
  Stop talking about that. Right. Yeah. In fact,
• 51:13
  that's, that's our advice to parents, but they
• 51:15
  all ask us all the time. And Jim was a child
• 51:18
  psychiatrist. So I learned from him and this
• 51:20
  is what he would tell parents is, is like, be
• 51:22
  supportive in the sense of like, don't, don't
• 51:26
  make them, don't punish them. Don't, don't spank
• 51:29
  them. But at the same time, focus them, get them
• 51:33
  to be here. There are some cases where their
• 51:40
  parents have actually gone the opposite way,
• 51:41
  where they literally have moved the children
• 51:44
  to where they say they were originally from and
• 51:46
  have tried to almost put them back into that
• 51:50
  life. And our perspective on that is don't do
• 51:53
  that, right? They're going to come out with these
• 51:56
  expressions. It's going to be a period of time,
• 51:57
  usually two and a half to seven. Deal with it.
• 52:00
  Be kind, be loving, be supportive of your children,
• 52:03
  but keep them focused on what they have here
• 52:06
  in front of them. And that would be what's best.
• 52:09
  And the good news is that it does, I'll kind
• 52:12
  of bring back that paper I talked about with
• 52:15
  Marietta, the follow -up we did with those 25
• 52:17
  adults who had been studied as children. The
• 52:21
  good news from that was all, there was no evidence.
• 52:23
  They were, we had comparative adults who hadn't,
• 52:27
  you know. been court children, cases of the reincarnation
• 52:30
  type, hadn't been past life memory children.
• 52:33
  They were not different. They were normal, generally
• 52:36
  healthy adults, which is nice to see. The mainstream
• 52:41
  scientific position on death is obviously materialistic.
• 52:44
  Since consciousness is produced by the brain,
• 52:47
  there's no reason to believe anything would survive.
• 52:49
  It's death. Given what you're researching, does
• 52:53
  this position make sense to you still? No, I
• 52:57
  mean, eternal oblivion, what we talked about.
• 52:59
  Yeah, no, I've, I've written this before. So
• 53:03
  I've written it in a sub stack piece that got
• 53:05
  some attention and that whole struggling with
• 53:10
  nothingness thing that I did for years through
• 53:13
  university. I just, I don't, I'm, I'm much more
• 53:19
  comfortable right now saying, I think the nothingness
• 53:21
  hypothesis is flawed. I just don't, the near
• 53:24
  death experience. the out -of -body experience,
• 53:28
  the after -death communication, the children
• 53:31
  seemingly recalling past life memories, the apparent
• 53:38
  psychic abilities of non -speaking autistic individuals,
• 53:43
  which is potentially evidence of a consciousness
• 53:47
  not fully embodied. I am just at that point now
• 53:51
  where I am... I think consciousness may be fundamental,
• 53:55
  not the product of neurons and dendrites and
• 53:59
  synapses and such. I don't think it's an illusion.
• 54:02
  I think I'm much more comfortable thinking of
• 54:05
  consciousness as potentially maybe actually responsible
• 54:12
  for everything. not just the sort of a byproduct
• 54:15
  or an avatar that, you know, it's like we are
• 54:19
  in the avatar. We are the sort of illusion. And
• 54:23
  I, you know, the way I would put it is like,
• 54:25
  I don't have a consciousness. I am a consciousness,
• 54:27
  right? I have a body. I just want to be clear
• 54:31
  though, like, especially in this day and age
• 54:33
  when a lot of folks on Twitter or X are openly
• 54:36
  saying, I don't really need science. I did my
• 54:38
  own research. The last thing I want to do is
• 54:41
  denigrate it, you know, science. In fact, this
• 54:44
  podcast is trying to be a tiny contribution in
• 54:46
  the other direction. That's why the vast majority
• 54:48
  of my guests are like you, extremely educated
• 54:50
  people, usually university professors and researchers,
• 54:53
  not some Teemu versions of Alex Jones. I know.
• 54:57
  However, exploration is an integral part of science,
• 55:03
  isn't it? Yeah, and there's a place for... I
• 55:08
  mean, there are materialists, there is materialism,
• 55:11
  there is physicalism, there are things that we
• 55:13
  should understand about the world that we live
• 55:15
  in. But I just have come to the conclusion that
• 55:19
  it is too, it is too, it's ignorant. And I mean
• 55:25
  that in the purest sense of that word, right?
• 55:27
  Not just like, you haven't done the research,
• 55:31
  you haven't paid attention to the evidence that
• 55:35
  comes from this line of work whether it's near
• 55:38
  -death experiences or anything psychic or out
• 55:40
  -of -body experiences they they don't count it
• 55:43
  they don't look at it they discount it as soon
• 55:46
  as confronted with someone saying it is oh this
• 55:49
  is this is like you believe in angels you're
• 55:51
  an idiot but what papers have you read what research
• 55:54
  have you read right you're ignorant of the research
• 55:57
  you you're you're defending a worldview without
• 56:00
  so like a perfect example is in practice in practice
• 56:03
  um is one of the things that skeptics of near
• 56:08
  -death experiences, people who really want anyway,
• 56:10
  not skeptics so much, but people who want to
• 56:14
  explain a near -death experience fully in a materialistic,
• 56:18
  physicalist sort of way. This is very common.
• 56:22
  They'll say, oh, well, this is just the reaction
• 56:24
  that comes from all the drugs that have been
• 56:27
  given to them. They're pumped full of drugs and
• 56:30
  anesthesia and other things. And that's what's
• 56:34
  happening. And it's like an out there sort of
• 56:38
  like, here's an explanation for it. Despite the
• 56:43
  fact that Bruce, my colleague Grayson and others
• 56:45
  have demonstrated empirically that, well. we
• 56:49
  went to hospitals and we found that basically
• 56:52
  the correlation is the more drugs people were
• 56:54
  given, the less likely they were to report near
• 56:56
  -death experiences. So just on the association
• 57:01
  is the opposite. But my point is their claim
• 57:06
  completely discounts because they aren't aware
• 57:09
  of the hundreds, if not thousands of documented
• 57:14
  near -death experiences and documented cases
• 57:17
  of people who had near -death experiences nowhere
• 57:19
  near a hospital in a you know drowning in a boating
• 57:24
  accident on a river in colorado no one gave them
• 57:26
  drugs right you're trying to explain something
• 57:29
  away and you're not even like and that's just
• 57:32
  like it's not a non -zero it's like a huge percentage
• 57:36
  of near -death experiences this assumption that
• 57:38
  well it's all happening because of the drugs
• 57:39
  are given in hospital is literally saying out
• 57:42
  loud, without saying the words, I am ignorant
• 57:44
  of the thing I'm talking about. And this is what
• 57:48
  I'm suggesting. I don't know what it is. I'm
• 57:51
  comfortable with that. I used to tell my students
• 57:54
  when I would lecture at the start of every semester,
• 57:57
  every term, I would say, as a scientist, I'm
• 57:59
  very comfortable with the notion that we're probably
• 58:02
  wrong about everything I'm going to teach you
• 58:03
  in the next 10 weeks. Because I think it's best
• 58:06
  to be there than to assume you know everything.
• 58:10
  That's not the way science is supposed to work,
• 58:12
  right? We don't prove things. We don't show truth.
• 58:16
  We test hypotheses. We can come up with preferred
• 58:19
  explanations for things. But that's as far as
• 58:22
  I'm willing to go. And my preferred explanation
• 58:24
  is probably wrong, but it's the one I prefer.
• 58:27
  That's why it's mine. And I'm very comfortable
• 58:31
  there. I think it's so funny how uncomfortable
• 58:34
  the skeptics are. to be there. They need to be
• 58:39
  right. And it's so often, too many times in needing
• 58:44
  to be right, they demonstrate how ignorant they
• 58:47
  are of all of the work that could inform their
• 58:49
  decisions or their ideas. One very gentle, well,
• 58:54
  not even pushback, but like a side note, let's
• 58:57
  say. I had, regarding the eternal oblivion. concept
• 59:02
  we were talking about before. Last year, I got
• 59:03
  a colonoscopy, as you should. No shame in that.
• 59:05
  Especially, you know, colon cancer incidents
• 59:08
  are rising under 50. So everybody should get
• 59:13
  that. And I had anesthesia, so they put me under.
• 59:16
  And it was sort of like an experience of nothingness,
• 59:21
  if you will. Just an absence of anything. I just
• 59:24
  woke up, I don't know what it was, two hours
• 59:26
  later or whatever. That got me thinking like,
• 59:30
  If that already happened during anesthesia, when
• 59:34
  I die, it is reasonable to assume it's going
• 59:37
  to be like that only deeper and forever, which
• 59:41
  is a tiny bit frightening. It could be. Well,
• 59:44
  it wouldn't be frightening at all, because if
• 59:46
  it is nothingness, then there's nothing. I mean,
• 59:49
  right. I mean, it's just I mean, whatever. And
• 59:53
  the funny thing is, is I'll say this. I understand
• 59:57
  this can get to the point of being. So one of
• 1:00:02
  the things that people will say is, well, if
• 1:00:05
  you want to know what nothingness is, if you
• 1:00:06
  want to know what it's going to be like when
• 1:00:07
  you die, think about all the things that you
• 1:00:10
  can remember from before you were born. And it's
• 1:00:12
  their way of in a quip saying, aha, right? So,
• 1:00:16
  but here's the point. Not only do we have 60
• 1:00:22
  years of children seemingly recalling a life
• 1:00:25
  that was lived, we have from them, some, not
• 1:00:30
  all. But some percentage, I wish I knew it off
• 1:00:33
  the top of my head. I don't. Some non -zero percentage
• 1:00:36
  of these children and many near -death experiencers
• 1:00:41
  who suddenly will talk about what is a time between
• 1:00:45
  lives. So that life ended. And before I became
• 1:00:49
  this new person, I have a memory of. my time
• 1:00:53
  in between. And we call them intermission memories.
• 1:00:56
  That's the term that Ian Stevenson came up with.
• 1:00:57
  You got to talk about that. Yeah. Intermission
• 1:01:00
  memories are really fascinating. Kids will talk
• 1:01:03
  about it. They'll say like, yeah, no, I was...
• 1:01:05
  And in fact, some children, now it's not a huge
• 1:01:08
  percentage who talk about... Some of the kids
• 1:01:11
  who talk about intermission memories will actually
• 1:01:14
  talk about going through a tunnel and seeing
• 1:01:16
  lots of colors and encountering other entities.
• 1:01:19
  All things that people say... in their near -death
• 1:01:22
  experience. All of those things are common in
• 1:01:24
  near -death experiences. One of the things that
• 1:01:29
  children say a lot about their intermission period
• 1:01:32
  is they talk about how they chose the life they're
• 1:01:36
  living now. This is what's really fascinating
• 1:01:39
  about this is that comes up from near -death
• 1:01:41
  experiences. They'll say, while I was there,
• 1:01:44
  while I was in that place, communicating telepathically
• 1:01:47
  with that entity. Whatever it was, the light,
• 1:01:51
  the source of light that was full of love and
• 1:01:53
  joy, these things that near -death experiences,
• 1:01:54
  it became known to me or I remembered that I
• 1:01:58
  had chosen the life that I was currently living.
• 1:02:01
  And that to me is so fascinating because here
• 1:02:03
  you have two to six, seven -year -old kids who
• 1:02:07
  talk about intermission periods saying, one of
• 1:02:10
  the famous ones that we like to talk about as
• 1:02:11
  a child said, oh yeah, no, I remember being in
• 1:02:14
  this place and I picked my mommy out of a basket
• 1:02:17
  of mommies. Again, they're a three or four -year
• 1:02:20
  -old child. You don't take the word for word.
• 1:02:24
  You don't parse it that way. You look thematically.
• 1:02:26
  What does that say? It says choice. I chose my
• 1:02:30
  mommy. I picked my mommy from a basket of mommies.
• 1:02:32
  Another child said, again, it's almost poetry.
• 1:02:35
  I followed my mommy regularly as she would go
• 1:02:38
  to the water source. Finally, when I decided
• 1:02:43
  - to do it. I flew down as a speck of dust into
• 1:02:47
  her bucket so that she would drink me and I would
• 1:02:49
  be her child. But again, forget the child. It's
• 1:02:54
  choice. I chose her. And the fact that children
• 1:02:58
  talking about intermission periods, intermission
• 1:03:00
  memories talk about that. And it perfectly correlates
• 1:03:04
  with adults who say, oh, it became known to me
• 1:03:06
  that I chose this life. It tells you something
• 1:03:11
  about if consciousness is the way I've been thinking
• 1:03:14
  about it, is a thing, is fundamental. It tells
• 1:03:17
  you that as consciousness, as conscious beings,
• 1:03:20
  when we're in that state, we have autonomy, we
• 1:03:24
  have choice, right? And then we're potentially
• 1:03:27
  put into this physical, materialistic, deterministic
• 1:03:30
  stimulus organism response world where we lose
• 1:03:33
  a lot of that, where we're... And the way I've
• 1:03:38
  put it recently is I think that's why human beings
• 1:03:39
  have struggled with this question forever, which
• 1:03:41
  is like, do I have freedom? Do I have free will?
• 1:03:44
  Am I autonomous? Because I think we are. It appears
• 1:03:47
  to me that we might be at some core level. And
• 1:03:50
  then we come down into this world to have this
• 1:03:52
  experience, and it is restricted. It's constrained.
• 1:03:55
  And we have sometimes no choice but to just kind
• 1:03:57
  of go, okay, I guess the next domino is that
• 1:03:59
  domino, and we're just going to keep going. And
• 1:04:02
  it's uncomfortable for us. Again, all of this
• 1:04:04
  is speculation. But to me, the fact that you
• 1:04:07
  find the correlates in these stories from very
• 1:04:10
  different experiences, out -of -body experiencers
• 1:04:13
  will say the same thing, that when they're in
• 1:04:15
  that state, when they have apparently left their
• 1:04:18
  body, they'll say, I've for the first time remembered
• 1:04:20
  what it meant to be free and fully autonomous,
• 1:04:23
  right? So it's like that seems to be a core part
• 1:04:25
  of consciousness when people describe it. Let's
• 1:04:30
  say that what's happening here really is reincarnation,
• 1:04:32
  even though you don't like the word, but please
• 1:04:34
  humor me. You must have an overarching theory
• 1:04:37
  of some sort of what might be going on here,
• 1:04:40
  if that's indeed the case. I have a heuristic
• 1:04:43
  that I use that I got exposed for a short period
• 1:04:48
  of time when I was trying to figure out, is there
• 1:04:51
  a path for me out of academics? I did some work
• 1:04:53
  for a company where I actually have a paper we
• 1:04:55
  published on LLMs, AI. large language models.
• 1:05:01
  So I got to do a bit of learning about AI, artificial
• 1:05:04
  intelligence. And the way that works, as many
• 1:05:10
  people will no doubt know, at least not only
• 1:05:13
  works this way, but a very common approach in
• 1:05:16
  building an AI and developing this intelligence
• 1:05:19
  is humans in the loop. So they'll say, okay,
• 1:05:23
  we want to, there are people at the time where
• 1:05:26
  they were really interested in Is this language
• 1:05:29
  okay? Is this language biased or hateful or whatever,
• 1:05:34
  right? So what you do is you get thousands of
• 1:05:38
  people in the world, humans in the loop, to read
• 1:05:40
  a bunch of sentences and then rate. Is this sentence
• 1:05:43
  compared to the, which of these two sentences
• 1:05:45
  is the most racially charged or positive, right?
• 1:05:48
  And then that gets fed back into the machine.
• 1:05:50
  And then they do it again. You go out and get
• 1:05:52
  another. thousand people and you do the same
• 1:05:55
  thing over and over again. And eventually the
• 1:05:57
  AI, the LLM, the intelligence says, okay, I think
• 1:06:01
  I understand what is neutral language and what
• 1:06:04
  is biased, hateful language now. I'm clear now.
• 1:06:08
  I've been told by the humans what I needed to
• 1:06:10
  know. It's this iterative process. And I think
• 1:06:15
  it's some, I'm not sure, I haven't made this
• 1:06:19
  tracking yet, but I think It's interesting to
• 1:06:21
  me that the greatest minds of our current generation,
• 1:06:24
  where you would assume we are at our most enlightened
• 1:06:27
  at that level, people trying to understand how
• 1:06:29
  to develop an intelligence, that they would pick
• 1:06:32
  a model that you could almost think about what
• 1:06:34
  a reincarnation model would look like. A consciousness
• 1:06:37
  that is trying to understand and learn and develop
• 1:06:40
  and grow about what is it to be a human? What
• 1:06:44
  is feeling? What is love? What is hate? What
• 1:06:47
  is anger? What is joy? It's humans in the loop.
• 1:06:50
  Go out there, live your life, experience things,
• 1:06:54
  feed all of those lessons back to the consciousness.
• 1:06:56
  And then once you're all done, it's iterative.
• 1:07:00
  We're going to go back, do it again, have another
• 1:07:03
  experience, live in a completely different way,
• 1:07:05
  have a challenge that you didn't have the last
• 1:07:07
  time, live in a time that you didn't live in
• 1:07:10
  the last time. And human intelligence, consciousness
• 1:07:14
  is potentially heuristically to me. Possibly,
• 1:07:19
  it's pure speculation based on the way, again,
• 1:07:22
  the synchronicity between the way the brightest
• 1:07:24
  minds have developed a way to create an intelligence
• 1:07:26
  seems to me that you could map that on to the
• 1:07:29
  reincarnation process of this iterative process,
• 1:07:32
  learning, experiencing. And the choosing part
• 1:07:36
  of it is exciting because it also suggests that
• 1:07:38
  this isn't like some matrix thing where we don't
• 1:07:41
  have choice. I've heard people tell their intermission
• 1:07:45
  stories, adults from near -death experiences.
• 1:07:48
  And they say, I had the option. I remember choosing
• 1:07:52
  this. Now, it's never perfect. They said there
• 1:07:55
  are branches. There are all kinds of things that
• 1:07:57
  can occur. But the general theme of what this
• 1:08:00
  life could be compared to that one, and I chose
• 1:08:02
  the one that I'm currently having. That's what
• 1:08:05
  was made known to me during my near -death experience.
• 1:08:07
  But the point is, and that does, I'll finish
• 1:08:10
  with this because I don't want to start rambling.
• 1:08:12
  That correlates with one of the... Most common
• 1:08:15
  things that near -death experiencers say when
• 1:08:17
  they're having their near -death experiences,
• 1:08:19
  they will almost inevitably say, it was made
• 1:08:22
  clear to me that I had more work to do, that
• 1:08:25
  I wasn't done yet. And when you think, when you
• 1:08:28
  add that, so there is a mission, there's a purpose,
• 1:08:31
  there's a reason you're doing this. It isn't
• 1:08:34
  just a life that lived and will stop someday.
• 1:08:38
  That is one of the most common refrains among
• 1:08:41
  near -death experiences. It was made clear to
• 1:08:43
  me. Many of them say, I want to stay. I want
• 1:08:45
  to be here. I'm home again. It was like, I'm
• 1:08:48
  finally back where I belong. And no, I'm not
• 1:08:52
  done yet. I'm not done yet. I haven't fed back
• 1:08:55
  enough, potentially, is the way I'm interpreting
• 1:08:57
  it. I haven't returned enough to the consciousness
• 1:09:00
  source the information that it requires, that
• 1:09:02
  I, in a sense, promised I would give it. So if
• 1:09:06
  any of that makes sense, that's basically my
• 1:09:08
  heuristic, that this reincarnation process is
• 1:09:11
  an iterative process of consciousness growing
• 1:09:13
  and developing and expanding and learning. So
• 1:09:16
  it's not an all -knowing source. It's an all
• 1:09:20
  -learning source. It's a constantly developing
• 1:09:23
  source based on the human experience. So within
• 1:09:27
  that model, would a near -death experience...
• 1:09:31
  Or remembering your past life as a child, would
• 1:09:34
  that constitute like a glitch in the matrix then?
• 1:09:36
  Yeah, I think for sure that past life memory
• 1:09:39
  stuff, if reincarnation is real, again, and I
• 1:09:41
  don't know that it is, I like to speculate because
• 1:09:43
  it's fun to, and I obviously have the opportunity
• 1:09:46
  to, you know, I get paid to do it, so I will.
• 1:09:52
  Yeah, I think the way I've said this multiple
• 1:09:54
  times is it's got to be a glitch, right? Like,
• 1:09:56
  if reincarnation is a thing, It can't be that
• 1:10:01
  the only people who are reincarnated are the
• 1:10:04
  kids who are remembering. That doesn't make sense.
• 1:10:07
  And why would the system want a three or four
• 1:10:10
  year old to be waking up at night? Again, the
• 1:10:12
  system, I'm using language that I'm not trying,
• 1:10:14
  but it shouldn't work in a way that I wouldn't
• 1:10:17
  want it to work in a way where a three or four
• 1:10:19
  year old is screaming at night, remembering dying
• 1:10:21
  in a fire, right? That feels wrong to me. That
• 1:10:23
  feels like it should work in a seamless way.
• 1:10:26
  But like all things that occur in nature. occur
• 1:10:31
  there are misses right and it may be that like
• 1:10:35
  that's the whole point about like consciousness
• 1:10:37
  and this physical world have to merge at some
• 1:10:40
  point for it to for me to incarnate here to have
• 1:10:44
  a physical experience as a conscious being and
• 1:10:48
  maybe that process doesn't always go right maybe
• 1:10:50
  it just maybe there are just times where it's
• 1:10:53
  a bit sloppy sometimes yeah i mean it's just
• 1:10:55
  because sometimes there are you know Things don't
• 1:10:59
  quite go right. Trees don't grow the way they're
• 1:11:01
  supposed to. And again, it could even be that
• 1:11:08
  some of that is part of the challenge that you
• 1:11:10
  take on. Maybe someone says, I'll take on this
• 1:11:13
  challenge of being born in a way that will be
• 1:11:16
  difficult, that will be a challenge, because
• 1:11:19
  maybe I need to have that experience. And that's
• 1:11:22
  the one that we want. Near to the experiences,
• 1:11:25
  I think. I rarely think of them as glitches,
• 1:11:30
  like I do with the children. To me, the reincarnation
• 1:11:33
  process feels like it should be more seamless.
• 1:11:36
  I think near -death experiences may be near -death.
• 1:11:40
  I think these people may, I mean, to the point
• 1:11:42
  where so many, because what I just said earlier,
• 1:11:43
  so many of them say, they'll even say, I was
• 1:11:47
  given a choice. You could stay. I think some
• 1:11:50
  of these people are right there. They are, you
• 1:11:53
  could be dead now. if you want to be. This could
• 1:11:57
  happen that way. And that is less a glitch than
• 1:12:01
  I think actually a glimpse of it. It's not a
• 1:12:05
  glitch, it's a glimpse. I think the reincarnation
• 1:12:08
  misfiring feels more like a glitch to me. Kids
• 1:12:11
  probably, we shouldn't be remembering a past
• 1:12:13
  life. I don't think that's the way it's supposed
• 1:12:15
  to work. Just have a couple of minutes left,
• 1:12:18
  but this just occurred to me. Isn't there...
• 1:12:21
  When they're choosing the next Dalai Lama, the
• 1:12:24
  Tibetans, don't they have like a special process
• 1:12:28
  of the child has to recognize certain artifacts
• 1:12:32
  from the current Dalai Lama? And it's always
• 1:12:34
  kind of like the same thing. Have you looked
• 1:12:38
  into that? Does that factor into your research
• 1:12:41
  at all? Yeah, we do recognition tests. Jim did
• 1:12:46
  a lot of these with Hammonds and others as well,
• 1:12:48
  not just Reininger. So you'll show them pictures
• 1:12:52
  of... two or three homes where one of them is
• 1:12:56
  the home that they their past personality lived
• 1:12:59
  in that you found out and verified and then two
• 1:13:01
  similar homes or their schools that's what he
• 1:13:03
  used to do a lot is this is a school that you
• 1:13:07
  say you went to versus this others uh and you
• 1:13:10
  know with no names on them and you'll just try
• 1:13:13
  to see like can they pick out the right pictures
• 1:13:15
  and in many of the cases they are either 100
• 1:13:19
  accurate or well beyond chance accurate in picking
• 1:13:23
  out faces, buildings. One child was really interesting
• 1:13:27
  was that he remembered being some of my memory
• 1:13:29
  of this story. I'm going to tell you the story.
• 1:13:31
  It's mostly accurate and I apologize for that.
• 1:13:33
  But what's really fascinating about it is my
• 1:13:36
  memory was this person that they claimed they
• 1:13:38
  once were spent most of their time in a house.
• 1:13:41
  They were either infirmed or they were young.
• 1:13:43
  I can't remember what it was when they died.
• 1:13:46
  And Jim found out the house that the person lived
• 1:13:50
  in. And then put it up other homes that weren't
• 1:13:53
  the house. And there was no, the child couldn't
• 1:13:57
  pick out. It was like, I have no idea which,
• 1:13:59
  picked the wrong one. And then Jim got smart.
• 1:14:01
  He said, oh, wait a second. He went out and got
• 1:14:03
  the picture of the house that was across the
• 1:14:05
  street. And then he took a bunch of other homes,
• 1:14:07
  not from earlier. And he showed it to the boy
• 1:14:09
  and the boy went right that one. I remember that
• 1:14:12
  house because that's what the child. in the past
• 1:14:14
  life or the person who was infirmed would have
• 1:14:16
  seen more than anything else was the house through
• 1:14:19
  the window across the street. So sometimes you
• 1:14:22
  have to think cleverly about how you do that.
• 1:14:24
  But yes, the recognition stuff is really important.
• 1:14:27
  That's one of the features that gets you points
• 1:14:28
  on that strength of case scale is how many recognitions
• 1:14:31
  did they get right? And if you get them wrong,
• 1:14:33
  you lose points. So we definitely account for
• 1:14:36
  that. By the way, I've been told, Bruce and I,
• 1:14:39
  Bruce Grace and I were talking just the other
• 1:14:40
  day. He met the Dalai Lama and I was actually
• 1:14:43
  asking him about that. And he said, oh, yeah.
• 1:14:46
  And I said, I heard that he's not going to reincarnate
• 1:14:49
  anymore. And he said, that's right. He's made
• 1:14:51
  the claim that I'm done. I'm not coming back
• 1:14:52
  anymore. Now, whether he has a choice to do that
• 1:14:55
  or not, I don't know. But that's what he's saying
• 1:14:57
  now. OK, last question. Not sure if you have
• 1:15:02
  kids, but if you did, how would your research
• 1:15:05
  impact the way that you're raising them, especially
• 1:15:07
  given the fact that they do say. that they chose
• 1:15:11
  their parents as you just told me that's very
• 1:15:14
  funny i don't i don't have kids if i did i would
• 1:15:16
  be like why the hell did you choose this um yeah
• 1:15:19
  but um i yeah exactly um i do have colleagues
• 1:15:24
  who have kids and children and i know that i
• 1:15:29
  would probably try to handle it the way they
• 1:15:30
  do which is you know I have my colleague Marietta,
• 1:15:34
  when she's asked, so what do you do for a living
• 1:15:37
  from her daughter? She tries in her best way
• 1:15:40
  to gently explain what we do. And it's been beautiful
• 1:15:43
  in the few years that I've known her to hear
• 1:15:46
  stories back about this child sort of like, oh,
• 1:15:52
  so death is perhaps this. I think I would try
• 1:15:56
  to expose them to an idea of the work and as
• 1:16:00
  they age, the... potential sort of possibilities,
• 1:16:06
  but I would be very careful. I mean, I was raised
• 1:16:08
  as a Catholic with, you know, crucifixes and
• 1:16:11
  hanging Jesus everywhere. Yeah. Right. So, I
• 1:16:13
  mean, I, I, and I would try very carefully to
• 1:16:17
  be to some extent as agnostic as believe it or
• 1:16:19
  not, I've tried to be today and still try to
• 1:16:22
  be as a researcher. I would try to let my child
• 1:16:24
  understand what I do, understand what it might
• 1:16:26
  mean. And also understand that as I tell my students
• 1:16:29
  might be wrong, probably wrong. But you should
• 1:16:33
  think about these things and you should be open
• 1:16:35
  to them and not just be told something that is
• 1:16:38
  doctrine from a science perspective. I don't
• 1:16:41
  like that either. Dr. Cozzolino, what an absolute
• 1:16:46
  treat. Thank you so much. Where can people follow
• 1:16:48
  your work? So yeah, so we can, obviously DOPS
• 1:16:51
  has a Facebook page, Division of Perceptual Studies
• 1:16:54
  at University of Virginia. We have, so we have
• 1:16:57
  a Facebook page, we have an Instagram page. I
• 1:16:59
  have a sub stack myself that I do occasionally
• 1:17:01
  populate with some stories. I also have a moto
• 1:17:07
  vlog. I'm a motorcyclist and I often will ride
• 1:17:10
  motorcycles and talk about ideas like this while
• 1:17:13
  I ride. And some people seem to enjoy that. So
• 1:17:15
  they can look that up. It's called the inner
• 1:17:17
  road. on YouTube, The Inner Road. Yeah, just
• 1:17:21
  the point being, whoever's out there, whoever's
• 1:17:24
  listening, it's all available to you. Everything
• 1:17:29
  that we've ever published and adopted is on our
• 1:17:30
  website. Read it, pay attention, go to NDERF,
• 1:17:33
  N -D -E -R -F. It's a place where they have thousands
• 1:17:42
  of near -death experience narratives written
• 1:17:45
  by the experiencers themselves. If you're scared
• 1:17:47
  of death, if you're worried about it, it's a
• 1:17:49
  good place to start is to dig into some of those
• 1:17:52
  stories. It might calm you down a bit. Thanks
• 1:17:57
  again. Yeah, my pleasure. hey peeps thank you
• 1:18:00
  so much for listening please subscribe to the
• 1:18:01
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• 1:18:05
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