Jim Tucker || The Science of Reincarnation

Sciences at the University of Virginia. He is director of the UVA Division of Perceptual Studies, where he's continuing the work of doctor Ian Stephenson on reincarnation. He's been invited to speak about his research on Good Morning America, Larry Kinglive, and CBS Sunday Morning. And he recently published the book called Before Children's Memories of Previous Lives, a two to one edition of his previous books. This is a really fascinating episode, folks. In this episode, I talked to doctor

Jim about the science of reincarnation. Yes, there's a science behind this. We dwelve into his research findings and methodology on children who clean to remember their prior lives. Doctor Tucker notes that these children don't just recall biological details of their past, but they also retain feelings and emotions. His finding have important implications for how we understand consciousness. We also touch on the topics of morality, trauma, quantum physics,

and pan psychism. The implications of this really run deep, and while there's still a lot of questions that remain, I had a lot of fun chatting with doctor Tucker about what's possible. I hope you enjoy this episode just as much as I do. So now I bring you Doctor Jim Tucker. Really, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you you. I am utterly fascinated with your work

and don't know why it's not more mainstream. Quite frankly, there's so many implications of it for so many areas of cognoive science that I study, and it runs deep to consciousness, issues of consciousness, issues of even free will. You know, so there's so much to discuss. Well, that's right, but yeah, it's not more mainstream because it challenges a lot of the mainstream assumptions, so it's easy for people

to ignore it. Yeah. So, well, before we jump into the deep end, I wanted to get a sense of some of your biggest influences. I do get the sense of the doctor Ian Stevenson played a huge role in your work, and even to the extent that you're kind of carrying the baton like I like to think I'm carrying the baton from Abraham Maslow, You're carrying the baton from doctor Ian Stevenson. So I can you talk a little about his work and the work he initiated in

like nineteen fifty eight, I believe, right. So, yeah, he came to Uva in the late fifties to be a chairman of the Department Psychiatry and had never done any had he had an interest in parapsychology, but he had never done any and he was still in his late thirties when he came here to be chair. I mean, he's feeling quite a successful mainstream career mostly or much

of it, looking at Sarkis kinds of things. But then he got intrigued by this phenomenon of young children in different parts of the world who said that they had membories of a past life, and he started trying to investigate those cases and find out exactly what the child said and whether they in fact matched a life from

the past. His work. Ian once said, on the obsessive compulsive scale went to ten, he was in eleven, and he liked to get all the details right, So he was he was very methodical in studying these cases and eventually stepped down his chairman of the department to focus full time on them, and then spent the bulk of the next few decades studying these cases. And we continue to do that, so doctor Ian Stevenson. Yeah, so that's

that's interesting. I didn't know that he would score high on OCD, so he was really Do you get the sense from reading his writings that he really wasn't biased to a certain conclusion, that he really wanted to admass as much evidence as possible to before he made up his mind. You know, I don't even know if he ever made up his mind completely, but yeah, do you get that sense that he really wanted to get as much data as possible. Yeah, he, I mean, he was

basically trying to determine for himself. So yeah, as we all are, I mean, were research questions are ones that were questioning In his case, he had become persuaded that the strongest cases that reincarnation was the best explanation for them, but not the only So he's certainly left that door open that he could be wrong about it, but he was persuaded that, you know, there was people no longer had to accept reincarnation on faith. They could accept it

on evidence that they chose to. Well, he coined the term psycho for right ps y c h O p h O R soul bearing. What was his thought about that? Why did he find the need to coin such a term? Well, right, so he was His idea was that if he had these memories and emotions and behavioral characteristics in a life, that if they continued on into another life, as these cases appeared to suggest, then there would have to be

some sort of vehicle to carry them. So, rather than use a term like soul or spirit, you know, some sort of religious term, he felt that he should coin a new term that didn't have connotations that were not necessarily consistent with the work, or certainly not consistent with the attempt to look at this in sort of a

serious objective way as opposed to a religious way. Yeah. Yeah, because even just people listening to this conversation, even they're like, oh, they're talking about recarnation, reincarnation, it might be hard for people to even have a model in their head that one can discuss this in a scientific way. So we're gonna let's change some people's minds here today in the sense that we can show them that we can have this discussion in a in a way that is evidence based.

And so, Doc, what I find interest is Doctor Stevens, he gives this quote, reincarnation is the best, even though not the only, explanation for the stronger cases we have investigated. That was the quote that got to the closest when I wanted to know what his conclusion was. And you're

not Ian Stevens's you're your own human. So as a jumping point from that, I want to, you know, continue the rest of this conversation day on what you've discovered and what you've concluded, maybe have similarly end differently from doctor Ian Stevenson, even though he was a huge mentor of yours. So you kind of popped on the scene in nineteen ninety six on the reincarnation scene. You reincarnated in nineteen ninety six. Let right, you left your private

practice in psychiatry to go all in on this. So this this was this was a motivation, like there was a moment like a Hoard Gardner calls it a crystallizing experience right where you're like, this is it, this is what I want to do with my life moving forward. So how did that happen? Yeah, it was a real fork in the road for sure, and I think we took back up for a step. It basically the big fork in the road when my wife and I got together.

It opened me up to, I mean to be frank, to experiencing life in sort of a different way, a more fuller way or a fuller way. And she was open to these kinds of things in a way that I had not been, so that got me intrigued. So I was reading about different things, and it was actually reading one of these seams and books I learned that his research division here at University of Virginia had gotten a grant to do a new study on near death experiences,

not reincarnation, but new death experiences. So I just called them up to see if they needed help with that study, and sort of one thing led to another. But when I left my private practice to come on here, I have continued to be a child psychiatrist. So about half of my time roughly is spent doing clinical work, patient care work, helping to train the residence and the fellows.

So it's not like I left it all behind, but I did decide that I was going to do the work that I wanted to do, and you know, if it didn't work out, I could always go back into private practice, but in the meantime, I was going to explore this area. Again. I mean, the question of life after death is something that you know, interests all of

us at least to some extent. But what really appealed to me was the serious minded sort of scientific approach, evidence based approach that was going on at UVA and that I wanted to be a part of. Yeah, I mean it must have also felt a little bit like a rebel, right, like there must be some bone in your body that like, you know, maybe like just a personality trait you maybe have had your whole life for you to like, you know, like I'm gonna, you know,

take on the establishment a little bit. Yeah. Actually I'm quite the opposite. I've alway fascinating, fascinatingretty much a straight row rule follower kind of person. So yeah, it was a step out of my comfort zone. But but again, the approach is mainstream. I mean it's at it's looking at a topic that people don't usually apply these methods to, but that it's the same end goal. I've seen what

we can see, what we can discover. Yeah, I mean, I bet you see all sorts of explanations for things that make you roll your eyes, you know, like that are just so outside of the evidence space and you're like, well, you know, I don't think that it's suggests that's true enough. But here's a fact, a fascinating fact. Some young children say they have been here before. Okay, that's the fact.

Now what derives from that? Well, lots of things can be investigated to try to understand that, and you probably always get asked, well, what's the mechanism, what's the right And there's all sorts of explanations. I would like to go through in a systematic way and discuss first of all the mean characteristics that you see, and we'll go through to have the list, and then I also want to discuss the potential explanations for it, and then I want to end with your your thoughts on what's what's

going on based on the totality of the evidence. So one thing you often see are just the most simplest, most conceptually associated with this idea, which are past life statements. Right. So, these kids, usually between the ages of two and five, talk about someone else's whole life, right, and they seem to have memories of it, right, So can you elucidate a little bit what exactly the nature of that? It looks like. Yeah, it's very much memory in the sense

that is, from one person's point of view. They're not just spouting facts, but more of what to them feel like memories and often focused on the end of the life. So three quarters of the kids talk about how they died in the past life. They remember at death, and most of those are sort of violent death or unnatural death anyway, murder, suicide, accident, combat, that sort of thing. And with those sort of traumatic memories can come other

memories to about family. They may express a lot of emotional attachment toward previous parents that they may tell their parents, you're not really my parents, my parents live in such and such place, and they at times will give enough specific details which pretty much have to include names of places or names of people, but give enough where people then verify that their apparent memories do in fact match a life from the past. A lot of them will

also show a lot of emotions. I mentioned that the attachment to the previous family, many of them will show phobias toward the mode of death the previous person had. That the kids may act out various aspects of the past life and their play. But you know, again, it's not just information that they seem to be connecting to or that seems to have carried on, but the whole that feelings and emotions have carried on as well. It seems these kids do this spontaneously. It doesn't involve hypnotic

regression or anything like that. And they come from all over the world that we've studied over twenty five hundred cases, and while they're easiest to find in cultures with the general belief in or reincarnation, they happen everywhere. So it's with the American cases, most of the parents did not believe in past lives before their kids started talking about one. So it's not like anyone created this or led them to believe these things. It's just something that arises from them.

That they have these emotional memories that they describe great and few of them are famous people. It's not like they're really prominent cases. Would you say that the one hundreds of these cases can't be explained away by somehow the kid finding a news article you know somewhere or watching something on television about a really violent death of someone. Can you say that you have investigated that systematically and one hundred percent of the cases can't be explained away

by that. Well, I wouldn't necessarily say one hundred percent for anything, but in the strongest cases, for instance, some of the kids will talk about either a deceased family member or a deceased person from the same town or village. So those you know, you always wondered did they learn about the previous person by natural means? But with the stranger cases, I mean they're or they remember being a stranger. There are plenty of those where it it's essentially inconceivable

that they learned about this stuff through normal means. That there may be other explanations for the cases, but not that they somehow read a news article about this person who lived fifty years before and that you know, died

in without anyone knowing that dog. I mean that that's just not a reasonable explanation for most fascinating and you know, children have wild imaginations, right, and you have enough people on the earth, you know, I could I bet I could imagine something right now, and then statistically it probably would match up to some you know, I could make up something right now, be like I'm Johnny. I'm Johnny who died of a bullet to the head in the war. I bet there's someone named Johnny who died with a

bullethead of the war. So just it just statistically, Now, do you think that can fully explain as a rich, rich imagination that just happens to match a prior life. Well, it depends on the statement. So yeah, like you said, you know, if someone says I was Bob and I was killed in a car accident in California, all right, well they're going to be a lot, right, So you have to look at how this specificity of the statements

so there where it can only fit one person. So you know, there's a well known American case of a kid who talked about being a World War Two pilot who was shot in the Pacific and gave the name of the aircraft carrier, first and last name of a friend of his, describe where he died, described how he died, and there was only one person in history whose life matched those details. So you know, you could say it's a coincidence, but that I don't think is plausible. I mean,

that would be one heck of a coincidence. Yeah, one heck of a coincidence. And you tend to find that these individuals come from not necessarily the person's bloodline, but a certain vicinity to where they live. Right, You don't tend to have prior lives of someone on the other end of the world. That's true, although we do occasionally get those reports. And you know, if a child, if an American child says my last life was in Africa, well, I mean, there's no way to verify that without a

whole lot more details. But with the ones that do have verifiable details, even the ones who describe a past life as a member of another country, there was often a geographical connection. So for instance, Burmese children who said they were Japanese soldiers killed in burrowing during World War Two. So right, most of them are not related. They're not describing the life of an ancestor, so there's not a genetic connection, but there is it is for intact memories

to come through. Typically the past life was one that was reasonably close by, usually in the same country. And then you also tend to see some past life behaviors, like unusual play among these children. Can you kind of celebrate what you see there? Yeah, the most common is actually acting now the previous occupation, So I mean not just playing war like all kids do, but specific things like a kid who played repeatedly hours on end at being a biscuit and soda a shopkeeper, which the person

had done. Some of them will kind of reenact the death scene over and over. That's not as common as the occupation, but we do have some of those cases. But sometimes the occupation ones quite precise as well. So there's this kid to remember it being a nightclub owner and would even put out seats for his two wives, And it turned out the previous person was somebody who

fit that kind of description. So just taken on its own, the play may not necessarily be that impressive, but when you put it in with the whole picture, then it looks like it is connected to the memories the child.

That's a great point, and I should have stepped back and asked about your methodology, because it is true that when you collect these reports, you tend to further investigate ones that show two out of a list of behaviors that there are multiple these things that when I was reading inter methodology, is that correct, right, Yeah, there are a number of features that we look for. The most

obvious is claiming to remember a past life. But then yeah, there are behaviors that are associated a peer associated with the memories there are These are not common, but are cases where the previous person made a prediction about where they would be born the next time around. They're also what we call announcing dreams, where usually the mom when she's pregnant, we'll have a dream about a previous person

saying I'm coming to be born to you. And it seems like there are one or two other features that make the list for you. We have to have at least two of those to register it in our cases of birthmarks and birth defects. That Matt, I was going to bring that up on the previous person. So the most common are the statements and the behaviors, but we

get the others as well. I thought it was interesting that like in Indiana, where reincarnation is a idea that's in the consciousness there of the culture a third of your cases from India include birthmarks or birth defects. They are thought to correspond to wounds on the previous personalities, with eighteen percent of those including medical records that confirm the match. My gosh, what are things going on with

the birthmarks? Well, I will say, like the child intentionally branded themselves, right, Yeah, No, I think we've ruled that out. But I will say the percentage is a little bit misleading in the sense that Ian Steinson was really fascinated by those cases, so those that would affect which ones

he would fully investigate. But yes, there are plenty of those cases out there, and yet it's once where the child is born with the birthmark er full birth defects that match wounds, usually the fatal wounds on the body of the previous person. And they include eighteen cases where they have both entrants and exit wounds of somebody who

is a gunshot victim. Deformity is like there's a case of a little boy who the previous boy lost the fingers that his right hand in the foder chopping machine, and then the second board is then born with missing the fingers on the right hand. Uh. And there are lots of those picking out there. We get some American ones like that as well, that they're not as common here, but we've certainly had ones, including a one with heart defect,

others with work marks, So yeah, they're there. It seems that if I mean, if we accept the cases there, if there is this sort of carryover of mind or consciousness that sometimes traumatic either memories or even traumatic wounds can affect the developing fetus in the way that they show up in Yeah, you talk about that in the in your in one of your books about the fascinating

nature of how our mind can affect our bodies. You know, how these things are intertwined and maybe the consciousness creates the birthmarks. But it, you know, it makes one question, you know, where do birthmarks come from in any of us? Like I have birthmarks? Right? Like? Why do I have birth marks? What's what's the developmental explanation of that? What a would a biologist be able to explain that? To me? Confab I think most of them did. The cause is unnearned.

I mean, not that I'm an expert on birth marks, but there you know, there are some birth defects, in particular where there's a syndrome that's been identified. But but for most of them it's unknown. And you know, it's not necessarily a ton of research on birth marks because they're nine and and Ian never claimed that all birth marks were related to past lives, But is that in some of these notes? But but it makes me wonder, Yeah, doctor,

doctor Tucker. I have a confession. When I was three years old or so, we were in Disneyland and we were I still remember this vividly. I remember this vividly. We're in Disneyland and we were at the hotel afterwards, and I went into the bathroom and I remember I was standing in front of the toilet and suddenly I saw I was like an old man in my head, and I saw my whole life, my whole life flashed before my eyes, like I saw, like like suddenly, like

I wasn't three year old, Scott. I was literally like a mature old man with like and all the things that come along with that, Like I had lots of mature thoughts like the three year old you know, wouldn't tend to have. And it freaked me out and so much so that I remember this moment even even today. And I but it just disappeared. It just disappeared. When

I like walked back into the room. It was just this like moment where I just I was, I was a I witterly felt like I was this old man now and it couldn't feel like an old man Scott or I mean couldn't tell hard to tell, but I still remember it vividly, like I remember that memory vividly. I mean, that's crazy, like I was three or four, but I uh uh, it felt like like I was that they're both both both were in me at the

same time. I was the old Scott be like knowing everything like that an old man knows and being like, oh gosh, but I have this three year old body that has to like live it, live, live it through, like I have to like go through the motions of living a life. But I see it at the end of the life. I see the whole life lived. It

was the weirdest thing. Yeah. Yeah, it's the kind of thing that I mean, these experiences do happen people, And I mean with our cases, we do have some where the child will talk with grave emotion about it past like just one time and then they parents were asking

them about a week later they don't even remember. But then there are others, you know, where people will have sort of transcendental experiences, which you know, as a three year old, sort of being able to seemingly stepping back from your day to day experience and seeing the big picture. It's something that happens to people. And you know, what

do we make of that? It sounds like you sort of stepped out of time for yeah, yeah, yeah, just had a very like mature way of I mean, I wasn't a three year old at that moment, you know. Just so, it's so, it's so interesting. So these are some explanations to consider, and I wanted to go through this. There are normal explanations and then, of course there are paranormal explanations. Let's just let's let's start with the normal, normal ones. You say, quote, we approach the cases with

an attitude of scientific curiosity. We were open to all possibilities. I mean, gosh, what a great scientific approach. I wish all scientists had that approach. Quite frankly, I can't say I'll do so. Normal explanations include things like, well, maybe these kids have fraud. Maybe it's fraud, wold fraud. It's not like the kids are creating the fraud, but they're broad conditions that make it look like those kids are saying those things, right, is that? Is that one of

that potentially? Yeah? Actually, Ian Simpson published a case of I mean published a paper on I think of seven cases of either deception or self deception. Sometimes very rarely, where the child's family may be trying to get say money out of a wealthy family and say that their

child was the previously family member. What's more common, I think is self deception, where the families may make sort of too much of what of the child's statements and then kind of build this story that the child was either a deceased family member in a past life or occasionally famous, a famous person. I mean, I've gotten ones for famous people like Babe Ruth and people like that, which I mean, the child wasn't Babe Ruth. I'm pretty skeptical. Well,

what do you do. What if you get five kids and they all say that they were Babe Ruth, do you got to like they got to fight that out amongst themselves, like you know, which is the real one? Yeah? Well right, so, I mean that almost never happens with but we do get some reports from adults who feel like they were someone famous in the past, often not because they have specific memories, but because of other aspects or coincidence or similarities. So yeah, we've had a number

of Thomas Jefferson's. I think that's the leading one, you know, the University of Virginia, and I mean the adult cases we tend to look at with a fairly skeptical eye anyway, because if you don't have specific memories, I think it's very hard to even speculate about who you were in a past life. But again, I mean that's a tiny

minority of these cases. For the most part, there's no reason to think that the parents or the child that they're committing deception, and typically there's not even any grounds to think they would be committing self deception. You actually just made me think of a question that have you ever had two children claimed to have memories of this person not famous? You know, would that be interesting? Yeah,

there are cases. One of our colleagues, Antonia Mills, up in Northern British Columbia, study cases of with the tribal people's up there, and there were there are some communities where they will not a sign but recognize the child as being a past life person on very limited grounds. I mean, they say a dream and they may decide, okay,

this child was that person. And it's usually like a village elder or somebody that was well respected in the community, so not a famous person, but somebody that people looked up to. So there may be three or four kids who are all identify as being that person in the past line. But again that that's a real exception to do, real, rare, real rare. Yeah. Another potential explanation is, well, we already

discussed this one, which is fantasy. Yeah, but I think we already discussed on you kind of meet well yeah, I mean I will say, if none of these memories could be verified, then I would have a great belief in the likelihood that this could be fantasy. And when kids certainly are capable of fantasy and say all kinds of things. Again, we don't pay that at face values, whether we can determine that these statements actually matched a past life, but before we would think that it's more

than just fantasy. Yeah, and then faulty memory by informants, how much could that explain the findings? Right? So, the idea is that the child makes some perhaps general statements about a past life, that the family finds someone whose life more or less match those statements, and then after the families meet and exchange information, then the child gets credited with more information than they actually had, and currently

cases for it that warrant serious consideration. But then there are all the cases where we've written documentation of what the child said before anyone knew if there was a previous person, so we can be sure that they're not faulty memory in those because we've got documentation. And then this one is very interesting for a number of reasons. Genetic memory. This one kind of gets to the heart of a lot of a lot of things that I personally study. Our worlds were going to are about to

intersect in a second. You'll see why. But can you tell me a little bit about what that is? What is genetic memory? Yeah, that the thought is that the idea is that the memories would be transferred in the genes to the child, so it would not be some sort of paranormal kind of thing, but a physical transfer

through the genes. But that does not explain could not explain most of our cases, partly because most of the time the child is not talking about a direct ancestor, which they would have to be for the genes to comfort. And also most of the children have memories of how they died, which, of course people die after they've already passed on their genetic material. So you know, there are a lot of very interesting facets to what can be transferred in genes or at least epigenetically, but what kinds

of memories crafts can be transferred. But it doesn't seem to be a factor in these cases. Well, hold up, hold up my own area of research. This is where our world's intersect. And I've long been thinking about this. I've studied prodigies, and I've studied savants, and I'm very dear friends with a man named Daryld Trufford who passed away pretty recently, and he was he was the scientific

advisor to the movie rain Man. But he was also the most knowledgeable, well known scientists studying savants, and he had this idea of genetic memory. He thought that was the only explanation. He thought that was the best explanation for how a lot of these individuals with very low IQs even could sit down and paint something for photorealistic or sit down at the piano and play something amazing.

And even in the Prodigies realm, there's a lot of trying to understand how children under the age of ten can just have a fully formed talent. You know, it takes a little bit of practice, but it doesn't take that much input for them to learn. It's not like the parents are pushing these kids. It's the kids are

pushing the parents. And then I've studied at great length the idea of gifted children and the idea of prodigies, and my friend David Henry Feldman wrote a book about prodigies, and specifically, in there he noted that there seemed to be a higher than greater chance of these kids somewhere in their ancestry there was someone who had a talent that resembled it, and he didn't rule out the possibility

that there was some sort of genetic memory. So genetic memory has been brought into the discussion of these other demeans like prodigies and savants. I didn't know. I don't know if you're familiar with any of these two individuals that I mentioned, or their work or writings about this, but I'd love to bring all these worlds together because I think there's something really really, there's something going on. Yeah, there's something going on. Yeah, And I mean I don't

doubt that at all. And it may be it's conceivable that there's a genetic disposition for recalling past lives and that they do seem more common in some communities than others. But my point is for the memories of one specific life, I don't see how that could be happening through genetic transfer in these cases. But because they're recalling lives, that is not. But you know, if you consider these children to be svants or or whatever, they have this special ability.

Now it may well be that that special ability may have a genetic Yeah. It gets, it gets really, you know, it gets it starts to get metaphysical, right. I mean, I'm not trying to go out all Ancient Aliens out on this and be like, could it be that the Chaka record has all these things and that we're tapping into Now, I'm not going I'm not that guy. I actually was on an episode of Ancient Aliens, but I wasn't. I was the scientist and I made some very clear,

factual statements about where genius comes from. The whole episode was where does genius come from and I and I made some statement like, well, we can't reduce genius entirely to the brain, and then the guy with the big hair said, what she means is could it be that it's from the Ashakk record. So I think that's not what you meant. That's not what I meant. But but I think that, you know, I think at this point in our conversation would be fun to play around in

the space of what what's the what is possible? What is going on now? Of course there are I didn't mention the paranormal explanations. Extra sensory perception has been one that has been put forward, but as you note, that doesn't explain the birthmarks possession. I'm fascinated with that one

as well. I you know, you look get. You know people who who who do GET feel like they're possessed by the devil for instance, you know, and then you start to look at those cases more scientifically, you see there's mental illness, schizophrenia, aspects that are that are more reasonable explanations than they were just possessed by the devil.

It's not as cut and dry as that they were just possessed by the devil, and then of course the paranormal explanation of reincarnation, and you say that doesn't explain fully why the memory is so fleeting. For instance, let's you know, for remaining moments here. Lets let's really play in the space of what is going on, doctor Jim Tucker. Let's just get right down to it. You know, what could be going on in a way that science can explain someday. I mean, maybe we don't have the tools yet.

Maybe that's that's part of the problem. Yeah, I think there are anomalies that in order to explain them you don't start over with science, but you may have to sort of broaden some things, you know, just like quantum

theory broad and classical physics. And not that I'm saying this is like quantum theory, but you can't just if you accept these cases, you can't just map them on to a materialist understanding of reality, because they involve some sort of transfer of mind, even if you don't accept it as reincarnation, but some sort of transfer separate from the physical and taking sort of a larger view. As time has gone on, I've become more of a scientific

or philosophical idealist. The idea that ultimately consciousness is at the core of reality and the physical grows out of it. And there are people a lot smarterer than me, like next Plank, the founder of quantum theory, who said the same thing, that ultimately reality comes down to consciousness, and that can be sort of mind bending thing, can be hard to sometimes to kind of make sense of it.

But if it's true that the physical grows out of the mental essentially, then I don't see why an individual consciousness would be dependent on a physical brain, because in fact,

the physical world is growing out of consciousness. So it would make sense that this piece of consciousness or mind that each of us has can continue on regardless of what happens to the physical body weren't having And then in our cases at least I have never said as universal, but in our cases at least, it seems that this mind has been attached to a new physical body and

then continued on with a new model. So are you are you atally literally saying that you think the only way to fully explain the totality evidence is one where we're going to have to disassociate the mind from or consciousness from the physical brain in some capacity in some way. Yeah, I mean, if you accept these cases, then yes, I think you're pretty much forced to conclude that. And you know, each person can decide for themselves whether they should accept

the cases. But I think if you look at our strongest ones as a group, I mean, they do provide good evidence that something's going on here, that these children do actually have memories of a life from the past. I mean, there's so many deep implications of this if this is if this is true, But what I want to really understand is why they're so fleeting, Why the memories so fleeting. Why don't people when they get recarnated just get recarnated as the total person for the rest

of their life. Could it there be mechanisms at play where that's just the way, Like when you have a human psychology of immediate memories, it just inhibits past life memories like that. There's a huge conflict there, and the way the biological system reconciles that conflict is by, you know, by prioritizing the current immediate experience. Yeah, I mean, typically these kids lose these memories or most of these memories at the same time that all kids lose memories of

early childhood. So you know, infantile anagor early childhood amnesia where that's not sure. Now that their brain is undergoing tremendous changes during this period of a lot of pruning, and you know, memories and sometimes of skills or whatever, it's sort of get left behind because others get prioritized. It would make sense that for most of these kids they lose those memories at the same time they lose

memories of real child. Now another related question is why there's such glimpses why you know, like you said, it's not like suddenly they remember everything from the past life. You know, the person hasn't just continued on. It's it's almost more like when you wake up and you've got glimpses of a dream and sometimes you remember a lot of details, and then other times you've got kind of images, but it's pretty hard to put them together, and you know,

they can fade. That's how it is for some of these kids that they will come out with certain details at certain times, but it's not like they can suddenly spell out the whole past line. So it's I mean, it's amazing that any memories would come through, right, but it's it's usually not a full complete thing, but it

really varies from child to child. So do you think it's Does your gut tell you that that we're all reincarnated from from some assemblage of prior things outside of our own genetic ancestry, or do you think there are only special cases like the ones you're discovering so not. There's so many questions to be asked about this. That's

one I'll stop there. Yeah, Well, I feel like our cases again do provide evidence that there can be this continuation, and I think that coming out of speculating, but I think that would apply to all of us. But it doesn't mean that all of us have lived here before, or that we would be reborn here in this reality. You know, consciousness that is the core of all. I don't know why we couldn't have very different kinds of

experiences in very different kinds of realities. So my own personal guess is that reincarnation is not universal in the sense that we all come back here, but that that mind or consciousness there is a piece that does continue on for all of us. What do you think happens after we die? Well, I don't know that it's universal. I mean, I don't know that we all have the same experience. I think that there are probably a lot

of factors that go into what we experience next. And for some that may be immediately coming back here, but for others and make you very different. And you know, if you look at near death experiences, people who where their hearts stop and then they have these experiences, there can be real variability. I mean, there are similarities, but there can also be real individual differences. And I suspect that that it's true for any of the afterlife kinds

of experiences. Well, what if you want to increase the chances that you're going to live after you die, should you die of violent death? I mean, is that what your research suggests. I mean, that's what it suggests now that you should have some dramatic ending. Make sure you have a dramatic ending, folks, well to have the memories come through. That may well be true. But you know,

it's just like traumatic memories in this life. I mean, there are memories when people have PTSD, memories that they wish they didn't have, but they couldn't get rid of them. There's a real strength, unfortunately to traumatic memories. That may well be the case across lifetimes. Wow. But as far as the kind of experience you have next, I mean I would guess that it relates to the kind of experiences you have here and also the kind of life

that you lead. I mean not in a heaven and hell kind of sense, but just if you're focused on love and connecting with others and giving to others, you know, it seems to me that would affect your whatever it is that survives, and if we call it a soul, that would have an effect on your soul. And then

what affect what comes next? Well, this is the right I'm a scientist, and I really am curious what patterns you found among the all the if you look at all the people, all the cases of the past lines, and you look at that like, I'm a personality psychologist. I want to like do the I want to crunch the numbers, like of the big five personality traits? Is there are there certain characteristics that they all have in common?

Is there some like I feel like we can like get this mystery, like this would this would get us to the like this this is real deep stuff. If we can discover who what personality traits are more likely to make you move on? After you die, and mean, that's that's some pretty heavy stuff there. Well, we aren't doing a study now where we are interviewing adults, so we originally study as children because this work's been done on so long and we are administering Big Five questionnaires

to them. Perfect we haven't gotten where we're done with the analysis yet, but we'll see if anything comes from that. I mean, my guess is, again there's a difference between having memories versus surviving at all. I would be disappointed if it turns out certain personality all these survive while others done, you know, for certain personality, people's personality characteristics. But who knows what. We'll have to see where the where the data leads us. I guess we wait. I

think we might be talking about different things. I'm not talking about the Big five traits of the person who is alive right now, is now what I'm talking about, What are the common characteristics of all the past lives, like what's the personality? You can do that analysis, right of. I mean, you can't physically administer the Big Five to them, but I'm saying you can do the qualitative sort of impressions like are they are these do youse tend to be good people? Do they live good lives? Like? Is

there a pattern there or some of them? Do you know what I'm saying, Well, I do. I mean with the Big five, yes, we don't have enough information for most of them to do any sort of reasonable assessment of that. As far as whether they were good people or not, there's quite a range. I mean, they're you know, if you're more likely to die violently if that life

is remembered. There are plenty of people die violently through no far of their own, but there are others who you know, are involved in knife fights or you know whatever. So some of the people have been fairly nasty people. It did some fairly nasty things, But then there are other people who are you know, just kind of typical that people do in their best Well, that's it. That's

really important information in itself. I mean you're basically you know, they're what if their like listeners who are saying like, I want to increase the chances that like some five year old remembers my life, you know, for two years. Yeah, that's all we get. But there's another part of this that's a bit disappointing, right, Like with the reincarnation stuff

is like, what what are you saying? Like, the best extension we get is some you know, annoying four year old like you know, being like, oh I'm Scarborough Kolfman, you know, and then it's like no one believes them, and then you know, two years later they don't remember me the rest of their life. Like you're saying, that's the best I got in terms of extending my consciousness, Well,

it's sort of you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I do know what you're saying, but I I'd like to view this as there may be sort of a larger self as well as the personalities that we have in each life. So yeah, I mean, you know, if kid comes back and remembers your life and then by the time they're school age they've forgotten it. If there's a larger self that is part of your existence this time as well as the next time, then you hope that this larger self grows or learns or becomes more evolved

however you want to put it. You hopes that each lifetime that there can be progress made, and you know that that is just part of our journey. My gosh, there's just so many implications even for theories of consciousness. I'm sure you're aware of panpsychism. I think that's the most compatible with what your theory is. My prior guest. My current episode that's up right now you might want to listen to. It is with Antonio Dimasio on the nature of consciousness. So you're going to be a really

interesting counter from a very different view. Yes, he's not a big fan of panpsychism, but some people are some people that I'm friends with, are you know. It's I don't have a card in this horse personally. I want to know the truth. There's so many just deep implications of this, you know, and it makes you just think about how does it all tie together? What does it all mean? Now? If we zoom out even further right, like to the universe, we zoom out, you know, is

the universe finite? Is the universe not findite? You know? I have this kind of intuition that physicists would probably disagree with, is probably not possible. But I have this intuition that that time just keeps whooping back on itself, that like that we're going to like it'll get to some point of the universe, even if it's like thirty

trillion years from now. They're kind of like, whoops, back again, because I don't, you know, like and that I'm going to live this life again, you know, like I I really kind of feel that's that's that's the way it works. There are businessists who talk about basically new universes bubbling out of current ones, where it's an infinite number of universes, and if it's truly infinite, it means that at some point there'd be this same existence we have now that

would be redone. So yeah, it all gets rather mind modeling. It does get mind boggling, and you can kind of see, like, you know, the error error in the system, like maybe it's not a full proof system, and that's what you're seeing in your cases where like it starts to like, you know, it's like whoops, we put that person's consciousness over in that person's body for a couple of years. Whoops. You know, maybe it's not even like a like a conscious entity that's doing it, but a process, a process.

Well that's right, and yeah, the process may it sort of short circuited, sometimes particulated with sudden violent deaths where things don't go the way they typically do and then you have my friend David Chalmers a book Are we living in a simulation? And here he puts it as a greater than fifty probability that we are. What I'm saying is we need to tie all this stuff together and come with a unitary theory of whatever with a scientific basis. And it's just funny even talk about Doctor Tucker.

If there are people listening to this episode who have cases of their children or even the kids themselves, will if if I were listening to my podcast and they want to report this to you, what can they do? Well, they can contact us through our website which is www dot uva DOPS, which is Division of Personalities that is theops dot org, or they just google my name and find this that way. But yeah, what we'd love to hear from families if their children are talking about past

on wonderful. Thank you so much for approaching a taboo topic with such a scientific rigor. It's really it's really refreshing to see that. And thanks for channeling me today on my podcast. It's been my pleasure. Beautiful. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard. I encourage you to join in the discussion at thusycology podcast dot com or on our YouTube page thus Psychology Podcast.

We also put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.