Dhru Purohit Show - #210: Is There Life After Death? with Dr. Jim Tucker

Episode Date: May 4, 2021

Sometimes, we’re led down a path that might surprise us. Our calling in life might end up being completely different than what we expected—it might even challenge our previous beliefs.    The concept of reincarnation elicits skepticism in many people. Today’s guest on The Dhru Purohit Podcast wasn’t quite a believer himself, until multiple mind-blowing accounts kept showing up in his work.    Dr. Jim Tucker is the Bonner-Lowry Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. He is Director of the UVA Division of Perceptual Studies, where he is continuing the work of Ian Stevenson with children who report memories of previous lives. He is the author of Before: Children's Memories of Previous Lives, a new 2-in-1 edition of his books Life Before Life and Return to Life, which together have been translated into twenty languages.   In this episode, we dive into:    -The story of James Leiniger who remembered being a World War II fighter pilot from a previous life (1:08)  -The story of Ryan Hammons who remembered being a Hollywood extra from a previous life (12:25)  -The connection between a violent or unnatural death and reincarnation (17:16) -The story of a boy who remembered being his paternal grandfather in a past life (20:12) -How Dr. Tucker validates the accounts of past lives shared with him (25:51)  -The age that past life memories start to surface and when they start to fade (29:21) -The average IQ of kids that remember past lives (34:49) -Birthmarks and the connection to a past life (36:50) -Children’s accounts of the time between death and rebirth (39:48) -Advice for parents if their children start talking about a previous life (1:06:52) Also mentioned in this episode: -University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies - https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/ -What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About Life and Beyond with Dr. Bruce Greyson -  https://drhyman.com/blog/2021/03/04/bb-ep198/ -Dr. Bruce Greyson - https://www.brucegreyson.com/ -After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About Life and Beyond by Dr. Bruce Greyson - https://www.brucegreyson.com/after-a-doctor-explores-what-near-death-experiences-reveal-about-life-and-beyond/ For more on Dr. Jim Tucker you can follow him on Facebook @JimBTuckerMD, on YouTube @UVA Division of Perceptual Studies, and through his website https://www.jimbtucker.com/. Get his book, Before: Children’s Memories of Previous Lives at https://amzn.to/3gGiMeV.  For more on Dhru Purohit, be sure to follow him on Instagram @dhrupurohit, on Facebook @dhruxpurohit, on Twitter @dhrupurohit, and on YouTube @dhrupurohit. You can also text Dhru at [phone] or click here https://my.community.com/dhrupurohit. Interested in joining The Dhru Purohit Podcast Facebook Community? Submit your request to join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2819627591487473/. This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth and Paleovalley. I recently tried out some of the bamboo sheets from Cozy Earth and they’re so soft that now I can’t imagine sleeping on anything else. They are also really good at regulating temperature, and are certified free of harmful chemicals. Cozy Earth also makes other types of clean bedding, like duvets and blankets, that all feel amazing. Right now, Cozy Earth is offering my audience 40% off. Just head over to https://cozyearth.com/ and use the discount code DHRU40.  Not all turmeric supplements are created equal. I love taking Turmeric Complex from Paleovalley. It contains organic whole food turmeric, so you get the synergistic effects of all its compounds. It also contains coconut oil and black pepper which have been shown to improve the absorption of those active compounds by 2,000%, plus it includes other natural anti-inflammatories like organic ginger, rosemary, and cloves. Right now, Paleovalley is offering my listeners 15% off at https://paleovalley.com/dhru. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

But there is this evidence that there is this continuation, that when we die or when our loved ones die, that it doesn't mean that it's the end. Hi, everyone, Drew Prode here. There's a question that many of us have, which is, is there life after death? Well, we may not know the answer to that question, but this week's guest, Dr. Jim Tucker, can probably give us some clues. Dr. Jim Tucker is part of the University of Virginia's team of doctors who have been exploring this category of past life experiences.

Specifically, Dr. Jim Tucker, who is a child psychiatrist, has been looking at reincarnation stories of young children who remember stories, experiences, facts from their past life. It's a fascinating interview. If you've ever wondered, is they? life after death, this topic is for you. Stay tuned. My friend and business partner Dr. Mark Hyman told me sleep is probably the most underrated pillar of health. Without proper sleep, we can do everything else right and still struggle with chronic ailments like fatigue, mitochondrial dysfunction, blood sugar problems, hormonal imbalances, and so much more. So basically,

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I definitely recommend. I recommend checking out their super comfortable bamboo sheets and upgrading your sleep today. So growing up, my family used turmeric all the time. I'm talking about in meals that were home cooked or even when I was coming down with a cold or a flu. So now it's kind of ridiculously amazing for me to see that turmeric has become this worldwide health trend. Since hats off to my parents and grandparents, they always seem to know how powerful it was. Now, as I've gotten older and researched more into brain health, I was really interested to see that many of my guests have talked about the fact that India had some of the lowest rates traditionally of Alzheimer's anywhere in the world, which many of them thought, and as I've dug into it, I looked into it a little bit more and found the same, that this came from regularly eating anti-inflammatory foods and spices like turmeric. There are actually over 2,700. studies on turmeric showing more than 600 different benefits like fighting inflammation, DNA protection,

workout recovery, circulation, brain protection, and so much more. But I know when I was a kid, I did not love taking a spoonful of turmeric powder. And that's the reality for most people. It's chalky. It clogs of your throat and it doesn't taste amazing. So it's great to see how easy it is to get turmeric in a capsule for everyday use. Not all turmeric supplements are created equal, though. A lot of them are only isolated compounds of turmeric like curcumin instead of the whole plant, which means you're missing out on a ton of important benefits and phytonutrients. So I love taking turmeric complex from Paleo Valley.

It contains organic whole food turmeric so you can get the synergistic effects of all its compounds. turmeric complex also contains coconut oil and black pepper, which have been shown to improve the absorption of those active compounds by get this 2,000 percent. Plus, it includes other natural anti-inflammatories like organic ginger, rosemary, and close. This is why I love the fact that turmeric complex by Paleo Valley is sponsoring today's episode. Right now, Paleo Valley is offering my listeners 15% off. off at paleo valley.com slash drew that's paleo valley p a l-e-o-v-a-l-l-e-o-v-a-l-e-y-y-a-l-y-y-d-d-h-r-r-d-h-r-r-w. Check it out today. Dr. Jim Tucker, welcome to the podcast. It's an honor to have you here. Oh, it's wonderful to be here. Well, I'd love to start off with a story. And I was hoping if you're

you might take one of the story slash case studies that you featured inside of your book, which is excellent, by the way, and start us off from there. Well, one well-known American case is a little boy named James Lininger, who around the time of his second birthday started having terrible nightmares multiple times a week in which he would be kicking his legs up in the air and screaming, an airplane crash on fire, little man can't get out. And then during the day, he would take his toy airplanes and repeatedly crash them into the coffee table saying airplane crash on fire.

And with all this going on, he really, he looked like a kid who had been traumatized, although he had not been through any sort of plane crash in this life. and there were several times where his parents could talk to him about these things while he was awake. And what he described was being a pilot who had been shot down by the Japanese, and he said that he flew off of a boat, and the parents asked him the name of the boat, and he said Natoma, which seems like an unusual name for a U.S. aircraft carrier. But his parents, who were quite opposed to the idea of past lives at the beginning, did an online search and discovered that there was this USS Natoma Bay that was stationed in the Pacific during World War II.

And then later he said that he had been, he saw a picture of Iwo Jima and said that's where his plane had been shot down. they would also ask him what his name was and he would always just say me or james which they didn't make anything of at a time and one time they asked him who else was there and he said jack larsen well this went on and on and he also described how his plane had crashed how had been hit in the engine crashed in the water and quickly sank and eventually this all this going on his parents did begin to wonder was he never in a past life. So his father went to a Natoma Bay reunion when James was four and a half and learned that in fact there was a Jack Larson who had been on the ship and he visited this Jack Larson, discovered he was on the ship during the Iwo Jima operation.

And he also learned that there was one and only one pilot from the ship who was killed during the Iwojima operation, a young man in Pennsylvania named James Houston. So we can then compare James' statements to Houston's life. And what we see is that it matched up perfectly. Houston was on the Natoma Bay. He did get shot down by the Japanese. His plane crash happened exactly as James described, getting hit in the engine, crashing in the water, quickly sinking.

And the pilot of the plane next to his on the day that he was killed was Jack Larson. So this is one where the previous life was from decades before. There was no way that this little boy had any information about it, and yet he had incredibly specific details about this man's life that all fit. So it is very hard to come up with an ordinary explanation that would explain how James got both the information as well as the emotions connected with this experience. So I'd love to talk a little bit more about your book and how you've built upon the work of an individual before you.

Can you tell us about Ian Stevenson and how you came to meet and some of the work that he prepared in this field of reincarnation, past life stories? Yeah, so Ian Stevenson was the chairman of the Department of Psychiatry here at the University of Virginia. He came here in 1957, and in the middle of quite a successful mainstream career, mainly focused on psychosomatic medicine, so the connection between mind and body. But then he became intrigued by these reports from different parts of the world of young children who said that they remember to pass life. And he decided to go investigate.

And what he found was this phenomenon, first of all, was a lot more common than people in the West had any idea. And second, that it produced some very intriguing cases. So he went where he could find the cases, which was initially, mostly in Asia, in India, Thailand, places with a belief in reincarnation where if a child started talking about a past life, the family would tell people word would spread. and then one of Ian's associates to learn about it. So he studied these cases and started publishing them.

Eventually, with some financial help, he stepped down as chairman of the department and established this separate research division in 1967, which is now called the Division of Persexual Studies. So we've been going on now for well over 50 years. and he produced this body of evidence that we have built on. We've now studied over 2,500 cases. And what most intrigued me was that he, the approach that he had is completely serious-minded.

I mean, he would never go to a case assuming it was reincarnation. More, he was going to determine as best as he could, exactly what had happened, exactly what the child had said, how well that matched with the identified past life, whether the child could have learned these things through ordinary means. And by the time that I came to UVA to do my training in psychiatry, this was in the late 80s, Ian was pretty detached from the department. I actually never met him during my training. He was still quite active, but I didn't meet him. And then after I finished training, I went into private practice, was there for nine years,

became intrigued by the study of the question of life after death, and was actually reading one of Ian's books when my wife and I saw in the local paper that his division had gotten a grant to do a new study on near-death experiences. So I called them up to basically see if they just needed volunteer help interviewing patients. And as it turned out, I never did work on that study. But that got my foot in the door. I then met Ian. This would have been 1996.

And could I ask just a clarifying question inside of there? Yeah. When you were reading about his work in the paper and the grant that they had got for near-death experiences, What in that intrigued you? Was this a topic that had an interest? Was it just a general sense of curiosity? Did your upbringing play any role in the sense of exploration? Well, I would say the biggest contruder to the sense of exploration was when my wife and I got together.

First of all, she was open to things like reincarnation and psychics and so forth. But beyond that, I mean, to be honest, being in that relationship opened me up, I mean, it may sound trite, but opened me up to experiencing things in the different way than I'd been able to before, and including the possibility of consciousness or life after death or, you know, things that I really had not considered much before. So to read about these researchers right nearby who were studying this question had been studying it for a long time in a serious-minded way, it really had a double appeal, one, the content, this question of life after death, and two, the approach to it.

So at the time in private practice, I was doing child psychiatry. It was quite busy. And it was rewarding. I mean, most of the patients would get better and so forth, but it wasn't completely fulfilling. And being able to have this sort of sideline interest in kind of the bigger picture, rather, you know, beyond just individual people, was quite appealing. so I gave them a call.

Once you gave them a call, pick up the story from there and tell us about some of the early work that you participated with in the department. Well, initially, I was just going to the research meeting an hour a week, and then I started, there was a study of near-death experiences, a different study looking at medical records and assessing how close the patients actually were to death at the time they had been near-death experience. So I was reading medical records and scoring and so forth. And then after, I guess I sort of passed the audition. And then Ian asked me if I wanted to go to Asia to meet a colleague to study cases in Thailand and Burma. So I did that and that went well. Then for a year I was working half time at the university and halftime in my practice. And then in the year 2000 came on full time.

focusing on the past life memory cases, not necessarily because reincarnation was my primary interest, but more that's where the need was, because at that point, Ian was approaching 80 years of age, and, you know, he was looking for, well, I guess at the time I came on full time, he was over 80 and was looking for somebody to carry on that work. But I was intrigued by all of it. but that's where the need was. So Ian and I actually investigated an American case together and then I started doing my own thing. He officially retired in 2002, although he still remained extremely active until he passed away in 2007.

This would be, I think, another good time to talk about another case that you highlight inside of the book. And this was of an extra in Hollywood. Can you talk about that story? and the name of this young child. Yeah, so Ryan was a little boy in Oklahoma, where we got a letter one day, actually a U.S. letter. Usually we get emails,

but this was in the U.S. mail, from a mom in Oklahoma who said that she and her husband were just ordinary folks. She worked in the county clerk's office. Her husband is a police officer. But their five-year-old, Ryan, for the last year, had talked about a past life in Hollywood. and he would cry and beg his mother to take him home to Hollywood.

This was quite difficult, both for him and frankly for her, to watch her child suffering that way. So she had gone to the public library and checked out some books on Hollywood to see if he could kind of process all this. And they were looking through one one day when they got to a picture from an old movie called Night of, after night and Ryan pointed to one of the fellas in the picture and said, hey, mama, that's George.

We did a picture together. And then pointed to another one and said, and mama, that's me. I found me. Well, the first one he pointed to was George Raft, who back in the day was quite a well-known actor. But the one that he said he had been was an extra with no lines in the movie. So Ryan's mom had written to me to see if I could help determine. who this was. So I went out to Oklahoma and met Ryan and his parents and got all the information.

And then afterwards, his mom was emailing me sometimes on a daily basis with all these statements that Ryan was making about his past life, which frankly I thought was kind of unlikely for this guy with no lines in a movie. Eventually, with the help of a Hollywood archivist, we were able to determine who this guy was. The archivist, she went to the library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, pulled up all the materials from night after night, which was mostly material about the stars. But she found one picture of this guy, which identified him as Marty Martin, and eventually I was able to confirm that with Marty Martin's family. But it turned out that Ryan's statements managed extraordinarily with Marty Martin's life.

So Ryan said how he had danced on stage in New York and Marty Martin danced on Broadway. Ryan said that he then went to Hollywood and worked in the movies, which Marty Martin did, working mostly on dance in the movies. Ryan said that he then worked at an agency where people changed their names. Marty Martin started a successful talent agency. Ryan said how he had seen the world from big boats and talked about going. into Paris. We have a picture of Marty Martin and his wife. They had sailed to Paris on the Queen Mary. Ryan said that he had a big house with the swimming pool, which Marty Martin did. And Ryan said

that the street address had the word rock or mount in it. And Marty Martin lived on North Roxbury. Ryan also said one day that he didn't see why God would let you get to be 61 and then make you come back again as a baby. And Marty Martin's debts were took it so that he was only 59. But both his daughter and his stepson said that he was in fact 61. So I looked into it and I found a passenger list, three census records, two marriage listings that all gave ages that meant in fact Marty Martin was indeed 61 when he died. So even though the debtsor took it said that he was 59.

was correct when he said 61. And altogether, we were able to confirm that 55 of Ryan's statements match Marty Martin's life. And let me just add, Marty Martin died in 1964. So he was completely unknown by the time that Ryan started talking about his lie. There are so many themes that are inside of that story that sort of characterize your work, some that are classic of these cases that you document and some that are a little bit more, excuse me, more regular. One that's more regular is that in this case, he was a little bit older when in his passing, the gentleman, Marty, where typically you find that a lot of these cases are of people who die younger and often tragically. Can you talk about that and some of the other common themes that showed up

in these past life stories and stories of children who seem to be remembered? remembering something, this otherworldly knowledge that they wouldn't have easily come about. Yeah. So the 70% of the cases that previous life ended in some sort of unnatural means. So murder, suicide, combat, accident, that sort of thing. And even in the natural death cases, they tend to be younger individuals. So three quarters of them are, I'm sorry, a quarter of them are under the age of 15, even in the natural death cases. So that's a pattern, but of course there are exceptions like, you know, there's always a bell curve or whatever for kind of anything.

So there are exceptions like Ryan's case. So James is more typical in that sense, dying in a plane crash, you know, as a young man. So it certainly seems that if you accept these cases, having a traumatic end to a life makes it more likely that those memories then would carry over to the next life. And, you know, it's quite similar to PTSD type thing where people have memories they wish that they could get rid of. And yet they keep having them when they've been through trauma. And so it seems that way with these as well. And there's often what people might term unfinished business that you could imagine from a past life that would cause someone to want to continue on. And in Ryan's case, he has talked about how in the past life, he was too focused on material things and too kind of greedy.

and it does seem that Marty Martin enjoyed the good life anyway. So, you know, he felt that he could come back and kind of work on that and not be so focused on material things this time around. Some of the children remember past life of strangers the way these two have. there are others that actually report a past life even in the same family or often in the same town or the same village. So there may be different things that pull the individual back to have another life, again, if you accept the cases. And there may be this emotional tug in some of the same family cases. We had one in an American case where the boy remembered being his paternal grandfather.

in the past life. In fact, he was able to pick him out of a class photo. But his grandfather had not been able to basically express love to his children. He loved his children, but he wasn't able to express it. And the little boy's father felt that if indeed his own father had come back as his child, it was so that they could have more of an emotional connection this time around than what he had had before. So there are often themes like that that show why there might be a connection that would lead the individual to come back where they did. I was watching one of your lectures that you gave.

It looked like it was at a workshop at a retreat center. And one of the things you mentioned inside that lecture was that you were feeling in your early in your work that these hundreds of cases that Ian had published, a lot of them coming from India, Thailand, and other places where reincarnation would be more common, more talked about, as you mentioned earlier, if those didn't convince the sort of modern population that, look, there is something here. We may not be able to explain exactly what that thing is, but there's something here that you felt that doing more of those cases or documenting more of those cases may not necessarily be the convincing argument. We maybe need to document

some more American-based cases. And what did you see? That's to set up this question, which is what did you see and what were you noticing from your work in the department in terms of how the reception was both positively or maybe skeptically to that early volume of cases that Ian had put together? Well, I think, you know, you never know who. who's going to be open to this sort of thing. So there are plenty of people who have had tremendous respect for Ian's work.

But it can also be easy to dismiss the work as something that happens in some foreign place and in a place where everyone believes in reincarnation is just kind of wishful thinking. And I think what my hope was was that if you show it's happening down the street, you know, and families, typical Christian American families, then you can't really discount it on those grounds. And it might lead people to take more of a serious look. Not that the cases are any more evidential than Ian's cases, but just that people may seriously consider them more. And I think, you know, I think some extent that has been true, that the American cases have drawn more attention perhaps than the age ones might have. And the other thing, just from a practical standpoint, I mean, there are those cultural factors in those Asian cases that could contribute.

But with the American ones, that's one thing we've controlled for. I mean, you know, these are in a culture without a general belief in reincarnation. And most of the time, they're happening in families without a belief in reincarnation. So we know that those factors are not feeding into them and perhaps making the cases look stronger than they really are. In fact, one of the things that you talk about inside the book is that the reason that we may see these cases as less common here in the United States is because many families actually feel that they are weird or that their kids are weird by talking about these things. So they don't want to go and explore them further. Well, that's right. They don't want people to know about it either.

So we often, when families write to us, they say, please keep this confidential. And in fact, there are times they haven't even told to grandparents or told any of the names. neighbors, and they sometimes try to hush up their children. So, you know, we don't really know how common they are. We don't have great numbers on how common they are anywhere, but we certainly don't know how common they are here. But I think we can be sure that they're more common than where we're, because, again, so few people talk about them. We did do, we did a sort of a preliminary survey that here at UVA, there's a survey center, and they will do surveys where you can, for a fee, you can include questions that they ask people. And it's not a national

survey. It's one of the five surrounding counties. So anyway, we asked parents, had they had a child who talked about a past life. And what it found, what it came out with was 6% of parents said yes, which was so much higher than I expected that 6% of people in central Virginia, 6% of families would have a child to talk about a past life, that I don't necessarily trust that result. So what we are hoping to do at some point is a more involved study where we can ask more questions and make sure that what they are calling talk about a past life is what we would also consider a talk about a past life.

But it does at least suggest that this may be happening more than right under our noses may be happening more than anybody knows. Let's talk about the scientific methodology of how you approach these cases when people write in and contact you or you hear about them and how you begin the process of validating to see if there is something that's there. Could you walk us through that? Yeah. Yeah. So it's, you know, this is not controlled laboratory research. So when you're looking at spontaneous events, it's not going to be as tightly controlled as other work might be. But it's certainly, we certainly take a scientific approach and try to control it as much as we can.

So when we get a report, the one key is to document as much as possible. the child's statements about the past life, preferably before anyone has identified a past life that, you know, people think might be, the child might be remembering. So in the two cases that I've described so far, there was, well, there was great documentation of Ryan's cases because, Ryan's statements, because, you know, we were the ones who determined who the past life was. There's also good documentation for James, too. So we have that documentation, and then we try to see how well it fits with the past lives. So that means usually contacting the previous family, and I'm going over the details one by one to see how much of a fit there is. And again, we also look, could the child have learned these things through ordinary means? and if it's in the same family, you know, you can never be certain that they haven't overheard things

or even in the same town. When you've got ones that are hundreds of miles away and decades apart, you know, you can be a lot more confident about that. And then in some of the cases, we've also been able to do recognition tests where we show them pictures of a person or a place from the past life, along with a control picture that's not from the past life. And sometimes we'll do a lineup with several. But anyway, asking the child to point out, see if they remember any of them. And in a couple of recent cases, we've gotten quite impressive results with that. So that's something that's kind of more controlled and more quantifiable.

So there's one child where with these picture tests we did, I did pairs of pictures because the children are so young. I learned if you show them four or five pictures at once, It just kind of overflows them. But I showed him pairs of pictures. And with the ones the child made a selection on, was it from, did he remember it from the past life versus a control picture? The child was six out of six.

And, you know, you can do the math on that. It's like flipping a coin six times having to come up heads every time. It's extremely unlikely. It's statistically significant. So that, you know, we do that as well when we can. And, you know, then you just put this all together. And again, you recognize with setting the spontaneous event, there will be potential imperfections, but then you look at it and say, okay, what's the most plausible explanation for this?

And is there a plausible explanation for how the child could have learned these things in an ordinary way? And again, for some of them, there does not appear to be. Can you talk a little bit more about some of the patterns that you see with these children, you know, let's start off first with the age typically that they start to, or even sometimes the conditions that they might be in, like being in a relaxed state, that these past life memories start to come up and be communicated with others in their family. Yeah, it tends to be very young children. So the average age when they start talking about a past life is only 35 months.

So two or three year old, basically when they develop verbal skill. they start coming out with these things. Sometimes they're later. There's usually a pretty narrow window. By the time their school age, six or seven, the statements can really tail off or even disappear. So there's this narrow window when they seem to access this information. Some of them can do it on demand sort of any time.

But many of them, like you say, do have to be in this relaxed state after a warm bath during a long car ride. They are, I mean, they're not fully hypnotized, but they're in this kind of zone where they'll start coming out with these statements about things from the past. And then later, you may ask them about it and they won't give you a word.

So, you know, when we go to interview the families, some of the kids can talk with us and some of them meeting a stranger who's asking them to them about all this, they're not able to share much with us. So then we rely, of course, on the parents to learn, again, what the child has said before anyone has identified the previous person.

Some of them will do it with great emotion, like both James and Ryan. The other kids sometimes are just sort of more matter-of-fact about it. But for a lot of them, there is this real emotional tug to the material. And some of them, it'll also come out on their behavior. So if the previous person died in some sort of violent, traumatic way, over 35% of the children will have a phobia,

have an intense fear toward the mode of death. So for instance, if the previous person drowned, the children will be petrified about being put in water. and Ian had a case in Thailand like that where it would take three adults to hold the little girl down as an infant to give her a bath. And then when she got older enough to talk, I described a girl from another village who had drowned in an accident.

So it comes out that way in behavior. It can also come out in their play. Like with James, you know, doing the plane crashes over and over and also the drawings, scores of drawings of planes and bombing scenes and all that kind of thing. It's often the occupation for the previous person that the child will just get stuck on and play at for hours at a time. And all of this will usually taper off as the statements do. So by the time the children are six, seven, eight years old, they pretty much look like anybody else. But during this earlier time, it can really be quite dramatic.

When you put your lens on as somebody who's just exploring this area and also studying it, we can't possibly know. But what do you think about the, what do you think that means in the sense of kids having these memories early, but then them starting to taper off at around six or seven. If you had to put your own interpretation on it, what are your thoughts? Well, if that's the same age that we all lose our memories of early childhood. So in a way, it's to be expected that these kids would also lose these memories. So to give an example, if there's a two- or three-year-old who knows a friend of the family is clearly in long-term memory,

they know their name and everything else. But if that person moves away, by the time the child is six or seven, they usually have no memory of them. So it's a well-identified phenomenon. Segment Freud called the repression barrier. We don't usually think of it as turns anymore. But the brain has undergoing tremendous changes at that age, and those memories get where they basically are very hard to retrieve. Now, both for early childhood and for quote unquote past life members, traumatic things are more likely to stay. And also, if there are frequent reminders, so it is more likely to stay.

So in our cases, some of the families, the child's family and the previous family have established relationships. And that can keep it going on longer. But if you look at this as being kind of a natural phenomenon, then what happens is what you would expect is that the memories would fade as the children get older and get more focused on the current life. One thing that often came up early on in this work, it's since mostly gone away except for people who are really not familiar with this category at all. But some of the skepticism would be, is there something wrong with these kids? kids, right? Wrong. I'm putting wrong in quotation marks. Do they have, you know, what is their, you know, mental health? What is their IQ? Can you, can you chat about those here? Yeah. So we've done some testing with the kids, psychological testing with the American kids,

and they were very young when we tested them. So, you know, there's some limits to the instruments. But what we found looking at kids from age three to six, they did not appear to be dissociating or hallucinating or anything like that. They seemed completely intact psychologically. The one thing that stood out in the testing was that they tended to be extremely intelligent and very verbal. So we did IQ testing and they tended to do very well. A colleague of ours also did testing with kids when they were a little bit older, both in Sri Lanka

and in Turkey. And what he found was that in general they were doing well, they tended to do better in school than their peers. They did have some mild behavioral issues at times, tended perhaps to be a little more anxious than other kids. And he kind of made the argument that they might be mild versions of PTSD, not that they were having full-blown PTSD, but that some of them would show features,

just like James Langer showed some features of PTSD, even that he didn't have the full syndrome. But it doesn't look like that the cases can be explained away as being a psychological disturbance, because overall the kids are psychologically intact. One of the really interesting phenomenon in this body of work is this idea that primarily the, stories that you've shared so far have been ones where the children were primarily communicating

these memories. There wasn't something physical at the moment that the child had to sort of share their connection to potentially a past life. But there are a group of cases that are related to physical birth marks. And I thought that was just incredible to hear about. Can you talk about that a little bit more? Yeah, and certainly Ian Stevenson thought they were something else. As I mentioned earlier, he had a long-standing interest in psychosomatic medicine. So the idea that trauma or injury from one life could even show up in the next, I mean, he really spent years exploring these cases and then eventually publishing a 2,000-page book on them. But it's where kids are born with breast marks or full birth defects.

that match wounds, usually the fatal wounds, on the body of the previous person. And Ian had cases where, again, there would be missing limbs or missing fingers or whatever. He listed 18 cases where the previous person was shot and killed, and the childhood double birth marks, ones that matched both the entrance wound and the egg, wound on the body of the previous person. And certainly what he always tried to do was, like with everything else, verify then, in fact, there was a match. So he would get autopsy reports when he could.

In a lot of the aging cases, there were not autopsy reports available. So then he would interview witnesses who had seen the body after the previous person had been killed and, in fact, confirmed that there was a match between the previous injuries and then the birthmarks or birth defects. And, you know, trying to explain that, that can be a little bit difficult. And what he talked about it and what makes sense to me is that it's not literally the physical injury on the previous body, but more of the consciousness of the previous person being impacted by that injury and carrying that image with them to the next life and then affecting the,

at developing fetus so that it shows up as a defect. So, you know, there are bodies of evidence showing that mental images can sometimes have very specific effects on the body. And this case seems to produce the things that show up at birth. There was a movie that came out. I don't know if you watched it, Disney movie Soul. and that sort of picked back up some of the interest in this topic for a lot of people who maybe weren't as familiar.

And that specifically, you know, focused on especially this in-between place that in the story that the main protagonist was sort of in while they were thinking. And obviously, you know, this is a Disney movie, Pixar Disney. It's a fictitious, you know, nice story, great story. but that beg the question for a lot of people with this topic is that do kids ever talk about do these young kids ever talk about sort of that in-between place that they're in? Well, as they do, 20% of the kids will talk about some sort of experiences between lives after the death from the previous life and before the child is born.

And there are different types that they will talk about. So some of them will talk about either staying near the previous family, or staying near where the previous person died. And some of them will give details about observing the funeral for themselves, sometimes giving verifiable details. And so, like, there's one little girl in Thailand who made a lot of statements about the past life, but one thing was she complained that her ashes had been scattered rather than buried the way that she wanted them to be.

Well, the previous woman had wanted her ashes buried at the bow tree of the temple complex where she studied. But when her daughter went to buried them, the root system of the tree was so extensive that she couldn't. So she scattered them instead. So there can be kind of verifiable details like that. Other kids will talk about going to another realm like heaven. The American kids may use the word heaven. And, you know, to be honest, some of those reports sound kind of fantastical. And, of course, they're coming through the mind of a three or four-year-old.

But, you know, they will talk about a heavenly-type city. Some of them will talk about either seeing other entities, spirits, or guides. Some of them will talk about seeing God. And then some of them will talk about preparing for the next life of either of observing their parents during the pregnancy or before the pregnancy or choosing them and then coming back and to be reborn. So James, for instance, one day told his father how he had chosen his parents and said that he had seen them eating on the beach at a pink hotel when he decided he wanted to be

born to them. And actually, I think I have this story straight. I think he even said Hawaii where there was a big pink hotel. And it turned out that his parents had been to Hawaii, had stayed at a big pink hotel on the last night they had, in fact, eaten on the beach. And they took that trip as they were preparing to try to get pregnant. So they didn't actually get pregnant for a couple of months, but that was when the intention began.

And needless to say, his father was flabbergast. that James described that event in such detail. So there can be verifiable details that the children give about the time before they, or either before conception or before they're born. On a personal level, you know, you play this role as a researcher in this project. And again, you know, it's a, you didn't so much choose this work as this work kind of chose you. but there's still a human element, and you are an individual, you're a man, you're a human. As these cases would continue to come across your desk, were there any physical sensations that you would feel?

Would you ever get goosebumps? Would there be any sense of astonishment? How did you process these as they came across to you? Well, I don't know about goosebumps, but there are certainly ones where, I mean, I've become more convinced. that there is more than just the physical world. There is this realm of consciousness that, you know, it's really separate from it and doesn't seem tied to physical events. In other words, the physical brain can die,

but it doesn't mean that the consciousness ends. And with some of the cases, you know, with anything, you hear the initial report, it sounds good, and then when you look into it, you can see kind of the weaknesses of the case along with the strengths. But then you get cases like James Leinger, where actually the more I dealt into, the more impressed I became because I realized we had better documentation of his statements than I'd been aware. Documentation that's been made before anyone had heard about pilot.

And then the same way with these recent tests where, you know, this kid's six out of six on the picture tests. But that takes me back a little bit. I mean, it's, you know, it's a little hard to explain that away. So, yes, there are times where it still shakes me a little bit, and I see, well, this, all right, this is actually quite impressive. And, you know, you add all the strongest cases together, then, you know, moves from impressive to really being pretty overwhelming. talk about Max Planck and how his sort of theories of and work and his Nobel Prize has in his category has impacted a little bit of sort of how you've processed some of the work that you do. Yeah, so Max Planck is kind of considered the founder of quantum mechanics or quantum physics

and he said that he viewed consciousness as fundamental and that matter was derived from it. And quantum physics is very hard for anyone to understand, especially those of us who are not physicists, but actually for physicists too. So there's the saying that there are as many interpretations of quantum physics as there are quantum physicists. But certainly there are a number of things. them who sort of following in Max Planck's line emphasize how critical observation is to reality that there's what John Wheeler called the participatory universe where the observer is really a critical piece to all this so I'm my thoughts continue to evolve on this but I'm

coming to think now that the basic building blocks of our world, you know, you might think would be particles and waves, but actually now I'm starting to think that it's observations and knowledge, that that's really what our world is built on. And with that being the case, again, the idea that consciousness is wholly dependent on physical brains, to me, doesn't even make a whole lot of sense, that consciousness is primary. And what we perceive is this physical reality is really secondary to it. There was another widely known quote that is attributed to Max Planck. And I'll paraphrase it here because it's a little bit longer. And basically he talks about science progressing one funeral at a time.

Not when, you know, new ideas don't just come in and win over the old guard. It tends to be that science progresses when the old guard dies, you know, and then funerals happen. And then a new guard is ushered in. How have you thought about that quote in the context of your work and any kind of pushback and skepticism that you've faced with over the years? Well, certainly science is conservative by nature, and really it should be. You know, we don't overturn everything we think we know just because something doesn't quite agree with it.

But these sort of outlier anomalous type things do require us to see if we have a complete picture. So, yes, science advances to some extent as the old guard who are made. maybe a little too set in their ways and not open enough, move on and people who are more open-minded explore different avenues. I think with our work, what it leads me to consider is that, you know, doing interviews like this or writing my books for the general public, what I'm trying to do is get this information out more in the general culture that future scientists are growing up in.

and or are part of so that over time, people do become more open to these things and then can consider them more fully and perhaps become more accepting. So that's the hope anyway. I interviewed one of your colleagues before our interview here, Bruce Grayson, and he talks about near-death experiences. And inside of there, and his most recent book, after, the big question is, okay, these near-death experiences are amazing and fantastical and does seem that something's going on. And naturally, people ask, well, what is my takeaway from it?

If I'm somebody that hasn't had a near-death experience, what are some themes or ideas that I might be left with? And, you know, he shared his answers in the interview. I'd love to ask you the same question. You know, for somebody who hasn't had sort of early childhood memories or experiences about the space in between or about a past life or hasn't had a child themselves about it, what do you think some of the takeaways are from your body of work? Well, I think, yeah, I mean, you're right. With near death experiences, typically with people who have had them, they are 100% certain that life continues on because they've experienced it. for the rest of us, you know, we can only read about it and, you know, who said they're right?

And there's some extent that's true that way with these past life memories. You know, when most of the parents, when you've had a child so intensely talking about these things, crying about these things and all that, you know, the parents typically become convinced. We're one step removed trying to assess this. I think I try to look at it sort of from the big picture, which is that, studied most conservatively, these cases provide good evidence that some young children have memories of a life from the past. The particulars of what you make of that are open to question. So reincarnation is sort of the most obvious explanation for it. But the world of consciousness, that realm may be much more complicated than it may appear.

That, you know, things may not be exactly linear. But there is this evidence that there is this continuation, that when we die or when our loved ones die, that it doesn't mean that it's the end. And it may continue on in very different ways. I mean, the fact that these kids appeared have had a past life here, it doesn't mean that we would all come back here. I mean, we may have different kinds of experiences. In these particular cases, there may be reasons why they are kept at this plane and have another life, but that there may be all sorts of other kinds of existence

that we can access removed from this life. But again, there is good evidence that things do continue. Most of the stories, as you mentioned earlier, that you documented here in America were from primarily families that grew up in a classic sort of Christian household and had very traditional beliefs, even to the extent that you had one mother say that she felt like she was a heretic slash sinning just by picking up a book on reincarnation and starting to look into the topic that it was some form of blasphemy. Had you seen any shifts in sort of the family's ideological or sort of belief systems that took

place as you began to validate some of what their children were telling to them? Did it shape their beliefs or view of the world or religion in one way or another? Yeah, I think what happens a lot of times is that the parents incorporate their experiences sort of into their religious beliefs. I mean, it doesn't change them from Christian to Buddhist or Hindu or whatever. But, you know, as it turns out, a lot of American Christians believe in reincarnation anyway. It's surprising them. And then we're about, at Polo show, about 20% of American Christians believe in reincarnation.

And, you know, for all of us, to some extent, we all have our own. individual religions. I mean, you know, everyone has their own beliefs and they may incorporate different things from different belief systems into it. And so, for instance, with James Leinger, his father who hated the idea of past lives before James started talking about one, because his dad tried to refute James' statements and then ended up confirming them instead. He remains very much a Christian, but he also believes that his child experienced the past life. So even though past lives for the most part are not mentioned explicitly in the Christian Bible, they are consistent in the sense that they show that a conscious sense or spirituality,

there is this component of us that is outside of just our physical existence. So I think, you know, it can be easy for families to accept that because that does go with their religious beliefs. It's just a different aspect of it. When I read about that story and about how his dad sort of set out on the quest to refute initially, you know, what the child had been experiencing and then later sort of adopted into into his current beliefs, the idea and the openness, I'll just call it openness, that the idea that I don't know what's going on, but something is out there. It may be think there's a book that I read a few years ago, many years ago, actually, almost a decade ago. I'm blanking on the title, but I'll bring it up for the show notes, for the audience that's

listening. But inside of there, it talked about the evolution of even just interpretations of common things that we understand today if somebody is Christian, like the concept of heaven. It previously wasn't really understood that when grandma or grandpa passes away, that then they go to heaven. And let's say if somebody has a traditional Christian belief, it was understood to be that they're buried until then potentially judgment day and then upon judgment day, then, you know, things would proceed from there. So there really wasn't even this idea of heaven is more of a modern, more modern understanding in Christianity than it was a traditional. So I thought about that in a sense that our ideas and interpretation of a lot of things, if people have, you know, I'm not, I don't identify in a particular religion.

I do was brought up in the Hindu tradition, but our understanding, you know, evolves over the years and both through cultural influences, our own interactions and experiences. And just another reminder that we can have these experiences or think about something and they can be incorporated into whatever belief system that we have into the world. Well, that's right. I mean, religion certainly evolves over time. I mean, there are still plenty of Christian denominations that do believe literally in a judgment day sort of at the end of times. But then there are others, I would say the majority now is this idea you go to heaven or hell, I guess, when you die immediately as opposed to being risen from the grave on judgment day.

So, yeah, I mean, things. And then, you know, you look back earlier where I read a book a few years ago, the disappearance of God, how even the concept of God has evolved in religions over the centuries. Yeah, absolutely. And just that, you know, I think about, you talked about your Ian's last sort of published words. and when it comes to like, you know, people asking like, okay, so what does this all mean? And I would wondering if you might be able to share what his last published words were because

I feel like there's so much weight in those in how we see near death experiences, potential reincarnation slash past life experiences that we can all learn from. Yeah. So literally his last words published words were let no one think that I know the answer. I am still seeking. Now, that being said, I mean, that's a, I hope we all go through life still seeking. You know, he also had arrived at some conclusions about that. He was talking specifically about sort of psychosomatic issues in these cases.

But he also had said that he had become more convinced that the most, the best explanation for the cases was that that was for reincarnation or this carryover from one life to the next. But again, we don't have all the answers. And, you know, anyone in science should be open to exploring. That's why they're exploring and open to being wrong. So that's certainly a mindset that we have tried to always keep, that we are doing our own exploration to try to figure out what we think is going on. I want to ask you about your wife, since you brought her up earlier, feel free to answer.

And if you don't want to answer, I'll cut this question out. But you know, you mentioned that her sort of openness and introduction to what I would generally say is like bringing a new perspective into your life when you two met was a big inspiration around taking that call in your hero's journey to go and explore this area. As your body of work has built up and eventually led to, you know, your publication of your book, which I want to talk about in a second, how did she, what were some of her thoughts and reactions from watching you from a distance of putting this all together? Well, I mean, she's certainly been supportive.

And she's a clinical psychologist. We worked together for years before I came on at the university full time. But, you know, we've, it's a journey that we travel together. And so it's, you know, our work essentially confirms what she believed anyway, as far as the idea of past lies. But she's, she's been fully supportive. And also one of your lectures that I saw on YouTube in preparation for the interview, I think you chatted about sort of how your book came together and how the way that your book came together. and how the way that your book came together is also one way that could give us a little bit of a sense of meaning

that there's this non-local phenomenon of different things all moving in a same direction to bring something about. And I just really liked that story. And I would wonder if you would share that with our audience over here. and maybe how that sort of relates a little bit to the takeaways that come out of, even though it's not directly related to reincarnation or childhood sort of past life experience, there's some mystical sense that is coming from these experiences that we all have in life. Yeah, so this idea of coincidence or synchronicity,

that there can be meaning or sort of purpose in things that align, in sort of the right way. And in my own example, which, I mean, I will say as a small example, because there are much more incredible kind of coincidences. But, you know, when I was working on my first book and trying to find an agent and a publisher, I sent out a number of query letters. But one was to Patricia Vanderlund,

who was an agent who one of her authors, Alan Waws had just been talking with her about our work at UVA. And then my stuff shows up. She happened to have a lunch scheduled with an editor-friend of hers. She takes my, what I had sent her, the materials about the book, book proposal, to this editor at lunch. And before I even knew it, I had an offer for the book. And, you know, you can just say, I was lucky.

And, you know, maybe that is it. But I think it's worth considering that for all of us, that there can be this force, sort of a causal type thing, as Young talked about, that shapes events. And where they all kind of come together in a way that is, in a way is the mind projecting, things onto our reality. And again, in a way that's very hard to explain or really understand, it's not completely linear, but there is this force beyond just the physical world.

I think a lot of people can relate to that because we've all had, and naturally, along with it, even though we have had synchronistic or hyper-coincidental experiences, of course, we all still have a human mind. So there's always wishful thinking. There's always the search. for deeper meaning. And it seems that, you know, the truth is somewhere in the middle. There is something bigger that goes on. And yes, we are human beings. And sometimes we want to interpret deeper meaning onto situations. And we've all been on both sides of that spectrum, you know, individually. Exactly. I mean, there are some people who say, well, there's no such thing as coincidence. Well, I think there is such thing as coincidence. And, you know, it may or may not have meaning.

But then there are times in our lives where it does feel like there is purpose to how things come together. So, you know, when that happens, it's good to be open to it. As you've put out and your work has become more published, have you seen a change in openness, especially here in America, to this topic? Well, I've seen it in an individual case. I mean, I've certainly gotten emails from people who say that our work, you know, has really opened them up to considering this in a way they hadn't before. I don't know that there's evidence overall. I mean, if you look at polling surveys, it's been fairly consistent that in America as a whole. It's around 25%, a little more, a little less of Americans that believe in reincarnation.

Again, even among American Christians, about 20%. It doesn't seem to be going up or down particularly. And of course, to be honest, most people don't know about our work. But I think for people who do, then, you know, it can help shape what they're open to. As you continue in your career and then one day passed on the torch, what would be some of the other research that you'd love to see in this particular field? And it could be that maybe the resources aren't there. There may not the number of minds working on it or potentially even not the technology.

But if you could dream for a second in terms of what you'd love to see in this area, I'd be curious. Well, one thing, just in a very practical sense, I would love to have more really strong American cases. I mean, if we had 50 American cases as strong as James and Ryan's, I think it would be pretty much impossible for people to dismiss it. You know, they would have to take a more serious look. I think beyond that, the time between lives, I find intriguing.

I mean, Ian Stevenson devoted very little time to that because most of it's unverifiable. And he was very focused on what can be verified. But it's intriguing to think of what kind of existence we may have. outside of our time here. So it would be great if we were somehow able to explore that more. And then there's the question of where you get reborn into whom. And certainly in our cases, it's not random. I mean, with the cases in the same family or same area,

usually the same country, it's not just random around the world. but what factors play into leading the individual to reborn where they are and to whom they're born to? There are probably some parents that are listening to this interview right now, and their child has said things that are similar to some of these stories that you've mentioned and brought up. what advice do you have for parents whose kids seem to be remembering something that is not from this current life? Well, I think first and foremost, just to be open to what their children are saying, not to be too quick to dismiss it as fantasy or make-believe.

And often the parents, frankly, say they can tell the difference, that the children tend to be much more serious talking about this than their make-believe stories about dragons or whatever. So to be open to it, but not necessarily to be too focused on the material or to be asking too many pointed questions of the children, which may be upsetting to the child and may also leave them to make things up, which wouldn't be great from our standpoint. We ask parents to write down whatever their children are saying, so we have that documentation. So initially, it may look completely unverifiable, but over time the child may come out with more and more details, and if we have that documentation, that's really helpful.

And then it can be reassuring to parents to know that even though their child may be getting upset about this a lot, it almost always fades and often disappears. So, again, it doesn't mean their child is going to be permanently traumatized. They usually move on past it and then just go on with a normal childhood. But again, we do have a column about it on our website, but the general thing is to be open, but not necessarily overly focus on his past life statements. Yeah, I think that's a great reminder that you share inside your book that, you know, eventually, as these early childhood memories fade away, kids move on.

And they're just normal kids and they have lives and other things. And it's also for, especially with the modern sort of, spiritual movement, right? Spiritual but not religious movement, there are a lot of parents that want to maybe hope that this means something that my child is a unique outlier. And one of the things that you've sort of reaffirmed parents is that a lot of these kids who have these experiences, they're not baby Buddhas or Dalai Lamas walking around. They aren't often sort of sharing mystical wisdom. They are more just expression. their own sort of call for lack of better terms, unfinished business and connections that are there.

Well, that's right. I mean, it's good that they let it go. You know, you wouldn't want to kind of waste one lifetime being overly focused on the previous ones. So it's, it's often not a pleasant experience to remember a past life if it's really traumatic. In fact, it could be quite difficult. So it's good that it fades. We're currently doing. a study where we were interviewing adults who we originally studied when they were kids. And I mean, for the most part, they're all doing fine. But in retrospect, some of them say that it was helpful because it affected their outlook on life and more of a spiritual outlook on life.

Even though they don't remember the past life now, and some of them don't even remember talking about a past life, but just hearing that they did, it's helped them have a more positive spiritual outlook. So it may be very good in the long run, but in the short run, it can be quite difficult for the kids. And actually, when people hear about this space, there becomes an area of interest, especially if they didn't have any of those feelings when they were a kid or remember anything or communicating anything to their parents, the topic of sort of past life regression and some of that body of work that's in that field comes up. And some people are curious and they're like, should I explore this?

Is it, you know, part of my French, but is it bullshit? You know, I want to get your thoughts on that area if you have any. Yeah, I mean, we're pretty skeptical about hypnotic regression. Because hypnosis is a very unreliable tool for pulling out memories, even memories of this life. So I'm reliable in the sense that sometimes they can be amazingly accurate. You know, people recall in license plate numbers from crime scenes or whatever. But there are a lot of times where the mind just fills in the blanks.

And then after that, it's very hard for the person to tell, was that an actual memory, or was it my mind making it up? So with hypnotic regression from past lives, which are usually completely unverifiable, there's not a lot of reason to think that the people are actually remembering in the past life. Now, that being said, it may be therapeutic to people, and they may be just like doing dream work can be therapeutic for people. It may be helpful to them. But with occasional exception, it doesn't look like there's any reason to, any evidence that they're calling a past life. There are a few cases where people have come up with a lot of information that seems

extremely unlikely they would have learned about through normal means. But those cases are very few in part between. Yeah, I think that sometimes the the criticism that comes along with that area. And again, it could be very therapeutic and by any means, you know, placebos can be therapeutic for people. And we know that inside of science and medicine. But it often seems to be associated with a person being somebody famous or of notoriety. And that really goes completely against a lot of the stories that you've documented. It doesn't mean that it may not be real, who knows what we'll discover in the future, but a lot of these kids that you've documented their cases and Ian's work as well, they were not remembering to be anybody

famous or even remotely famous. They were average, ordinary individuals that were just living lives. And often you had to do heavy digging to even find out what their actual existence was in the case of the young boy who remembered him being an Hollywood extra in that area, right? I mean, nobody would have known him. There's no books written about this individual, and you really had to, like, work hard to find out that this person actually existed in the first place. Well, that's right.

Usually, it's even less notable than that. Yeah, it's a perfectly ordinary life. The one thing that's out of the ordinary Alphen is how the previous person died, but otherwise is a completely ordinary life. And we will very rarely hear of a child talking about being someone famous or the parents think they might be talking about someone famous. And I have to say that I tend to be extra careful or skeptical about those cases,

just because there's the potential for wishful thinking on the parents' part, as well as the potential for the child to have learned about the person through, you know, just normal means. I'm sure people ask you because you're an author, if you put yourself your work out there, and you can feel free to decline to answer. But has this changed your own beliefs? Do you feel that you identify by any particular tradition or typical religion or belief system? And has that evolved over the years?

Well, it's certainly evolved over my lifetime. I mean, I was raised Southern Baptist. As an adult, I can't say I was necessarily practicing of any sort. But I would identify now as spiritual but not religious, which person is a growing group. in the U.S. And, you know, I have become more convinced, as I was saying earlier, that there is more than just this physical world, that there is consciousness and continuation.

It doesn't mean, again, that I think reincarnation is universal. It may be, but we don't have evidence of that. But I think there's, good reason to think that a piece of us does carry on after we die. And if you would look at it from like 30,000 feet up and somebody was looking at your life and studying your life, how do you think that that sort of belief system or your own personal knowledge, your own understanding around that, which is, of course, filtered through your life experiences, how does that shape your actions, if you would look at that?

Are there things that you think that you are more strongly to believe in on an action-based level in terms of how you live your life because you have that background or understanding? Well, I think with that awareness, I hope anyway, that at least in awareness that we all have this aspect in us, you know, that I hope we can, I hope I treat. everyone that I come in contact with respect. And I mean, I hope I always have. But, but, you know, if we sense that there's something greater that is, there's a piece of it in all of us, hopefully it leads us to not fall into us versus other kind of thinking so much, but more of seeing us all in this together. I think that's one of the most beautiful thing that's come

out of my background. Again, I grew up in the Hindu and the Jane traditions, which are very well notably reincarnation as a core part of the understanding of life, which plays into the deeper elements of karma theory and a whole host of other belief systems that are there. And people say, well, do you still believe those things? And I say, yeah, I still believe them. And I also know that, okay, you know, I would often reference, you know, your work or the other work that's out there, not a way to defend it, but more in a sense of because I believe that I feel that there's this classic Buddhist phrase, which is that, you know, treat everybody as if they were your mother in a past lifetime, right? And there was, and that idea that comes in, which is when we want to be snappy to our child, when we want to be snappy to people that are out there, we want to discount somebody for having a different belief system than we do or voting for a different set of politics that are there, when you have a sense or some reminder, because we can all forget,

that who knows what relationship you had in a previous lifetime, if that meaning is something that I take away, which makes me kinder to people around me, then who cares if it's right or wrong, right? There's some takeaway. That's how I personally feel about it. And I also don't profess to know the answer to the truth about it. But that does seem to be the golden rule,

one takeaway that comes from this. You know, that annoying friend that you had a falling out with, years ago, but that you still miss, is there some connection that was there and a reason and an opportunity to make up because you two are still figuring out, you know, work that was left unfinished in a past lifetime? So I think that's one interpretation that could just add to people being better human beings if they so choose to. Yeah, and I think I would add to that that it can be a connection, even if it's not related to a past life, that, you know, we may all be connected in this larger way, you know, through spiritual or consciousness or whatever you call it.

So, yeah, I mean, it may be, you know, in your past life, you and your annoying friend, I don't know, we're working through something that you're still working through, and certainly with family. But I would even say beyond that, it's even this, we're connected in a sense that we often lose sight of in our kind of day-to-day living. could you just expand on that a little bit more and for the audience that's listening? Yes. So, you know, I have wondered at times if looking at sort of the observer kind of thing, do we all have our own separate reality or are we all in this creating it all together and sort of a kind of a mosaic where we all contribute our piece of it?

And, you know, if you look at synchronicity or, you know, like the story I was telling about with my agent and with Alan Wallace and different people, it all kind of fit together. So it suggests that, you know, we all have our own reality, but it's all part of a greater one. So the fact that I wanted to get a book published didn't somehow lead Alan Wallace to devote decades of his life to Buddhism. But the pieces fit together where it helped me. So these things are not necessarily linear, but there is this, I think, this overarching story that, again, we each contribute a piece to. It's sort of like a jigsaw puzzle. We each have our piece to contribute, but then the puzzle together, it all works together to create kind of one beautiful picture. So that would be one way of envisioning how we're all separate but also linked. Yeah, and it does seem that there is a building body of work in the quantum physics area,

which I am not qualified to talk about in any way, but I am familiar enough to know that there is the, in quantum physics, there is the observer effect studies where they have particles that seem to change their structure and position. based on who or what is observing that particle. And that seems to be right in alignment with some of what you're talking about. And it'll be very interesting over the years as this field of quantum physics, quantum computing continues to develop, who knows what fantastical things will be able to discover through that research.

It's completely mind-blowing. And, yeah, again, there are a lot of different explanations for quantum physics. One that currently is getting more force is called cubism. And with that, the key of observation, just how it affects actually not even just kind of the present, but even the past. And there are good experiments, a delayed choice experiment showing that decisions people make with their observations now. affect what happened in the past. So yes, it's wild stuff. I have often thought that before our work can gain general acceptance, there would have to be theory that can incorporate, or there have be understandings of reality that would at least allow for it and may be required. But I think

the Avenue N would probably be quantum physics. As we learn more about the ultimate nature of reality through quantum physics, I think we may well find that this work would fit in with that very well. Something to look forward to in the future for all of us who get to see that. It may well be during our next lifetimes, but we can always have it. It might be in our next lifetime. Well, if that's the case, I'll track you down and see if I can find you for another interview. Sounds good. Dr. Tucker, this has been fantastic, and I want to thank you for taking the call that you did,

and I use it in a general sense, the call of adventure to your own hero's journey to explore this area and this field. I think that's another takeaway that comes from this, is that, again, you weren't necessarily looking for this. This sort of work found you as your wife had a beautiful influence in your life and sort of opening you up in terms of what was – out there possible, potentially possible. And I think that's a reminder for us all that, you know, if there's something that we're strongly drawn to in this world, we've got to also accept that call or at least give it a little bit of love and pay attention to it.

Who knows what could come out of it. So tremendous gratitude for what you have done over your years in this place. And as that continues, and thank you for writing such a fantastic book on this topic, which is, I think all of our audience should pick up. It's called Before Children's Memories of Previous Lives, and we'll have the link in the show notes. Dr. Tucker, if people want to keep in touch with your organization,

maybe even contribute to it, if they want to make a contribution to the work, or potentially they're a parent who's listening, who wants to document their child's experiences or looking for resources, how can they find you? Well, we're on Facebook and YouTube and everything else where. I mean, you just Google Jim Tucker, you can find it. But our website is UVA Dops.

Dops is division of perceptual studies. UVA Dops.org is sort of the short version of it. And that way you can email us or again, you can find the links to stay connected with us. But yeah, we love to hear from parents whose children are talking about these. things and we'd love for people to keep up with everything and follow us on the different places. Fantastic. Again, Dr. Tucker, thank you so much for being on the podcast and hats off for you for this incredible body of work that you've put together. Well, thanks very much. And it's been fun talking to you.