How Reincarnation Works

Don't you? Oh? That guy from MTV? Yeah, Adam Curry. Isn't that crazy? A pioneer in our field? Yeah, we should jump him and beat him up, give me the old pillow case treatment. No, we should salute them hats off. Yeah that too. By the way, Chuck, did you notice in iTunes that you and I are in a special room where we are basically referred to as pioneers? Yeah? Podcast turns five? Yeah? Awkward? Yes, So Adam Curry started what twenty years after Ghostbusters? Very nice? No, twenty one years?

Nice work. Let's get to it show. I Yes, have you heard of a kid named um James Lenninger? No, so let's see he's eleven now, I guess, and he lives in the United States. I don't know what state. I'm sure we could find out one of the fifty. Yes. Um and he around the age of two started having them, these crazy nightmares. And uh, he always had an affinity

for airplanes. But around the age of two, things turned a little bit dark, and he started, you know, waking up screaming things like, UM, plane on fire, plane on fire, or something like that. That the kids sitting next to you when he flew to New York. No, that kid was he was just a punk. This kid was was traumatized. You could say he knew a lot about planes. His parents started noticing that he UM would do kind of pre flight checks when he was playing with his airplanes.

He he could point to parts of his mom thought a UM a fuel tank called the drop tank was a bomb attached to the belt of a toy plane. And he's like, no, that's a drop tank. And he was just a little kid at the time, right, UM. And after a while his his the things he was he was talking about Sarah to get a lot more specific, Chuck. He talked about Um going down in a Corsair that he used to fly bless you with this is headed.

He talked about how Corsair, the Corsair he flew, his tires would always go flat, which it's kind of a little known fact unless you're a World War Two pilot or worked on a flight deck. Sure. Uh. And then he finally said that he went down near Iwajima in a plane and that his plane had gone down from taking a direct hit in the engine. And by this time, this kid's like five, right, um, and so he said

that he had been flying off of the Natoma right. Uh. So his father started to get a little bit obsessed with this and started researching the Natoma and found that there was a Natoma bay an aircraft carrier UM that was off the coast of Ewagima during the raid on Iwagima UH in March of nine. And there was indeed a guy whose name was James M. Houston Jr. And he was the only one to die uh in this raid on Iwagima from hitting the engine direct hitting the engine went down in his course air Is that a

movie yet? Not yet? Should be? So the kids getting owners his um, his memories are fading. That was this was two thousand five. The article his memories were already fading. Apparently they hit their pinnacle at about three two to five something like that. Crazy, uh, And a lot of researchers are saying, you know, the parents have diluted themselves, they've deluded him, they've really kind of encouraged this, and

they're seeing things that aren't there. But obviously as parents think that this kid is the reincarnation of this other guy named James, the one who went down in ninet and his course, their right sounds plausible to me, it is. There's a lot of people out there that would say that doesn't sound plausible, especially people in the Western world. But you go a little further east, a little past the Greenwich date line, right right, uh, and you will find a billion and a half two billion people who

believe in reincarnation. Right yeah, Well wait, is that a billion and a half that's just Hindus and Buddhist right, you're at everybody? No, No, that's just there's like a billion people in China alone, right, Yeah, but I don't know that all of them are Buddhists. Yeah, but many more people believe in reincarnation than the Hindus and Buddhists.

So you cross the International date line. Go a little further east, you're gonna find billions of people, billions of people starting in Central Asia and moving eastward, and us Stagi Westerners are always the ones going I don't know about that folksy remedy, or I don't know about that coming back as someone else. Well, one of the reasons why is because we view time as in a linear motion. There's no going back, there's no there's no coming back

to do it again and again. You know, there's no rebirth. Most of the religions over here are monotheistic. You got a heaven after you die. Your life on earth is too sort of gain entry into heaven. And on the on the other side of the world, um in in among cultures that believe in reincarnation, time is generally viewed as cyclical, which makes for you know, coming back again and again as a lot more plausible, right, Yeah, I

did find a thing about Christianity though. There are some people who think that reincarnation may have been an early tenant of Christianity, but it was misinterpreted and or just flat out kind of lost over the years. Yeah, are you talking about the Cathars. Well, it's just I mean, none of it can be proven obviously, and then parts of Judaism, the Kabbalah, and Hasidic Jews believe in reincarnation. Yeah, let's talk about that first. Let's talk about Asian views

of reincarnation. All right, there's a lot of really interesting similarities across cultures as far as reincarnation goes in the earliest well, the oldest active religion right now is Hinduism, oldest surviving religion, right. I think you can make a case that's Zoroastrianism is older, but I don't know that you could say that that's actually surviving. Yeah, at the very least, it's not thriving like hindu is. Um. Right, So Chuck, how long has reincarnation been around. It hasn't

been around forever like people would think it's. Actually it's fairly new, right, Yeah, the fifth and seventh century BC. Yeah. BC. We get yelled at every time we use that, don't

sometimes Okay? And they were in the apon A Shads, right, which were these Hindu ancient Hindu texts where reincarnation is first really spelled out right, right, And they don't think that it was around prior to this, because um, there's a lot of evidence that in like burials, that people believe that this individual person went on to another life, so they would bury like um, their hunting materials, or arian societies would burn the wife alive when they cremated

the husband, so they were together in the next life. So then reincarnation first pops up around you know, the fifth and seventh century or the seventh and fifth century BC. Right, yes, So what are we talking about when it comes to Hinduism, like, what are what's the basis of of reincarnation? Well, I mean and its original Latin translation, it means entering the flesh again, so that pretty much speaks for itself, I think.

And Hinduism it's all about, uh, the acceptance of sam sara, which uh that literally means wandering on and from when I gathered. It's more of an answer to what are we doing? Like the eternal question is what are we doing? No way, not where are we? A lot of people think it's like you know where you are at your station, but it's really what are you doing? And so uh, basically it's um and it's sort of the same in Buddhism. We'll get into that, but it isn't there it's not

in a continual cycle for all of eternity. There is a goal that you eventually want to break the cycle and reach an endpoint. And and Hinduism it's called moksha. Is that right? Yeah, that's how I took it. Yeah, And that's that's salvation. Right. Yes, it means release literally released, So to be released from your cycle is how I took it. So with Hinduism, you achieve moksha through karma, right.

And karma is that it's this very it's that's as misused as socialism these days, I think, at least here in the West. Right. Um, If karma is basically this impersonal law where if you carry out good actions, you become good, If you carry out evil actions, you become evil. Right, So, according to how you live your life is the kind of karma you accrue in this karma accumulates from life to life. And ultimately, when I guess the good enough of the good karma is accrued if you will, um.

And I don't think it's as black and white as good or bad karma necessarily, But but once you crew this this type of favorable karma, um, You're you're ultimately loosened from your human form and you're not going to be reborn again. You're gonna go join the Brahma. Right, Yes, that is the absolute god of the Hindus. Big cheese, you become one with I guess a part of it. Yeah, yeah, but karma is not controlled by that. God is not controlled by any god. No. Right, it's this like universal

law like thermodynamics or something like that. Yeah, it's not like God says I'm gonna you know, you've earned this or you haven't earned that. He's just like he's like a dealer in Vegas, Like, I've got nothing to do with this, buddy, this is all about It's the second time we've done that called clearing your hands or tapping out. Um chuck. I find that really really interesting and kind of um uplifting that there is this um god, this almighty powerful god in the Hindu religion, and then there's

of course like tons of other gods. Right, um, but the this this all powerful god can't do anything about this cosmic law of karma. It's up to the individual's actions. I just find the endlessly appealing that it's up to you how you live your life, whether or not you're going to achieve moksha or not. That's I just think that's super cool, absolutely, you know, because your actions should reflect you know, how you end up, and I think

it creates your station in life as well. Right. Well, yeah, if you do enough, I guess, if you accrue enough good karma, you may end up in a higher cast, in another incarnation here on earth. Right. But then there's no heaven or hell or anything after after you do hit moksha, right, it's just being a part of the brahm one right, okay, which is the Buddhist equivalent of

the Hindu equivalent of the Buddhist nirvana. Right. So moksha is one of four primary Hindu goals, right, Yeah, the final, that's the final, the first one, and it's almost kind of like this um this transcendence, and it starts with this very basic goal of desire where you want to have sex or you want wealth or you want fame or something like that. Uh, And then you move to wealth. Arthur, which actually is ka was the first one. I'm sorry, K And like you're saying c O M M A

r K A M A uh. And then Arthur A r T h A is wealth and it's not like a bad thing. It's not like our concept of wealth. It's you want to accumulate wealth so you can take care of your family or do good for other people, that kind of thing. So that in the Western concepts of wealth are not necessarily one of the same. Then you have dharma righteousness, right, and then after that you achieve moksha. And I think there's an interplay. I don't.

I don't think it's necessarily graduated. There's that linear thought progression again right in the West. I think they're all kind of intertwined. Right. I think so too. But you led us to Buddhism and I trampled all over that segue. So let's go back to it, buddy. I believe that we said that moksha would be the Hindu equivalent of

the Buddhist nirvana. Excellent segway, Chuck, And Buddhism is about years old, and uh, it's kind of their concept of reincarnation and is much the same as Hindu in fact that they got it from the Hindu. So they believe in karma. They believe in good karma and bad karma. They believe in uh sam Sara and rebirth and UH. They also believe in the in between, which is UH, between the afterlife, after death, and before birth. Right, that's

actually Bardo in the Tibetan tradition. Okay, is it? So there's a there's a it's basically yeah, you can't really call it an afterlife, right if you call it an in between life? And so chuck this this thing that exists in between life and also in life and what dies as well? Um. Buddhists consider a germ of consciousness and I just made air quotes right, right, so that starts in the womb um, and you live, you die, You generate karma based on how you live. But the

point of life to Buddhists is suffering. Yes, that's part of the fore noble truths, which is uh, suffering exists. Suffering arises from attachment to desires. Suffering ceases when attachment to desire cease, and freedom from suffering is possible by practicing the eight fold path. Right, And the eight Fold path was um something that was um created by the Buddhists.

That Arthur Right who was born around five sixty three BC, and he was born into a life of opulence and wealth and privilege and had it very easy but he noticed fairly early on. I get the impression he was something of a prodigy, um that he wasn't achieving much

spiritual progression through this life of wealth. So he went off and he did what Chuck, Well, when he was twenty nine years old, he left and said, I'm gonna practice yoga training and he basically abandoned all that and sat under a tree and he lived the life of a hermit. Yeah, so you know me, Chuck, You know how I feel about Buddhists going off and living in the cave by themselves and not contributing anything to humanity. Right, And this is what Siddartha tried. And did he gain

enlightenment from this? No, he was I guess you could say he was in your camp. He didn't. Um. I'm not gonna say he didn't much out of it, because I wasn't there. But he ultimately did not gain enlightenment that way. And he thought, you know what, maybe a mix of both is a good thing, and maybe we should call that the middle way, and maybe that's the

way to be right, and it's called the eight fold path. Right, So he achieves enlightenment and he immediately starts telling other people about it, and he said that there's this eight fold path that is basically it's in the middle between excess and self deprivation. Right, right, So what are the eight the eight parts of the eight fold path. Well, this is broken down into three qualities. Uh, the wisdom

or panna is right view and right thought. Okay, You've got morality, which is right speech, right action, and right livelihood. Then you have meditation which is right effort, right and mindfulness and right contemplation. Very nice. So basically, you put all this together, you are living the right life that's going to deliver you to nirvana. Right, yeah, which is the middle way? Sounds pretty easy. I bet it's extremely difficult.

I think so too. You know, well, there it's it's difficult because there's something called hindrances and they actually list these out, which in you know, it's probably no surprise that one of them is lust, one of them is aversion to ill will. You have sloth and torpor, which you know, who wants to be involved with torpor? Restlessness

and worry and skeptical doubt. And then there are seven factors of enlightenment, which are mindfulness, investigation, energy, rapture, twan quility, concentration, and equanimity. So yeah, not so easy. No, I wouldn't think so, I mean think think about avoid those and then do those though it does sound easy, But but

how life is. I'm sure if you like, you know, zig to the left, you zag right into you know, some sort of temptation or you know, if you close yourself down to the possibility of you know, um, being exposed to wealth or whatever, you're missing out on being able to help other people. Yea, you know, there's there's probably a lot of pitfalls to that that way of living,

which is why I issue the whole thing. Yeah. Well, sid Heartha believe that he wandered in around India for like forty five years teaching this and until he died at the age of eighty. And you know what his last words were, Tell him I said something cool. Now he did say something cool. He said impermanent or all created things strive on with awareness. Party on is basically what he said, party on garth. Wow. Yeah, nice last words. Huh, yeah,

they are. Have you ever wondered about yours will be? Uh? I have a feeling mine are gonna be holy to be my last two words mineld b probably you got me, Copper, you're gonna revert back to your bad boy ways just for one list and tying to shoot out suicide by cop. It reminds me the end of Royaltanon Bombs when they showed it said he died heroically saving his family from a sinking ship. Um all right, Chuck, some of the stuff that we've been talking about may sound kind of familiar.

If you live the right way, you can stop coming back to this existence that you know, we call earth life on life on this planet. Right. It kind of bears a striking resemblance to the Judeo Christian ethic of you know, if you live this right life, if you're good to other people, you don't hurt other people or

other things, you're not a cruel person. Um, and you kind of it's not you don't pursue worldly objects, you're going to uh have a better afterlife, right, Yeah, But it's you know, Christianity obviously it's a permanent afterlife, right because reincarnation. Here's the thing, like there's a there's a very there's a similarity between the Judeo Christian outlook and Muslim as well, because they believe in the afterlife as well, that the soul is immortal, that there's something in us

that lives on after the physical body dies. Where it differs and disagrees is specifically with reincarnation, where you come back and you inhabit somebody on this earth again. That's the that's the difference. That's reincarnation right there, right has something to do with the immortality of the soul. Well, has everything to do with the immortality is soul. But as far as comparative religion goes the differences, you don't keep going straight. You come back because you screwed up.

I took a comparative religion class in college. And here's a little secret, Josh, don't tell anybody, but they're all kind of the same. I know. And do you want to know why I have my theory? Let's hear it. Are we gonna go there? Here's my here's my theory. Man evolved into man from whatever, and man started to as soon as man could think, Man started questioning why they were there on earth looking for a purpose. And that's where religion sprung up. And that's why they're all

very similar. When you break down the tenants of world religions is people fractured and split off in different areas, and they evolved differently. But at the root of it, I think it began with man walking upright and looking at you know, the sun and saying, why son there? Yeah, I think I subscribed to something very um. Why river run? Right? I think I think it was um born the chuck out of the first time somebody witnessed someone else die and realized that that's going to happen to me one day?

What happened to talk talk? Right? Now, there's a if you if you look at um religious scholars work, most of them will tell you that reincarnation was born out of um watching the seasons change, especially for because because these were agricultural societies that started giving rise to religion like this right when the whole cyclical thing, it makes sense the earth rotates, the seasons rotate in a cycle, so it makes sense the I guess the commonality, like

you said, people started to split up. I don't know that it's necessarily that it happened. And then I see what you're saying, Like with religion in general, but with something like say reincarnation and these really you know, lead a good life and the reward after this. I think it was from cultures having an influence on one another by living near one another. Remember we did UM that podcast on whether the Greeks got their ideas from the Africans. Well,

this apparently is another example of that. The African mystery system, the comedic mystery system that we talked about in Egypt. Um one of the big guys who formed a mystery system, well, one of the big cult founders UM. His name was Pythagoras, remember him the Paean theorem. So we're gonna get into the mystery religions a little bit. Yeah, he spent several decades in Africa and came back and the next thing you know, he's founding mystery cults. Orpheus, the orphic Um,

the orphic mystery cults founder. Well, he's supposedly a mythical figure, but they also think he may be an actual historical figure the music legend if he was real. There's part of his legend is that he went and spent twenty years in Memphis studying from the Egyptian So you kind of get the idea that a lot of the Um ideas of rebirth and reincarnation went from UM. The Hindus to the Egyptians to the Greeks. And then remember we talked about the Jefferson Bible being written or the Bible

being written by the Platonics. Yes, that plato uh was derived from these mystery cults who believed in reincarnation, and actually some Catholic cults, early Catholic cults um believed in reincarnation as well, like the Cather's. Yeah, well, orphanism sounds a lot like heaven and hell to me, because he believed or they believe that leading a correct life leads you to elysium, which is like a paradise, and if you're evil, you'll get to a hell, right, but you

can die in the afterlife as well. Yeah it doesn't. That's that's the main difference. You have to lead three good orphic lives to get out of there. And what what is leading a good orphic life? Chuck with this horrible, horrible orphic life. Uh well no, no wine, no sex, no meat. Vegetarianism is good. Yeah. So yeah, those are a few of the tenants. Which is strange because this uh, this is this orphan cult was actually an offshoot of

the Dianicing colt and they believed quite the opposite. They would rip a goat um to death, to shreds a live goat to shreds with their teeth as part of their sacrifice, their ritual sacrifice. They get drunk as they could on wine. They have sex and orgies, and they eat everything right. And he and apparently Orpheus went to Memphis and came back and said, Hey, I know what you guys are trying to do, and that's a good idea, but you're doing the opposite of what you should be doing.

Let's start leading this puritanical life. And that led to this this um kind of idea that denying yourself was a good way toward being a pure person. I think you were starting to lead us down the road a minute ago about Jiinism. Yeah, there's a couple of other Indian religions jain is Um, and I always thought it was Sikhism, but also saw something that said that's a common mispronunciation. And then it's like say it, say it chisum. Nice.

I don't know if that's right way to go. The extra mile checkers, Well, who knows, you know, it's on the internet. Might not be true, but jin is Um they think that your soul accumulates karma as a bad thing. It's an actual substance, physical substance, and that karma is never good. Karma is always bad. It's your goal is to rid yourself of karma on here on earth. Yeah, and if you have these karmic particles, then your soul

is always going to bind to a body. Right, yes, So if you can get rid of the karmic particles, you're all right. Um. I also mentioned the Cather's right, these were this was Um. They were from South France and Spain, I believe, and they're the reason the Spanish Inquisition was founded because they were considered this the heretical sect of Catholicism, when basically they were vegetarians, they believed

in reincarnation. They were highly they followed this highly neo Platonic tradition UM, and they accused the Roman Catholic Church of being Um, the antichrist branch of Catholicism. The Roman Catholic branch proved stronger, started setting up steaks, burning Kai Thur's at them and basically ran them out of um existence. But they believed in Um. You know that you shouldn't eat me, that you could come back as as a

human or an animal. Um, and that they were just kind of a kinder, gentler version of Catholicism, a little less bloodthirsty. So chuck um. We talked about the West being generally incredulous of this kind of thing, right, there is a sterling exception as far as Westerners go, of you know, believing in reincarnation, and that exception took the form of a guy named Dr Ian st Evenson, Right. Yeah, well, he studied it. He never said that he believed it

was true. He just wanted to believe it was or wanted to prove that it was at least a possibility. So he spent his life pretty much until he died in two thousand seven trying to do so. Uh. Founded the Division of Personality Studies at u v A. Right, which became I guess it was originally called the Division of Perceptual Studies, right. Well, now it later became the Perceptual Studies I get confuse them. It was originally personality studies.

And he was a Virginia cavalier. Yeah is that right? Huh? Okay, go caps and uh. He had a lab basically where he studied near death experiences. He studied children, mainly two to five young kids who um you know to to kind of like your a kid that you talked about at the beginning two to five who had these stories that um, could not be explained in ways that made sense other than perhaps they were reincarnate. Did Yeah. Um, there's there's been tons and tons and tons of cases.

Some are easily explained away, others aren't. But Stevenson apparently investigated about him, Yeah, over forty years, but he was pretty much shut down by mainstream his peers. He was and he he was a true Fordian actually he was. Um. He wanted to apply the scientific method to uh, the supernatural, right. He just basically believed things that were considered supernatural were just things that couldn't be explained by science right now. But like you said, he was basically pushed to the

friends just because of his studies. But there's a lot of people out there. I think he was successful in in proving that it is possible for reincarnation, like the kid who thought it was the World War two pilot's.

Stevenson would never say, like whether he believed in reincarnation anything like that, but um about and like I think nineteen sixty seven he went out and bought a lock, a combination lock, and set the combination himself, and then used a mnemonic device to remember the combination, and he

stored the lock away. And he always said that the reason why he did this he wanted to see if he could um transmit the information thenemonic device to somebody who could then go unlock this lock after he died. And so far nobody's unlocked the lock in three years. But oh, no, that disproves anything to you, No, of course, not that it proves that no one's unlocked the lock. Yet, that's diplomatic. I mean, get you a job in the foreign service. Have you got anything else? Reincarnation? Yeah, the

Chinese government. Did you know they banned reincarnation without permission from the Chinese government. I think I have heard that. Actually when was this like a few years back? Yeah? They China like to ban things, as we all know, and they banned reincarnation without uh consent from the Chinese government. And basically, basically it's a way to keep the Dolli llama from reincarnating and saying this is the next dolli Llama.

Basically he won't have permission to do so, so China will be able to choose the next DOLLI Llama, and the current Dolly says obviously, he said many times, I Am not going to come back as long as uh China is in power. Over to bet, he's boycotting reincarnation. I don't know if he's so much boycotting it, but he's um he's gonna end up here. Well, I guess he is boycotting. He says he refuses to be reborn

until that happens. But what's happening is I mean when he dies, it's gonna be a little hinky because potentially there might be two Dolly Llamas, the one China appoints and the one, you know, the the real one. I would call it. That will be awkward if they over me or if they met Charley McLean remember that stuff. Sure, And she claimed that she was reincarnated and she had sex with Charlemagne. I didn't hear about the charm Charlott

magine part. Yeah, well, she said she she actually did have an affair with the Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palm and he she said he was Charlemagne reincarnated, so supposedly, she says she got it on with Charlemagne. Well, if you want to know more about Charlemagne or reincarnation or the Dolly Llama, we got tons of those articles. Um, just come up with some good keywords and put them in the handy search bar at how stuff works dot com, which means it's time for chuck is it listener mail?

Are we back to listener mail? We are, all right, it's time for the listener mail. Uh, quickly. We want to support our Kiva team real quick. Beforehand, we need to mention this because it's been a while. We're trying to get to two hundred and fifty thou dollars um by August. Oh, I don't know August. Let's stay in the end of August. I think it was just at the end of August, right, um, and we are plugging along.

I think we're at about one seventy right now, a hundred and seventy hundred and seventy thousand dollars raised by the stuff you should know Kiva team, right, which is far and away all stats aside, far and away the greatest Kiva team ever assembled. All right, agreed, So we're trying to get the two This is not an exclusive team, uh, so if you want to join, you can donate in increments of twenty five dollars. You um donate as a loan.

It's repaid. You don't make any interest back. But I mean you get your twenty five dollars back UM and it's pretty addictive in it. Chuck, I'm pretty hooked. Yes, you can go to www dot kiva dot org slash team slash stuff you should know right join or check it out or whatever. Josh, I'm just gonna call this one question that has been answered many times, but Sean doesn't know the answer. That's a great title for this one, Chus, Chuck, Chuck, Josh,

and Jerry. I missed a Facebook questionnaire because I was at working. My job prohibits Facebook. Thank god for s Y s K, ABC News and Yes Stuff Mom Never Told You podcast. It helps this twenty four year old newlywed understand his smart, wonderful, beautiful, but very complex wife a little better the best kind. His question is this, who the heck is Hippie Rob. I'm pretty sure I've listened to all the podcasts you have, not even the ones before, Chuck, So which one explains Hippy Rob and

all my cube mates? Who also listen are wondering the same thing we need to know is not a word, Otherwise it's just a boring inside jokes joke that drives us nuts. So sucks to be you pal Ps Jerry at least cough or something. No, s I sk listener believes you're real, and we wouldn't put it past Chuck and Josh to make you up. This guy is really suspicious one and demanding to Sean of Virginia Beach, little bossy Sean, get with the program, buddy. Yeah, answers are

out there, Sean. We're gonna do a reverse on you. I'm not going to say who Hippie Rob is or where the origin is, so Sean, Actually, instead of telling you who Hippy Rob is, where he came from, et cetera, We're going to put a request out to our listeners. The first person who sends us an email and tells us we're a Hippie Rob, first appearance, what episode, and

in what capacity that he's described? Right? Yeah? Uh. If you do have that info, send it to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot Com? Want more how stuff Works which I got our blogs on the house stof works dot com home page m hm hm