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A woman is sitting beside her mother's
bed.
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00:00:10,153
It's late, the house is quiet
and the only sound is a
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00:00:16,020
slow, scraping breath that
comes and stops and comes again.
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00:00:19,900
She's been told it won't be long.
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What nobody has told her is what happens
after.
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Her mother is about to go
somewhere and she has no idea
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where or whether there's
anything at the other end of it.
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So she does the only thing she can.
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She holds her mother's hand.
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It's cool and still.
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Then there's a breath.
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And the next one doesn't come.
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She waits for it, she of still you can
almost hear, and she realises that's it.
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That was the last one.
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Now, if we follow what
people report about this exact
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moment, here's what's
going on from the other side.
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Her mother isn't in the bed anymore.
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She's up near the ceiling, looking down,
and what she sees is strange and calm.
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There's a body on the pillow.
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There's a daughter holding its hand,
and her shoulders are shaking,
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and the view keeps rising.
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Past the light fixture, past
the roof, until the house
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is just a small square
of yellow in a dark street.
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Here's what I find hard to ignore.
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People who never met each other,
in cultures that never met each other,
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in centuries that never overlapped,
have described what comes next.
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The journey between one life and the next.
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And they agree on a lot more than you'd
expect.
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We're going to walk that road from
beginning to end, step by step,
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and to do it, we're going to start with
the oldest account we have.
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A soldier who wakes up on his own funeral
pyre.
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Let's go back to around 375 BC,
to the very end of Plato's book,
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The Republic.
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It's about a soldier named
Ur, the son of Armenios, from
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a region called Pamphylia, in
what's now southern Turkey.
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Ur is killed in battle.
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He's one of many men
who fall on the same
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field, and the bodies
just lie there for days.
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00:03:05,680
Ten days later, the army comes back to
collect the dead.
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By then the bodies are decayed as you'd
expect, except for Ur's.
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His body hasn't rotted at all.
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They carry him home and lay him out on the
funeral pyre, ready to burn.
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Two days after that he sits up,
12 days dead, lying on a heap of wood,
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and he opens his eyes
and starts talking, and what
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he says is that he's been
sent back with a message.
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Here's what he tells them.
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His soul left his body and
travelled with a crowd of
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other until they reached a
strange and enormous place.
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It had four openings.
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Two were in the ground, side by side, and
two were in the sky, directly above them.
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Between these openings sat judges.
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As each soul came before them,
the judges decided where it would go.
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The just were sent up through the sky
openings on the right.
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The unjust were sent down through the
earth openings on the left.
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Then Ur came forward, expecting the same
treatment.
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But the judges stopped him.
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They told him he wasn't going anywhere.
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He was to stay right where he was,
and watch and listen to everything,
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so that he could carry the whole report
back to the living.
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And that's why we have it.
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Ur wasn't a philosopher or a priest.
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He was a soldier who was told to look closely,
and then sent back to say what he saw.
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Now let's talk about what people report
when they leave, because Ur isn't alone.
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In 1975, a philosophy student turned
doctor.
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Named Raymond Moody
published a book called Life After
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Life, and in it he gave this
experience a name that stuck.
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The near-death experience.
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He'd spent years collecting accounts from
people who had been pronounced dead,
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or came very close, and then came back.
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And he noticed that their stories kept
lining up.
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Here's the pattern.
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First, people find themselves outside
their body, looking at it.
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Then comes a sense of
movement, often through a
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00:06:03,260
dark space that people
describe like a tunnel.
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At the end of it, there's
a light brighter than
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anything they've seen, but
it doesn't hurt to look at.
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And somewhere along the way, there's some
kind of border.
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A line, or a gate, or a river,
and the person understands
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that if they cross it,
they won't be going back.
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Picture a man on an operating table,
heart-stopped, surgeons working.
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He rises, he's near
the ceiling, and he can
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see the top of the
monitor drawing a flat line.
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He isn't scared.
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He's curious, almost detached, like he's
watching a program about someone else.
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00:07:03,400
Then the walls of the room seem to fall
away, and he's moving toward a glow.
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00:07:08,020
And the strongest feeling in him isn't
fear, it's recognition.
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He knows this place.
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That last part comes up again and again.
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A doctor named Jeffrey Long runs a huge
archive of these accounts, thousands of
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them, collected through detailed
questionnaires from people all over the world.
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And when his experiences
try to describe how it
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felt, many of them say
it felt like going home.
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Not arriving somewhere new, but returning
some of they'd been before and forgotten.
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You know the feeling.
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You've been away for a long time,
and you come up your own front walk,
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and your hand goes
to the door without
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thinking, and the smell
of the hallway hits you.
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Nobody has to explain anything to you.
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Your body already knows where it is.
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That's the quality these people describe,
except it's a hundred times stronger.
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Now here's why the pattern matters so
much.
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These accounts don't come from one country
or one religion.
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They come from believers and from people
who believed nothing.
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They come from children
too, who haven't absorbed any
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ideas yet about what dying
is supposed to look like.
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And the steps keep coming in roughly the
same order.
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Leaving, the tunnel, the light,
the proofs, what's actually happening.
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You can read these reports
as a dying brain, doing
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strange things, or as the
first steps of a real journey.
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But either way, you've
got people in very different
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places and times describing
the same opening moves.
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And that's the thing
worth noticing, because if
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there is a road, this is
how it seems to begin.
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Next, let's talk about what happens when
you arrive.
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Because the light isn't the end of the
story.
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In the accounts that go further,
somebody is waiting.
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This is the heart of a book called Journey
of Souls by a hypnotherapist named Michael
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Newton, published in 1994.
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Newton started out as a skeptic.
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Then, a client under deep
hypnosis went past her
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last death and began
describing a place beyond it.
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And he spent the next few decades asking
thousands of people what they saw there.
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00:10:24,190
And one of the first things they described
was a welcome.
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Guides come.
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Loved ones come.
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They're simply there when you arrive.
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Picture it the way his clients tell it.
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A soul comes out of the dark, a little
dazed, not sure what it's standing in.
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And the first face it sees is a
grandmother who died when they were ten.
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Or an old friend, or a dog, or someone it
hasn't thought about in 40 years.
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00:11:04,810
They look the way the soul remembers them,
or younger, or lighter, and there's no
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awkwardness.
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Just a sort of, oh, there you are.
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Now there's an older and stranger account
of arriving, and it comes from Tibet.
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00:11:26,030
It's called the Bardo Thodol, usually known
in English as the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
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00:11:31,205
It's a text meant to be
read aloud to a person who
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00:11:34,830
has just died, and its
first instruction is startling.
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The very first thing that appears isn't a
person at all.
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It's the clear light, a pure, bare
brightness.
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And the text says it shows up at the
moment of death, before anything else does.
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What's the soul supposed to do with it?
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Recognise it.
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00:12:05,830
The teaching is that this light is your
own mind, stripped of everything.
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00:12:10,590
And if you know it for what it is,
right there, you're free.
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Nothing more is needed.
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But here's the catch, and it's a human
one.
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Most people don't recognise it.
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00:12:26,430
The light is too bright, too empty,
too much.
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It has no face, no warmth,
nothing to hold onto,
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so the soul flinches
and turns away from it.
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00:12:42,470
The text knows this, and it gently keeps
calling the person back, telling them not
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00:12:46,410
to be afraid, that this is the best chance
they'll get.
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Think about that for a moment,
because it sets up something we'll come
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back to.
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00:13:02,630
In one account, you're met by familiar
faces who ease you in.
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00:13:09,170
In the other, you're met by something so
vast and unfamiliar that you run from it.
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00:13:15,190
Both are describing a threshold, and
both agree that how you meet it matters.
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Which raises a question.
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If you do get past this first moment,
where do you go?
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It turns out there's a place where souls
gather, and the traditions describe it
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very differently depending on who's
telling the story.
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Now let's look at the places souls gather.
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00:13:49,140
And we'll go back to her, because after
the judges sent him off to watch,
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00:13:55,540
he followed the crowd to a meadow, and
what he saw there is surprisingly ordinary.
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It's a reunion.
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00:14:05,040
Souls who've come down from the sky,
and souls who've come up from underground,
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00:14:07,300
arrive at the same field.
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00:14:14,000
And they greet each other, like travellers
who've just got off long trains.
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00:14:21,920
They run up to the ones they know,
they ask questions, and mostly they talk,
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00:14:28,220
each one telling the others where they've
been and what happened to them.
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00:14:29,689 -->
00:14:33,740
They stay there for seven days just
swapping stories.
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00:14:38,480
But the stories aren't the same.
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00:14:44,830
The souls coming down from
the sky tell about wonderful
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00:14:44,831 -->
00:14:48,120
sights and a sweetness
he couldn't put into words.
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00:14:55,840
The ones coming up from underground,
dirty and worn out, cry as they talk.
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00:15:00,196
They're remembering
everything they suffered
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00:15:00,197 -->
00:15:03,940
down there, and the
telling hurts all over again.
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00:15:06,309 -->
00:15:12,120
So you have this meadow, where the happy
and the broken sit side by side,
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00:15:14,500
and everyone's being listened to.
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00:15:17,340
There's no judge in the field.
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00:15:20,340
Nobody's marking anything down.
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00:15:23,140
They're just telling it.
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00:15:25,569 -->
00:15:29,840
That's one way to picture where souls
gather, and it's a gentle one.
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00:15:31,334 -->
00:15:34,320
Now here's the dark version of the same
idea.
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00:15:40,246
The Gnostics, a family of
early Christian era movements
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00:15:40,247 -->
00:15:44,280
from around the second
century, told it differently.
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00:15:50,380
In their accounts, the way back up isn't a
meadow at all.
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00:15:55,674
It's a series of levels,
and each level is guarded
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00:15:59,320
by a ruler, a power
the texts call an archon.
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00:16:02,280 -->
00:16:04,470
These rulers don't welcome you.
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00:16:05,130 -->
00:16:08,429
They stand in the way,
and each one wants
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00:16:08,430 -->
00:16:11,690
something from you
before it lets you through.
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00:16:13,530 -->
00:16:15,410
Here's how it works in the texts.
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00:16:19,950
A soul rises and comes to the first gate.
195
00:16:22,354 -->
00:16:28,090
The ruler there blocks the path and puts a
question to it, or a challenge,
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00:16:28,780 -->
00:16:30,430
and the soul has to answer.
197
00:16:31,145 -->
00:16:34,490
And the right answer isn't a good deed or
a clean record.
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00:16:34,940 -->
00:16:35,940
It's knowledge.
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00:16:36,590 -->
00:16:41,750
The soul has to know what it is and where
it came from, and say so.
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00:16:43,750 -->
00:16:49,490
In one text, a teacher actually coaches
his student on the exact words to use,
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00:16:53,290
like a man handing over a script before an
exam.
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00:16:57,870
Give the answer, and the gate opens.
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00:17:03,450
Fumble it, and you're held, then sent back
down to start again.
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00:17:05,609 -->
00:17:08,270
So look at the two pictures side by side.
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00:17:09,185 -->
00:17:12,430
In Erzmeddo, arriving means being heard.
206
00:17:13,339 -->
00:17:16,950
In the Gnostic gates, arriving means being
questioned.
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00:17:18,169 -->
00:17:24,750
Same journey, but one is a homecoming,
and the other is a checkpoint.
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00:17:26,129 -->
00:17:31,970
And that difference between a welcome and
a gauntlet is going to keep showing up,
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00:17:32,979 -->
00:17:37,690
because it turns out to depend on a
surprisingly personal question.
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00:17:39,749 -->
00:17:44,390
Not what's out there, but who you think
you are when you walk in.
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00:17:46,350 -->
00:17:50,710
Let's talk about the part everyone fears,
the review.
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00:17:56,387
Because sooner or later,
in almost every one of these
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00:17:56,388 -->
00:18:00,570
stories, someone sits you
down and looks at what you did.
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00:18:02,799 -->
00:18:05,890
Go back to Erz's four openings for a
second.
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00:18:07,059 -->
00:18:10,290
The judges sitting between them weren't
just pointing.
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00:18:11,330 -->
00:18:16,810
Each soul came before them, and they
weighed what that soul had done in life,
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00:18:16,924 -->
00:18:19,170
and sent it up or down accordingly.
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00:18:20,509 -->
00:18:21,690
Then came the bill.
219
00:18:22,929 -->
00:18:28,830
For every wicked deed, Erz says,
the soul paid a tenfold penalty.
220
00:18:30,110 -->
00:18:34,201
A journey lasted a thousand
years, and that thousand-year
221
00:18:34,202 -->
00:18:37,190
trip was repaid ten
times over for each wrong.
222
00:18:38,410 -->
00:18:43,910
It's a ledger, and it's blunt,
and it was meant to be.
223
00:18:45,814 -->
00:18:47,490
India has its own judge.
224
00:18:48,629 -->
00:18:54,990
His name is Yama, the Lord of the Dead, and
in the Indian accounts, he keeps a mirror.
225
00:18:56,274 -->
00:18:58,110
It's called the Mirror of Karma.
226
00:19:01,189 -->
00:19:02,770
And it doesn't flatter anybody.
227
00:19:03,804 -->
00:19:06,061
Every deed you ever
did is shown back to you
228
00:19:06,062 -->
00:19:08,850
in it, the small ones
along with the big ones.
229
00:19:10,279 -->
00:19:12,950
There's no argument you can make against a
mirror.
230
00:19:14,014 -->
00:19:15,090
You just look.
231
00:19:17,524 -->
00:19:22,070
Now picture what that might feel like,
the way the accounts hint at it.
232
00:19:23,884 -->
00:19:31,190
A soul stands before the glass, and the
scene that rises up is one cruel moment.
233
00:19:32,470 -->
00:19:36,241
Maybe a sharp word to
someone who was already down,
234
00:19:36,242 -->
00:19:39,050
or a favour refused to a
person who was begging.
235
00:19:41,409 -->
00:19:43,710
At the time, it cost nothing.
236
00:19:44,695 -->
00:19:46,770
You walked off and forgot it.
237
00:19:47,679 -->
00:19:51,470
But now, the mirror shows it from the
other side.
238
00:19:53,004 -->
00:19:55,050
You're not watching yourself anymore.
239
00:19:56,150 -->
00:20:00,243
You're the one on the
receiving end, feeling the sting
240
00:20:00,244 -->
00:20:03,370
land, feeling how long
it lasted after you'd gone.
241
00:20:06,264 -->
00:20:09,080
The Tibetan version is close to this.
242
00:20:10,320 -->
00:20:15,680
Remember that in the Bardo Thudol,
the dead person comes before Yama too,
243
00:20:16,349 -->
00:20:20,980
and the text says the dead person's own
deeds are laid out and weighed.
244
00:20:22,140 -->
00:20:27,540
White pebbles for the good, black ones for
the bad, in one telling.
245
00:20:30,754 -->
00:20:35,200
But the text keeps adding a strange
instruction right in the middle of it.
246
00:20:36,134 -->
00:20:37,280
Don't be afraid.
247
00:20:38,659 -->
00:20:41,700
This is your own mind showing you your own
record.
248
00:20:42,799 -->
00:20:49,420
The judge, the scales, the pebbles, all
of it is being projected from inside you.
249
00:20:51,839 -->
00:20:55,960
That's a different feeling from a ledger
kept by someone else.
250
00:20:56,599 -->
00:21:02,920
And honestly, it's something most of us
have already tasted in a small way.
251
00:21:04,459 -->
00:21:08,980
You've probably watched yourself on a
security camera video at some point,
252
00:21:09,860 -->
00:21:14,400
a clip from a shop or a doorway,
and felt a jolt.
253
00:21:15,449 -->
00:21:16,700
That's how I walk.
254
00:21:18,304 -->
00:21:21,500
That's what my face does when I think
nobody's looking.
255
00:21:23,989 -->
00:21:26,400
It's not that the picture is false.
256
00:21:27,359 -->
00:21:32,220
It's that for once you're seeing what
everyone else has been seeing all along,
257
00:21:33,304 -->
00:21:38,400
with no flattering angle and no inner
narrator softening it.
258
00:21:40,994 -->
00:21:43,858
Now, notice what these
old accounts share, even
259
00:21:43,859 -->
00:21:46,880
though they come from
opposite ends of the world.
260
00:21:48,610 -->
00:21:53,280
The review isn't random, and it isn't
hidden.
261
00:21:54,205 -->
00:21:55,205
It's a showing.
262
00:21:57,180 -->
00:22:02,640
Your deeds are brought out into the open,
and you face them, whether the one doing
263
00:22:02,641 -->
00:22:06,415
the judging is a stern
figure with a ledger, a
264
00:22:06,416 -->
00:22:10,540
god with a mirror, or
your own mind laid bare.
265
00:22:12,659 -->
00:22:17,260
But the oldest versions are also the
harshest.
266
00:22:18,399 -->
00:22:22,400
They've got penalties and weights and
punishments.
267
00:22:23,660 -->
00:22:26,514
The modern accounts
tell it differently, and
268
00:22:26,515 -->
00:22:29,320
the difference is
worth looking at closely.
269
00:22:31,039 -->
00:22:34,760
And the first thing you notice is that the
tone changes.
270
00:22:36,094 -->
00:22:38,020
Nobody's holding a ledger.
271
00:22:40,080 -->
00:22:43,949
In Michael Newton's
book, the soul is brought
272
00:22:43,950 -->
00:22:47,980
before what his clients
call a council of elders.
273
00:22:49,494 -->
00:22:56,380
It's a small group of advanced beings
sitting in a half circle, and the soul's
274
00:22:56,381 -->
00:23:00,340
own guide is usually standing right beside
it.
275
00:23:00,914 -->
00:23:03,180
People walk in, expecting a courtroom.
276
00:23:05,700 -->
00:23:09,147
What they describe
instead is more like a long
277
00:23:09,148 -->
00:23:13,120
conversation with people
who've been where you are.
278
00:23:15,029 -->
00:23:20,920
The soul presents its life, goes through
what it intended, what it actually did,
279
00:23:21,320 -->
00:23:26,920
where it stumbled, and the elders mostly
ask questions.
280
00:23:28,424 -->
00:23:31,440
Why did you stay in that situation so
long?
281
00:23:32,224 -->
00:23:34,220
What did you think you were protecting?
282
00:23:35,799 -->
00:23:37,260
What would you do differently?
283
00:23:39,554 -->
00:23:42,260
That's the part we keep coming back to.
284
00:23:42,824 -->
00:23:45,060
Nobody hands down a sentence.
285
00:23:46,674 -->
00:23:49,160
The questions are the whole method.
286
00:23:49,780 -->
00:23:56,840
A sentence closes a matter, but a question
opens it up, and leaves the work with you,
287
00:23:57,124 -->
00:23:59,280
where it can actually do something.
288
00:24:02,125 -->
00:24:05,640
Raymond Moody's accounts add the other
half of this.
289
00:24:06,869 -->
00:24:11,760
From the people who came back,
he describes what he calls a life review.
290
00:24:13,359 -->
00:24:15,680
And it doesn't work like a slideshow.
291
00:24:17,140 -->
00:24:23,500
The whole life plays back almost at once,
in an instant, every scene there together,
292
00:24:24,239 -->
00:24:25,980
and the feelings are attached.
293
00:24:27,584 -->
00:24:32,427
You don't only see what
happened, you feel what you
294
00:24:32,428 -->
00:24:36,100
felt then, and often what
everyone else felt too.
295
00:24:38,409 -->
00:24:40,440
Here's how people describe that part.
296
00:24:42,060 -->
00:24:49,780
Someone watches a moment from decades ago,
a small unkindness, say, a joke at a
297
00:24:49,781 -->
00:24:52,360
co-worker's expense that got a laugh in
the room.
298
00:24:54,779 -->
00:24:56,600
At the time it felt like nothing.
299
00:24:57,980 -->
00:25:02,980
Now the scene replays, and suddenly the
hurt is arriving in your own chest.
300
00:25:03,999 -->
00:25:06,580
You feel the heat in the other person's
face.
301
00:25:09,094 -->
00:25:12,040
You feel them deciding not to say anything
back.
302
00:25:12,879 -->
00:25:16,686
It's not a punishment,
but it's exact, and it's far
303
00:25:16,687 -->
00:25:20,040
harder to sit through
than any lecture would be.
304
00:25:22,959 -->
00:25:28,480
And here's the finding that shows up
across these accounts, again and again.
305
00:25:30,444 -->
00:25:33,400
The harshest judge in the room is the soul
itself.
306
00:25:34,760 -->
00:25:39,951
The elders are gentle, the
guide is patient, and the person
307
00:25:39,952 -->
00:25:43,580
being reviewed is the one
who won't let anything slide.
308
00:25:45,999 -->
00:25:53,320
People come out of these reviews saying
nobody condemned them, and that they
309
00:25:53,321 -->
00:25:58,000
condemned themselves more thoroughly than
anyone else could have.
310
00:26:00,049 -->
00:26:02,760
You've felt a tiny version of this.
311
00:26:03,659 -->
00:26:05,240
It's two in the morning.
312
00:26:06,949 -->
00:26:11,640
You're lying in the dark and an old
conversation starts replaying.
313
00:26:13,284 -->
00:26:16,680
Something you said years ago, a clumsy
phrase.
314
00:26:17,985 -->
00:26:21,580
A moment you were short with someone who
didn't deserve it.
315
00:26:22,159 -->
00:26:24,100
You cringe at your own voice.
316
00:26:24,979 -->
00:26:28,180
You wince at the version of you who said
it.
317
00:26:30,500 -->
00:26:37,880
Now, take that wince and take away the
sleeping house, the pillow, the option of
318
00:26:37,881 -->
00:26:40,700
rolling over and thinking about something
else.
319
00:26:42,204 -->
00:26:45,780
Make it complete with the other person's
side included.
320
00:26:47,989 -->
00:26:53,100
That's about the closest ordinary life
gets to what these people describe.
321
00:26:55,209 -->
00:26:59,880
Notice what a strange fit that makes with
the older accounts.
322
00:27:01,129 -->
00:27:06,080
Er's judges and Yama's mirror assume
someone outside you is keeping score.
323
00:27:08,120 -->
00:27:13,220
The modern reports say that once you see
clearly, nobody needs to.
324
00:27:14,549 -->
00:27:16,780
The scorekeeper was inside all along.
325
00:27:19,309 -->
00:27:25,580
But if that's what the review looks like,
there's a bigger question hanging over it.
326
00:27:26,764 -->
00:27:29,660
Where does all of this actually take
place?
327
00:27:33,119 -->
00:27:36,000
Now let's talk about where this place is.
328
00:27:36,720 -->
00:27:43,620
And for that we go to Rome, about 50 years
before Christ, where the statesman Cicero
329
00:27:43,621 -->
00:27:49,780
wrote a short vision and tucked it into
the end of his book on government.
330
00:27:50,679 -->
00:27:56,300
It's called the Dream of Scipio,
and he built it on purpose to echo Er.
331
00:27:58,909 -->
00:28:04,140
A young Roman general named Scipio is
visiting a king in North Africa.
332
00:28:05,094 -->
00:28:09,560
That night he falls asleep, and his
grandfather appears.
333
00:28:10,619 -->
00:28:12,340
This isn't just any grandfather.
334
00:28:13,914 -->
00:28:19,980
It's Scipio Africanus, the man who beat
Hannibal, and he's been dead for years.
335
00:28:21,329 -->
00:28:26,800
He takes the boy by the hand and lifts him
up to a high place, full of stars,
336
00:28:27,639 -->
00:28:31,800
and from there he shows him how the
universe is built.
337
00:28:34,214 -->
00:28:37,380
It's nine spheres, one inside another.
338
00:28:38,145 -->
00:28:40,600
Earth sits motionless at the bottom.
339
00:28:41,044 -->
00:28:44,780
Above it come the moon, then the planets
and the sun.
340
00:28:46,104 -->
00:28:49,939
And the whole thing is
wrapped in the outermost
341
00:28:49,940 -->
00:28:53,000
sphere, the heaven
that holds all the others.
342
00:28:54,320 -->
00:28:59,440
And running through it is a pale band of
light, the Milky Way.
343
00:29:00,819 -->
00:29:04,900
The grandfather tells him that's where the
souls of the just go.
344
00:29:05,919 -->
00:29:07,020
It's their home.
345
00:29:08,549 -->
00:29:11,600
They came from the stars, and they return
to them.
346
00:29:13,679 -->
00:29:14,960
Here's a detail I love.
347
00:29:15,934 -->
00:29:17,540
The spheres make music.
348
00:29:18,489 -->
00:29:24,580
As they turn, each one hums at its own
pitch, and the moon, being closest to
349
00:29:24,581 -->
00:29:30,120
Earth, makes the lowest note, while the
outermost heaven makes the highest.
350
00:29:31,485 -->
00:29:33,100
Scipio can hear it.
351
00:29:33,239 -->
00:29:36,080
So great and so sweet, he says.
352
00:29:37,269 -->
00:29:40,620
The grandfather explains why the rest of
us can't.
353
00:29:42,339 -->
00:29:45,380
Humans have been deafened by it since
birth.
354
00:29:46,599 -->
00:29:50,940
The way people who live beside a waterfall
stop hearing the roar.
355
00:29:53,444 -->
00:29:56,120
Now the part that stays with you.
356
00:29:56,760 -->
00:30:02,020
Standing up there, Scipio looks down at
Earth, and it's small.
357
00:30:03,099 -->
00:30:06,564
Then he looks for Rome,
the empire he's been
358
00:30:06,565 -->
00:30:10,500
raised to serve, and
it's a dot on a speck.
359
00:30:11,109 -->
00:30:12,600
He's almost embarrassed.
360
00:30:13,820 -->
00:30:16,713
All those wars, all
that glory fought over a
361
00:30:16,714 -->
00:30:19,680
patch of ground you could
cover with your thumb.
362
00:30:21,264 -->
00:30:23,980
That's the message of the dream,
really.
363
00:30:24,284 -->
00:30:27,800
The body is a posting, and home is up
there.
364
00:30:28,660 -->
00:30:30,440
Cicero says it plainly.
365
00:30:31,169 -->
00:30:32,400
You are not mortal.
366
00:30:32,924 -->
00:30:34,420
Only your body is.
367
00:30:36,209 -->
00:30:39,860
Now, a Roman dream could easily have been
lost.
368
00:30:41,044 -->
00:30:45,896
It survived because of a
man named Macrobius, who
369
00:30:45,897 -->
00:30:50,220
around the year 400 wrote
a long commentary on it.
370
00:30:52,549 -->
00:30:58,140
His book became one of the most copied
texts of the Middle Ages, and through it
371
00:30:58,141 -->
00:31:04,120
the starry home stayed alive in European
thought for a thousand years.
372
00:31:05,204 -->
00:31:09,000
Long after the empire Scipio saw as a dot
was gone.
373
00:31:10,914 -->
00:31:14,760
But Rome wasn't the only place with an
address for home.
374
00:31:16,625 -->
00:31:19,540
Other traditions put it somewhere else
entirely.
375
00:31:22,160 -->
00:31:25,857
They give this place a
different address, and the
376
00:31:25,907 -->
00:31:29,460
first one I want to look
at is surprisingly literal.
377
00:31:30,809 -->
00:31:32,220
It's a storehouse.
378
00:31:36,090 -->
00:31:41,810
In the Talmud, the collection of ancient
Jewish teachings, there's a belief that
379
00:31:41,859 -->
00:31:46,650
all souls were made at the very beginning,
all of them at once.
380
00:31:48,119 -->
00:31:54,630
And they're kept somewhere in heaven, in
a treasury, a sort of vault of the unborn.
381
00:31:56,609 -->
00:31:59,010
The name for it is the Guth.
382
00:32:00,730 -->
00:32:04,272
Souls wait in there,
each one set aside, until
383
00:32:04,273 -->
00:32:07,550
its turn comes to be
sent down into a body.
384
00:32:08,690 -->
00:32:11,876
One teaching even says
the Messiah can't arrive
385
00:32:11,877 -->
00:32:15,310
until the last soul in that
treasury has been born.
386
00:32:17,399 -->
00:32:21,310
Now go to West Africa, to the Yoruba
people of Nigeria.
387
00:32:22,279 -->
00:32:24,110
They call the other world Orun.
388
00:32:25,139 -->
00:32:31,210
It's the realm where a soul lives before
birth, and where it returns after death.
389
00:32:32,390 -->
00:32:35,907
Earth, in contrast,
has its own name, IA,
390
00:32:35,908 -->
00:32:39,010
and a Yoruba saying
calls it the marketplace.
391
00:32:39,754 -->
00:32:42,930
You go there to do your business,
and then you go home.
392
00:32:45,049 -->
00:32:46,390
Orun is home.
393
00:32:48,319 -->
00:32:54,490
In the Yoruba teaching, before a soul
comes to the marketplace, it kneels.
394
00:32:54,990 -->
00:33:00,450
It kneels before its maker, Olodumare,
and it picks its destiny.
395
00:33:01,530 -->
00:33:07,950
The word for that, Akunleyam, means
roughly what was chosen while kneeling.
396
00:33:10,249 -->
00:33:14,050
So the place you come from isn't just a
waiting area.
397
00:33:15,269 -->
00:33:18,548
It's where the most
important decision of
398
00:33:18,549 -->
00:33:22,010
your life gets made,
in a posture of humility.
399
00:33:22,874 -->
00:33:24,230
With the maker listening.
400
00:33:26,584 -->
00:33:31,170
Then there's a third version, from a young
American religion.
401
00:33:32,634 -->
00:33:35,670
The Latter-day Saints, often called
Mormons.
402
00:33:36,870 -->
00:33:42,330
Their teaching is that every human being
lived before birth as a spirit.
403
00:33:43,899 -->
00:33:49,090
In the presence of God, with nobody yet,
but with a mind and a personality.
404
00:33:51,039 -->
00:33:57,430
They knew each other there, they grew and
learned there, and Earth is the next stage.
405
00:33:58,490 -->
00:34:02,004
A stretch of time away
from home, where those
406
00:34:02,005 -->
00:34:05,630
spirits come to receive
a body and be tested.
407
00:34:09,470 -->
00:34:12,936
Three traditions, three
continents, no contact
408
00:34:12,937 -->
00:34:15,880
between them, and look
at the shape they share.
409
00:34:17,390 -->
00:34:19,699
In each one, you came from somewhere.
410
00:34:21,060 -->
00:34:26,659
It's a real place with a real population,
and the only thing that's new is the trip.
411
00:34:29,150 -->
00:34:34,699
We usually treat life as the main thing,
and whatever comes before as a blank.
412
00:34:36,549 -->
00:34:38,580
These accounts reverse it.
413
00:34:39,375 -->
00:34:43,960
The place before is the main thing,
the settled, familiar home.
414
00:34:45,314 -->
00:34:48,260
And Earth is the journey you took away
from it.
415
00:34:49,660 -->
00:34:52,543
So we've got a home
with an address, and a map
416
00:34:52,544 -->
00:34:55,590
that keeps changing
depending on who's drawing it.
417
00:34:57,180 -->
00:35:01,160
But now we run into the strangest problem
of the whole subject.
418
00:35:02,315 -->
00:35:06,720
And it's one that quietly hangs over
everything we've covered.
419
00:35:08,914 -->
00:35:12,480
Every one of these stories assumes things
happen in order.
420
00:35:13,840 -->
00:35:15,900
First this, then that.
421
00:35:17,680 -->
00:35:22,400
But what if, in that place, there is no
order at all?
422
00:35:24,015 -->
00:35:27,560
Now we hit the most confusing part,
time.
423
00:35:29,195 -->
00:35:34,300
And I want to say up front that the
sources genuinely disagree here,
424
00:35:34,950 -->
00:35:37,840
so I'm not going to pretend they line up
neatly.
425
00:35:39,815 -->
00:35:41,320
Start with Er.
426
00:35:42,390 -->
00:35:44,820
His afterlife is full of clocks.
427
00:35:46,040 -->
00:35:49,179
Seven days in the
meadow, four more days of
428
00:35:49,180 -->
00:35:52,780
walking, journeys that
last a thousand years.
429
00:35:54,124 -->
00:35:58,780
It's a place where things happen one after
another, just like here.
430
00:35:59,564 -->
00:36:04,120
So in the oldest account we have,
time goes right along with you.
431
00:36:06,190 -->
00:36:12,880
But Plotinus, writing about six hundred
years after Plato, says that can't be right.
432
00:36:14,380 -->
00:36:18,260
He had a very particular idea of what time
is.
433
00:36:18,960 -->
00:36:24,900
Time, he said, isn't a container sitting
out there that everything happens inside.
434
00:36:26,740 -->
00:36:32,080
It's the life of the soul itself,
as it moves from one activity to the next.
435
00:36:33,855 -->
00:36:36,380
Time is what that movement feels like.
436
00:36:38,320 -->
00:36:42,860
So where the soul comes to rest,
in the highest part of itself,
437
00:36:43,460 -->
00:36:45,340
time simply stops.
438
00:36:46,489 -->
00:36:51,320
Nothing happens in sequence there,
because there's nothing to move between.
439
00:36:52,354 -->
00:36:54,400
Everything is present at once.
440
00:36:56,770 -->
00:37:00,980
A 20th century voice says nearly the same
thing.
441
00:37:02,830 -->
00:37:09,080
In the Seth material, a set of books
channeled by a woman named Jane Roberts in
442
00:37:09,081 -->
00:37:15,640
the 1960s and 70s, Seth says all your
lives are happening at the same time.
443
00:37:16,980 -->
00:37:23,200
The line you seem to walk along,
birth, middle, death, then the next one,
444
00:37:23,834 -->
00:37:26,380
is just how it looks from inside a body.
445
00:37:27,800 -->
00:37:30,940
From outside it's all laid out together.
446
00:37:33,640 -->
00:37:37,713
And Dolores Cannon, the
hypnotherapist, reported
447
00:37:37,714 -->
00:37:40,860
the same kind of
thing from her clients.
448
00:37:42,210 -->
00:37:49,060
People under hypnosis described living
several lives at once, not one after the
449
00:37:49,061 -->
00:37:52,120
other, like windows open on the same
screen.
450
00:37:54,350 -->
00:37:57,140
Here's a small way to sense what that
might mean.
451
00:37:59,030 -->
00:38:04,140
People who've come back from a near-death
episode often say the life review took
452
00:38:04,141 -->
00:38:08,380
what felt like seconds, and yet it held
decades.
453
00:38:09,580 -->
00:38:13,878
Every scene, every
feeling, all of it, packed
454
00:38:13,879 -->
00:38:17,660
into a moment that was
somehow also enormous.
455
00:38:18,609 -->
00:38:21,980
Whatever that is, it isn't clock time.
456
00:38:23,875 -->
00:38:25,060
Now, here's the puzzle.
457
00:38:25,805 -->
00:38:28,620
Against all that, we have a real number.
458
00:38:30,860 -->
00:38:37,300
The researchers Ian Stevenson and Jim
Tucker spent decades collecting cases of
459
00:38:37,301 -->
00:38:43,660
children who say they remember a previous
life, and they could measure the gap
460
00:38:43,661 -->
00:38:48,080
between the earlier person's death and the
child's birth.
461
00:38:49,550 -->
00:38:54,820
Across the cases, the average comes out to
about 16 months.
462
00:38:56,490 -->
00:39:01,400
That's a clock time figure, checked
against dates and records.
463
00:39:03,080 -->
00:39:04,400
So which is it?
464
00:39:04,555 -->
00:39:07,120
16 months or no time at all?
465
00:39:09,350 -->
00:39:11,560
One way to hold both is this.
466
00:39:12,955 -->
00:39:15,300
The soul has no clock over there.
467
00:39:16,580 -->
00:39:19,758
16 months is simply how
long the wait looks from
468
00:39:19,759 -->
00:39:23,140
down here, because we're
the ones with calendars.
469
00:39:24,420 -->
00:39:29,460
From our side, a year and a bit passes
between a death and a birth.
470
00:39:30,580 -->
00:39:34,640
From the other side, there may be no
between to measure.
471
00:39:35,560 -->
00:39:38,580
The number belongs to us, not to them.
472
00:39:40,180 -->
00:39:41,920
You've had something like it.
473
00:39:42,820 -->
00:39:48,200
You nap for 10 minutes on the couch,
and in that time you dream a whole day.
474
00:39:49,400 -->
00:39:55,100
You go to a different city, you have a
long conversation, you get lost,
475
00:39:55,360 -->
00:39:56,440
you find your way.
476
00:39:57,284 -->
00:40:01,920
And when you wake up, the clock says
barely, any time has gone by.
477
00:40:02,674 -->
00:40:04,120
Both things are true.
478
00:40:05,195 -->
00:40:09,280
The dream lasted hours, and the sleep
lasted minutes.
479
00:40:11,045 -->
00:40:12,460
And neither is wrong.
480
00:40:14,540 -->
00:40:21,000
All those stages we've walked through,
the arrival, the review, the choosing,
481
00:40:23,170 -->
00:40:24,620
they sound like a schedule.
482
00:40:25,540 -->
00:40:31,500
They may be better understood as layers,
all there at once, that we can only
483
00:40:31,501 -->
00:40:35,483
describe one after another,
because that's the only way
484
00:40:35,484 -->
00:40:40,120
language, and a mind in a
body, knows how to tell it.
485
00:40:42,850 -->
00:40:46,020
Which leads to the next question,
and it's a bigger one.
486
00:40:46,840 -->
00:40:51,160
If part of you sits outside of time,
who exactly is that?
487
00:40:52,210 -->
00:40:54,080
Who are you in that place?
488
00:40:56,495 -->
00:40:58,720
Plotinus says part of you never left.
489
00:41:01,260 -->
00:41:03,040
His idea goes like this.
490
00:41:04,009 -->
00:41:08,840
When the soul comes down into a body,
it doesn't come down all the way.
491
00:41:09,920 -->
00:41:14,340
The highest part of it stays up,
in what he calls the intellect.
492
00:41:15,870 -->
00:41:17,820
The realm of pure thinking.
493
00:41:19,050 -->
00:41:22,414
And it keeps on
contemplating, while the lower
494
00:41:22,415 -->
00:41:25,300
gets on with the
business of being alive.
495
00:41:26,950 -->
00:41:31,200
You don't notice it, because your
attention is down here.
496
00:41:32,634 -->
00:41:35,720
With the hunger, and the bills,
and the traffic.
497
00:41:37,330 -->
00:41:41,452
But it's there, at the very
centre of you, and it has
498
00:41:41,453 -->
00:41:45,400
never been out of that other
place for a single second.
499
00:41:47,590 -->
00:41:50,000
So picture a whole life going by.
500
00:41:50,865 -->
00:41:57,320
A person is born, goes to school,
falls in love, gets hurt, grows old.
501
00:41:58,555 -->
00:42:03,160
And all that time, one part of them stays
untouched above it all.
502
00:42:04,084 -->
00:42:08,060
Watching, the way you'd watch a game you
aren't playing in.
503
00:42:08,730 -->
00:42:11,300
It doesn't get dragged around by the fear.
504
00:42:11,924 -->
00:42:13,700
It doesn't get its heart broken.
505
00:42:14,460 -->
00:42:18,120
It's simply there, calm, holding the view.
506
00:42:20,410 -->
00:42:25,300
A completely different tradition arrives
at nearly the same place on its own.
507
00:42:27,260 -->
00:42:33,000
Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical teaching,
describes five levels of the soul,
508
00:42:34,720 -->
00:42:36,960
running from the lowest to the highest.
509
00:42:37,800 -->
00:42:42,920
And the top levels, it says, don't enter
the body at all.
510
00:42:44,350 -->
00:42:49,560
They stay rooted above, same shape,
reached by a totally different road.
511
00:42:50,720 -->
00:42:54,812
Inside a religion that
was otherwise very much
512
00:42:54,813 -->
00:42:58,540
about a hierarchy, and a
God who sends you down.
513
00:43:00,880 -->
00:43:07,280
Then there's Michael Newton, whose
clients, remember, were ordinary people
514
00:43:07,281 -->
00:43:12,040
under hypnosis, mostly with no background
in any of this.
515
00:43:13,300 -->
00:43:19,320
They kept reporting that a soul brings
only a portion of its energy into a body.
516
00:43:21,100 -->
00:43:26,340
The rest stays behind in the spirit world,
going about its own business.
517
00:43:27,455 -->
00:43:30,160
While one piece lives out the life on
earth.
518
00:43:31,780 -->
00:43:37,620
Some of them said it felt strange to go
back and find that, part of themselves,
519
00:43:37,845 -->
00:43:40,540
still sitting there, waiting.
520
00:43:44,510 -->
00:43:47,300
Think about what that does to the idea of
death.
521
00:43:48,810 -->
00:43:53,232
We usually treat dying as the
soul leaving the body, as though
522
00:43:53,233 -->
00:43:57,200
it had been fully poured in
and now has to be poured out.
523
00:43:58,660 -->
00:44:04,880
But if the highest part never went in,
then death isn't an exit for all of you.
524
00:44:05,780 -->
00:44:09,650
It's the lower part
setting down its work and
525
00:44:09,651 -->
00:44:12,760
rejoining what was
never really separated.
526
00:44:14,374 -->
00:44:16,220
Plotinus put it this way.
527
00:44:17,400 -->
00:44:22,800
The soul's higher nature was never really
born into the body in the first place.
528
00:44:23,800 -->
00:44:26,700
You can't lose what was never fully here.
529
00:44:29,120 -->
00:44:33,280
If that's even partly right, it raises a
natural question.
530
00:44:35,550 -->
00:44:40,580
If a piece of you stays above,
is there someone up there who looks after
531
00:44:40,680 -->
00:44:42,240
the piece that came down?
532
00:44:44,765 -->
00:44:47,900
Now let's talk about the guide who stays
with you.
533
00:44:49,680 -->
00:44:55,400
The oldest version comes from Plato,
and it sits right at the end of Er's story.
534
00:44:56,420 -->
00:45:02,980
After the souls have chosen their lives,
each one is handed a guardian spirit,
535
00:45:03,130 -->
00:45:07,600
a diamond to watch over that life and see
the choice through.
536
00:45:08,820 -->
00:45:15,460
The souls get it at the spindle of
necessity, just before they cross over to
537
00:45:15,560 -->
00:45:16,560
be born.
538
00:45:16,920 -->
00:45:23,080
So before you ever draw a breath,
somebody has been assigned to you.
539
00:45:24,460 -->
00:45:25,860
But who is that somebody?
540
00:45:27,794 -->
00:45:30,240
Plotinus had a surprising answer.
541
00:45:31,190 -->
00:45:34,765
He wrote a whole essay
on it, and his claim is
542
00:45:34,766 -->
00:45:38,580
that the daemon isn't
a separate being at all.
543
00:45:39,290 -->
00:45:41,740
It's the next level up of your own soul.
544
00:45:43,070 -->
00:45:46,176
Whatever part of you
you're living from right
545
00:45:46,177 -->
00:45:49,100
now, the guide is the
part just above that.
546
00:45:50,100 -->
00:45:54,820
It's you, one floor higher, with a better
view of the street.
547
00:45:56,820 -->
00:46:02,840
The Yoruba say something very close,
and they say it through a person's head.
548
00:46:04,060 -->
00:46:08,200
Remember Ajala, the potter in heaven who
makes heads.
549
00:46:09,600 -->
00:46:13,228
The one you choose
from his house is your Ori,
550
00:46:13,229 -->
00:46:16,600
your inner head, and
it holds your destiny.
551
00:46:19,545 -->
00:46:27,420
A Yoruba saying, holds that no Orissa,
none of the gods, can bless a person
552
00:46:27,421 -->
00:46:29,820
without the consent of that person's own
Ori.
553
00:46:33,400 -->
00:46:35,030
Think about the weight of that.
554
00:46:35,510 -->
00:46:40,950
Here's a whole crowded heaven of powerful
beings, and the final vote on your life
555
00:46:40,951 -->
00:46:43,350
belongs to the self you chose while
kneeling.
556
00:46:45,790 -->
00:46:51,630
So in both traditions, the guide isn't an
employee sent from outside.
557
00:46:52,380 -->
00:46:57,710
It's your own deeper self, standing
slightly ahead of you on the road.
558
00:47:00,075 -->
00:47:03,550
Now what would that look like in an
ordinary life?
559
00:47:05,150 -->
00:47:07,310
Say someone's going through a rough year.
560
00:47:08,890 -->
00:47:16,170
A job collapses, a relationship ends,
nothing is working, and one evening
561
00:47:16,171 -->
00:47:19,390
they're about to sign on to something that
looks like a rescue.
562
00:47:20,910 -->
00:47:27,990
A quick deal with an old acquaintance,
easy money, everything on paper says yes.
563
00:47:29,820 -->
00:47:33,490
But there's a small, quiet no somewhere in
the chest.
564
00:47:35,190 -->
00:47:37,550
It doesn't argue and it doesn't explain.
565
00:47:38,680 -->
00:47:42,470
It just sits there, steady, and they don't
sign.
566
00:47:43,980 -->
00:47:47,121
Two years later, they
find out what that deal
567
00:47:47,122 -->
00:47:50,410
turned into, and they
can't say how they knew.
568
00:47:52,985 -->
00:47:56,930
That's the kind of thing these traditions
would call the guide at work.
569
00:47:58,000 -->
00:47:59,010
It doesn't shout.
570
00:48:00,020 -->
00:48:04,610
It tends to speak in the smallest voice in
the room.
571
00:48:06,095 -->
00:48:12,050
And you probably know it from your own
life, your driving somewhere, and at an
572
00:48:12,200 -->
00:48:16,930
intersection you suddenly feel you
shouldn't take the usual road.
573
00:48:18,914 -->
00:48:22,690
No reason, you just turn the wheel the
other way.
574
00:48:23,710 -->
00:48:30,810
Later you hear there was an accident on
that stretch, or maybe you never hear
575
00:48:30,811 -->
00:48:38,570
anything at all, but you remember the pull
and how it came before any thinking did.
576
00:48:40,850 -->
00:48:42,890
This idea changes the question.
577
00:48:45,230 -->
00:48:49,211
We usually ask whether we
have guides, as though they were
578
00:48:49,212 -->
00:48:52,390
visitors we might or might
not be lucky enough to get.
579
00:48:56,000 -->
00:48:59,919
The older answer is that you
were never without one, because
580
00:48:59,920 -->
00:49:03,450
the guide is built into the
structure of who you are.
581
00:49:04,680 -->
00:49:08,410
The only real question is whether you're
listening.
582
00:49:10,900 -->
00:49:15,970
Which sets up a bigger puzzle,
because not every tradition agrees that
583
00:49:16,120 -->
00:49:17,710
this guide is equal to you.
584
00:49:18,870 -->
00:49:22,450
Some say it's above you, and you're the
student.
585
00:49:24,690 -->
00:49:29,876
Others say you're already the
master, and that disagreement
586
00:49:29,877 -->
00:49:33,710
turns out to run much
deeper than it first looks.
587
00:49:35,854 -->
00:49:38,910
Here the traditions split on a big
question.
588
00:49:39,845 -->
00:49:43,190
It sounds simple, but a lot hangs on it.
589
00:49:43,830 -->
00:49:47,770
When you arrive in that place,
are you a child or a master?
590
00:49:50,305 -->
00:49:52,650
The first answer says child.
591
00:49:53,530 -->
00:49:56,210
You're a young soul in a very large
school.
592
00:49:57,160 -->
00:50:00,890
There are levels, and you're near the
bottom of them.
593
00:50:01,990 -->
00:50:08,550
Others are further along, and they teach
you, advise you, and sometimes correct you.
594
00:50:11,090 -->
00:50:16,150
Michael Newton's clients described soul
energy in colours, white for the
595
00:50:16,151 -->
00:50:23,790
beginners, then yellow, and on up through
blue and purple for the most advanced.
596
00:50:25,890 -->
00:50:28,626
You grow, you graduate,
and one day you might
597
00:50:28,627 -->
00:50:31,430
be the ones standing
at the front of the room.
598
00:50:33,650 -->
00:50:39,610
Plenty of the near-death accounts have
this flavour too, where a being of light
599
00:50:39,611 -->
00:50:44,190
looks at the person and calls them,
my child.
600
00:50:45,455 -->
00:50:50,850
That's a loving thing to say, but notice
what it is.
601
00:50:56,350 -->
00:50:58,570
The second answer says master.
602
00:50:59,094 -->
00:51:00,530
You're already whole.
603
00:51:02,170 -->
00:51:05,403
You were never a
beginner, and nothing has to
604
00:51:05,404 -->
00:51:08,510
be earned, because
there's no ladder to climb.
605
00:51:10,470 -->
00:51:16,210
The life you're in is a part you're
playing, and the guides are simply friends
606
00:51:16,660 -->
00:51:19,250
who happen to have a better view of the
road.
607
00:51:20,640 -->
00:51:24,485
Plotinus sits on this side,
and so does the Tibetan
608
00:51:24,486 -->
00:51:28,870
teaching that every judge and
every deity is your own mind.
609
00:51:29,829 -->
00:51:31,710
Nobody outranks you.
610
00:51:32,350 -->
00:51:33,350
You forgot.
611
00:51:33,700 -->
00:51:34,700
That's all.
612
00:51:37,490 -->
00:51:42,220
So one picture is a school, and the other
is a stage.
613
00:51:43,800 -->
00:51:48,120
And I think the sources aren't really
arguing about what's out there.
614
00:51:48,800 -->
00:51:52,120
They're arguing about who you are when you
get there.
615
00:51:54,060 -->
00:51:57,798
Now here's where the
Gnostics come in, because their
616
00:51:57,848 -->
00:52:01,440
trap is what this divide
looks like when it goes wrong.
617
00:52:03,365 -->
00:52:05,520
Remember the rulers at the gates.
618
00:52:06,770 -->
00:52:12,360
In their telling, the soul that doesn't
know what it is gets held.
619
00:52:13,900 -->
00:52:20,320
The lower powers can't touch a being that
knows itself, but they can keep one that
620
00:52:20,470 -->
00:52:21,470
has forgotten.
621
00:52:22,350 -->
00:52:24,200
So the danger isn't a monster.
622
00:52:25,434 -->
00:52:28,300
The danger is a case of mistaken identity.
623
00:52:30,410 -->
00:52:32,880
A soul arrives, a little dazed.
624
00:52:33,549 -->
00:52:35,760
It isn't thinking of itself as vast.
625
00:52:36,384 -->
00:52:40,420
It's thinking of itself as the small
person it just was.
626
00:52:41,400 -->
00:52:47,120
With that name, those worries,
that one face, and in the confusion,
627
00:52:47,604 -->
00:52:51,560
a voice appears and tells it where to go
and what to do.
628
00:52:52,420 -->
00:52:54,320
It sounds sure of itself.
629
00:52:54,890 -->
00:52:56,140
It sounds helpful.
630
00:52:58,300 -->
00:53:03,482
Because the soul sees itself
as someone small who needs
631
00:53:03,483 -->
00:53:07,580
directions, it follows the
first voice that offers them.
632
00:53:08,949 -->
00:53:11,040
Nobody forced it.
633
00:53:11,520 -->
00:53:14,924
It just took the first
hand that was held out,
634
00:53:14,925 -->
00:53:18,360
and the hand led
somewhere it never chose.
635
00:53:20,280 -->
00:53:21,660
That's the whole logic of
636
00:53:28,430 -->
00:53:32,919
The higher being who knows
better can be a gentle parent or
637
00:53:32,920 -->
00:53:37,260
a handler, and from the
child's seat you can't tell which.
638
00:53:39,055 -->
00:53:43,020
The fear only makes sense if you're small
enough to be fooled.
639
00:53:45,440 -->
00:53:51,140
A being who knows it's the author of its
own story has nobody above it to be
640
00:53:51,290 -->
00:53:52,290
tricked by.
641
00:53:54,220 -->
00:53:56,960
That's why this question matters so much.
642
00:53:58,960 -->
00:54:03,340
Who you think you are on arrival doesn't
just colour your mood.
643
00:54:04,009 -->
00:54:08,040
It decides what you see and who gets to
handle you.
644
00:54:10,250 -->
00:54:15,830
And if that's true at the doorway,
it's even truer at the next stage,
645
00:54:16,674 -->
00:54:18,170
where you're offered a choice.
646
00:54:19,860 -->
00:54:25,450
Because a choice is only worth anything to
the person who knows they're allowed to
647
00:54:25,600 -->
00:54:26,600
make it.
648
00:54:29,180 -->
00:54:32,100
Now let's talk about whether you choose
your next life.
649
00:54:33,120 -->
00:54:37,155
And the oldest answer
we have is that you do,
650
00:54:37,156 -->
00:54:40,820
and that it goes about
as well as you'd expect.
651
00:54:42,600 -->
00:54:45,180
Back to __________.
652
00:54:45,615 -->
00:54:49,054
After the meadow and the
long walk to the spindle of
653
00:54:49,055 -->
00:54:53,580
necessity, the souls are lined
up and handed lottery tokens.
654
00:54:54,930 -->
00:54:57,320
The tokens don't decide what you get.
655
00:54:58,570 -->
00:55:00,220
They only decide your turn.
656
00:55:01,280 -->
00:55:05,064
Whoever draws number
one steps forward first,
657
00:55:05,065 -->
00:55:08,360
number two goes next,
and so on down the line.
658
00:55:10,820 -->
00:55:14,420
Then the lives are laid out on the ground
in front of them.
659
00:55:15,264 -->
00:55:19,960
Plato calls them patterns of lives,
and the range is huge.
660
00:55:21,340 -->
00:55:27,920
There are lives of animals, lives of
tyrants, lives of famous men, lives of
661
00:55:27,921 -->
00:55:34,900
quiet ordinary people, rich lives and poor
ones, healthy ones and sickly ones.
662
00:55:37,040 -->
00:55:41,112
And there are more patterns
than there are souls, so
663
00:55:41,113 -->
00:55:44,700
even the last one in line
can find something decent.
664
00:55:46,180 -->
00:55:52,220
The spokesman tells them so, and adds the
line that sums up the whole scene.
665
00:55:53,340 -->
00:56:00,040
The responsibility belongs to the one who
chooses, and the god is not to blame.
666
00:56:01,845 -->
00:56:03,480
So who goes first?
667
00:56:04,660 -->
00:56:08,320
A man who has just come down from a
thousand years in the sky.
668
00:56:10,100 -->
00:56:13,667
Remember, the souls who
went up were rewarded,
669
00:56:13,668 -->
00:56:16,440
and this one had it
easy the whole way.
670
00:56:18,070 -->
00:56:24,740
He walks along the rows, spots the biggest
life on the ground, a great tyrant's life,
671
00:56:24,999 -->
00:56:29,740
power and wealth, and a palace,
and he grabs it on the spot.
672
00:56:31,070 -->
00:56:34,700
He doesn't hesitate, and he doesn't read
any further.
673
00:56:36,920 -->
00:56:38,320
Then he looks closer.
674
00:56:39,320 -->
00:56:43,558
Tucked inside that pattern,
among other horrors, is
675
00:56:43,559 -->
00:56:46,800
the fact that he'll end up
eating his own children.
676
00:56:48,020 -->
00:56:54,020
He starts to wail, and beats his chest,
and blames the luck of the draw,
677
00:56:54,845 -->
00:56:59,440
blames the gods, blames everyone but the
person who picked.
678
00:57:02,335 -->
00:57:06,200
And Plato's explanation is the part worth
sitting with.
679
00:57:07,850 -->
00:57:09,460
This soul wasn't wicked.
680
00:57:11,040 -->
00:57:16,220
It had lived well in its last life,
but out of habit, not understanding.
681
00:57:17,420 -->
00:57:20,354
Its comfortable thousand
years in the sky never
682
00:57:20,355 -->
00:57:23,140
taught it to look past
the surface of anything.
683
00:57:24,760 -->
00:57:30,200
So when it finally faced a real choice,
it had no practice at choosing.
684
00:57:32,840 -->
00:57:35,580
Compare the ones who came up from
underground.
685
00:57:37,900 -->
00:57:43,720
They'd suffered, and they'd cried through
that meadow, and now they stood in front
686
00:57:43,920 -->
00:57:46,620
of the same rows, with their eyes open.
687
00:57:48,045 -->
00:57:50,480
They read every pattern slowly.
688
00:57:51,240 -->
00:57:57,580
They'd learned what a bad life costs,
so they weren't dazzled by the shiny ones.
689
00:57:59,840 -->
00:58:04,380
That's why Ur says, fortunes tend to flip
between lives.
690
00:58:05,580 -->
00:58:10,900
The ones who had it easy, often choose
badly, and the ones who had it hard,
691
00:58:11,089 -->
00:58:12,140
often choose well.
692
00:58:14,410 -->
00:58:19,023
That first soul is just
that story at a much larger
693
00:58:19,024 -->
00:58:22,960
scale, with a life on the
table in place of a dinner.
694
00:58:25,200 -->
00:58:32,300
And if that's how the Greek tradition
tells it, the interesting question is how
695
00:58:32,301 -->
00:58:38,720
other cultures handle the same scene,
because West Africa has its own version,
696
00:58:39,400 -->
00:58:41,220
and it comes with a potter.
697
00:58:44,070 -->
00:58:47,260
Let's look at how the Yoruba tell this
story.
698
00:58:48,865 -->
00:58:54,480
And in their version, nobody's standing in
a field reading patterns off the ground.
699
00:58:56,569 -->
00:59:00,920
The choosing happens at a house,
and the house belongs to a potter.
700
00:59:02,700 -->
00:59:07,640
His name is Ajala, and his job in heaven
is making heads.
701
00:59:08,785 -->
00:59:13,740
Every soul that's about to be born goes to
his house to pick one.
702
00:59:15,280 -->
00:59:21,040
And remember, in Yoruba thought, the head
isn't just the thing on top of your neck.
703
00:59:22,025 -->
00:59:26,740
It's your ori, your inner self,
and it carries your destiny.
704
00:59:27,745 -->
00:59:32,340
So picking a head is picking the shape
your whole life will take.
705
00:59:34,044 -->
00:59:37,000
Now here's the catch, and it's a good one.
706
00:59:37,974 -->
00:59:39,780
Ajala is careless.
707
00:59:40,960 -->
00:59:43,640
He's forever distracted, forever in debt.
708
00:59:44,090 -->
00:59:50,920
And some of the heads he fires come out
flawed, cracked, or underbaked,
709
00:59:51,024 -->
00:59:53,800
or warped in some way you can't see.
710
00:59:54,714 -->
00:59:57,940
And the floor isn't always visible from
the outside.
711
00:59:58,634 -->
01:00:03,360
A head can look perfect on the shelf and
still be bad clay inside.
712
01:00:06,130 -->
01:00:10,332
That sets up the old story
the diviners tell, about
713
01:00:10,333 -->
01:00:14,780
three friends who go to
Ajala's house together to choose.
714
01:00:17,180 -->
01:00:19,220
The first one walks in slowly.
715
01:00:20,310 -->
01:00:25,360
He looks at the heads one by one,
turns them over, asks questions,
716
01:00:26,060 -->
01:00:29,309
and before he decides,
he stops to consult
717
01:00:29,310 -->
01:00:33,240
the oracle and make
the offerings it asks for.
718
01:00:35,330 -->
01:00:37,600
The second one is in a hurry.
719
01:00:39,580 -->
01:00:41,842
He's already thinking
about the road back,
720
01:00:41,843 -->
01:00:44,720
and he grabs the first
head that looks good.
721
01:00:48,090 -->
01:00:54,470
And the third one picks the most beautiful
head in the room, a head that gleams,
722
01:00:54,850 -->
01:00:58,850
and he doesn't ask a single question about
what's inside it.
723
01:01:00,230 -->
01:01:07,130
In some tellings, two of them end up with
poor heads, one by haste and one by vanity.
724
01:01:07,950 -->
01:01:11,574
In others, it just
happens by accident, a
725
01:01:11,575 -->
01:01:15,290
cracked head that no
one noticed in the rush.
726
01:01:18,520 -->
01:01:19,910
The point isn't subtle.
727
01:01:20,870 -->
01:01:25,408
The head you pick shapes
the life you get, and the care
728
01:01:25,409 -->
01:01:29,330
you take at that moment is
the only protection you have.
729
01:01:31,550 -->
01:01:35,370
Now picture two friends who grew up side
by side.
730
01:01:35,850 -->
01:01:41,370
Same town, same school, same age,
same family friends.
731
01:01:42,874 -->
01:01:47,250
One of them sails through life,
and the other keeps hitting a wall,
732
01:01:47,510 -->
01:01:53,430
job after job, year after year, nothing
sticking, no matter how hard he works.
733
01:01:54,530 -->
01:01:57,510
People shake their heads and call it bad
luck.
734
01:01:59,650 -->
01:02:02,710
The Yoruba story offers another reading.
735
01:02:03,595 -->
01:02:07,690
It says, look further back than the town
and the school.
736
01:02:09,314 -->
01:02:14,190
It started at the potter's house in a
hurried moment nobody remembers.
737
01:02:16,810 -->
01:02:23,910
Now the accounts that show the choosing in
detail, and the most detailed map of all
738
01:02:23,911 -->
01:02:30,310
comes from Tibet, in the Bardo Thodol,
the text that's read aloud to the dead.
739
01:02:32,380 -->
01:02:38,250
By the last stage of the journey,
the dead person is drifting, restless,
740
01:02:39,220 -->
01:02:44,330
a mental body that can pass through walls
and go anywhere in an instant.
741
01:02:45,690 -->
01:02:47,850
And then the visions begin to change.
742
01:02:48,970 -->
01:02:52,881
The person starts to
see couples, men and
743
01:02:52,956 -->
01:02:56,330
women together in the
act of making a child.
744
01:02:58,705 -->
01:03:00,650
Those are the future parents.
745
01:03:02,170 -->
01:03:07,250
And the text describes exactly what
happens inside you as you watch.
746
01:03:08,230 -->
01:03:12,770
You feel drawn toward one of them and
pushed away from the other.
747
01:03:13,950 -->
01:03:21,190
That attraction and that aversion are hooks
and they're what pull a soul toward a womb.
748
01:03:23,390 -->
01:03:25,110
Here's the strange part.
749
01:03:26,610 -->
01:03:29,788
The teaching doesn't
tell you to dive in, it
750
01:03:29,789 -->
01:03:33,030
first teaches you how
to close the womb door.
751
01:03:34,370 -->
01:03:40,450
You're supposed to recognize that these
visions are projections, that the pull you
752
01:03:40,451 -->
01:03:44,890
feel is only your own habit and to refuse
it.
753
01:03:46,890 -->
01:03:52,190
If you can't manage that, the text
switches to a second set of instructions
754
01:03:52,940 -->
01:03:54,070
and they're practical.
755
01:03:57,095 -->
01:04:00,210
Look at the signs, turn away from the
lower realms.
756
01:04:02,055 -->
01:04:06,750
Choose a good human birth in a place where
you'll be able to practice.
757
01:04:08,770 -->
01:04:10,830
So picture a soul in that state.
758
01:04:11,970 -->
01:04:16,689
It sees a couple and
something in it leans forward,
759
01:04:16,690 -->
01:04:20,010
warm and eager, like a
moth toward a window.
760
01:04:20,910 -->
01:04:25,410
The instruction is to stop right there and
ask what exactly is doing the leaning.
761
01:04:26,930 -->
01:04:30,010
Is that a choice or is it a reflex?
762
01:04:32,170 -->
01:04:40,170
Only after you've asked, do you look at
the parents, the house, the country and
763
01:04:40,171 -->
01:04:43,630
decide whether this is a door worth going
through.
764
01:04:47,380 -->
01:04:52,350
Michael Newton's clients describe something
that looks very different on the surface.
765
01:04:54,700 -->
01:04:59,087
They talk about a room they
call the ring of destiny, where
766
01:04:59,088 -->
01:05:02,950
souls sit and watch possible
lives play out on screens.
767
01:05:04,770 -->
01:05:10,690
Several lives side by side, each with its
own body, family and set of challenges.
768
01:05:12,595 -->
01:05:15,470
And here's the detail I find most
interesting.
769
01:05:17,090 -->
01:05:21,430
The soul can step into a scene to try it
out before it commits.
770
01:05:22,590 -->
01:05:29,530
It can walk around in that life for a moment,
feel what it's like and step back out.
771
01:05:33,400 -->
01:05:39,280
It's like watching trailers before you
pick a movie, except you can walk into the
772
01:05:39,281 -->
01:05:42,720
trailer and stand inside the film for a
minute.
773
01:05:44,394 -->
01:05:47,780
And one of Newton's clients gave a picture
that sticks.
774
01:05:49,350 -->
01:05:55,780
He compared the whole place to a video
store, shelves and shelves of lives.
775
01:05:56,560 -->
01:06:03,840
And the soul walks the aisles, picking up
boxes, reading the back, putting them down.
776
01:06:04,995 -->
01:06:06,840
Some people grab the blockbuster.
777
01:06:08,480 -->
01:06:13,178
Others, like Odysseus in
Ur's story, walk right past
778
01:06:13,179 -->
01:06:17,220
the loud covers and pick
the quiet one nobody wanted.
779
01:06:18,500 -->
01:06:22,900
The life of an ordinary private man,
tucked in a corner.
780
01:06:23,760 -->
01:06:27,160
He says he'd have chosen it even if he'd
gone first.
781
01:06:29,800 -->
01:06:33,605
Two accounts, almost
15 centuries apart, from
782
01:06:33,606 -->
01:06:37,020
cultures with nothing
to do with each other.
783
01:06:38,424 -->
01:06:42,060
One says the pull is a trap to be
examined.
784
01:06:43,200 -->
01:06:46,960
The other says the options are a menu to
be browsed.
785
01:06:47,310 -->
01:06:49,440
But both agree on the same thing.
786
01:06:52,884 -->
01:06:56,660
Before you go down, somebody shows you the
possibilities.
787
01:06:57,720 -->
01:07:01,180
And there's a moment when you stand at the
door and decide.
788
01:07:03,234 -->
01:07:06,500
Next, a study that tried to count the
answers.
789
01:07:07,820 -->
01:07:12,046
In 1979, a clinical
psychologist named Helen
790
01:07:12,047 -->
01:07:16,380
Wambach published a
book called Life Before Life.
791
01:07:17,970 -->
01:07:23,800
Before her, most of this material was one
dramatic story at a time.
792
01:07:25,339 -->
01:07:27,460
Wambach did something different.
793
01:07:29,110 -->
01:07:36,460
She sat 750 people down under hypnosis,
took them back to the time before their
794
01:07:36,461 -->
01:07:41,420
birth, and asked every one of them the
same set of questions.
795
01:07:43,190 -->
01:07:44,860
Did you choose to be born?
796
01:07:45,515 -->
01:07:47,740
Did you know who your mother would be?
797
01:07:49,639 -->
01:07:52,220
When did you actually enter the baby?
798
01:07:53,990 -->
01:07:55,700
Her thinking was simple.
799
01:07:57,560 -->
01:08:01,267
If these were just
individual daydreams, the
800
01:08:01,268 -->
01:08:04,680
answers should scatter
all over the place.
801
01:08:05,520 -->
01:08:09,680
If something real was underneath,
patterns should show up.
802
01:08:11,749 -->
01:08:12,860
And patterns did.
803
01:08:14,214 -->
01:08:17,439
About 81% said they chose to be born.
804
01:08:17,885 -->
01:08:19,859
Not assigned, not sent.
805
01:08:20,345 -->
01:08:21,420
They chose this.
806
01:08:22,100 -->
01:08:24,100
Then came an unexpected number.
807
01:08:25,700 -->
01:08:29,863
About 89% said they
didn't join the fetus
808
01:08:29,864 -->
01:08:33,979
until the sixth month
of pregnancy or later.
809
01:08:34,830 -->
01:08:40,286
Before that, they described
hovering nearby, drifting in
810
01:08:40,287 -->
01:08:44,180
and out, picking up on the
mother's moods from a distance.
811
01:08:45,750 -->
01:08:52,460
A third said they didn't fully arrive until
just before or during the birth itself.
812
01:08:55,270 -->
01:09:00,000
Now here's the detail that makes this more
interesting than a simple yes.
813
01:09:01,675 -->
01:09:03,600
Many of them weren't excited.
814
01:09:05,865 -->
01:09:08,842
When Wambach asked
how they felt about coming,
815
01:09:08,843 -->
01:09:11,500
a lot of the answers
sounded reluctant.
816
01:09:15,500 -->
01:09:21,420
Earthly life looked hard from over there,
and the commonly quoted figure is that
817
01:09:21,421 -->
01:09:25,520
only about a quarter were actually looking
forward to it.
818
01:09:26,510 -->
01:09:30,994
So a big majority did say
yes, but most of them said
819
01:09:30,995 -->
01:09:35,040
it the way you'd say yes
to a task you didn't love.
820
01:09:38,710 -->
01:09:40,529
You know that kind of yes.
821
01:09:41,795 -->
01:09:45,870
Think of the volunteer who signs up for
something because it needs doing,
822
01:09:46,710 -->
01:09:52,350
and then, once the date gets close,
wonders what exactly they were thinking.
823
01:09:54,970 -->
01:09:58,351
Picture one of her
subjects lying on a floor
824
01:09:58,352 -->
01:10:01,910
in a group session
describing what they see.
825
01:10:02,710 -->
01:10:09,490
They're looking at a small body, a cramped,
heavy, slow body, and they feel dread.
826
01:10:10,810 -->
01:10:14,230
The sense of going from wide open to
tightly packed.
827
01:10:15,550 -->
01:10:21,250
Heavy limbs, a narrow field of view,
a long list of things that are going to
828
01:10:22,500 -->
01:10:24,670
hurt, and still they say it quietly.
829
01:10:26,090 -->
01:10:27,350
I agreed to this.
830
01:10:27,554 -->
01:10:28,554
I know why.
831
01:10:28,890 -->
01:10:30,690
They weren't tricked into it.
832
01:10:31,410 -->
01:10:34,910
They looked straight at it and went ahead
anyway.
833
01:10:37,955 -->
01:10:40,790
It's the feeling of the night before a big
new job.
834
01:10:42,320 -->
01:10:43,810
You asked for the promotion.
835
01:10:46,480 -->
01:10:47,850
You worked for it.
836
01:10:48,210 -->
01:10:49,770
You're proud of it.
837
01:10:50,090 -->
01:10:55,850
And at ten o'clock, you're lying awake
with your stomach in a knot, half thrilled
838
01:10:55,851 -->
01:11:01,430
and half sick, knowing you'd say yes again
and wishing you could skip tomorrow.
839
01:11:05,650 -->
01:11:09,570
Now, there's a fair caution to add here.
840
01:11:10,510 -->
01:11:15,970
Wambach's subjects were mostly
middle-class Americans in group hypnosis,
841
01:11:16,725 -->
01:11:19,949
and critics point out
that suggestion and
842
01:11:19,950 -->
01:11:23,010
shared expectations
could shape the answers.
843
01:11:23,950 -->
01:11:28,554
Her own defence was how
consistent the replies were
844
01:11:28,555 -->
01:11:32,430
across hundreds of people
who couldn't hear each other.
845
01:11:34,030 -->
01:11:37,850
But notice what her numbers do on their
own terms.
846
01:11:39,110 -->
01:11:47,110
They describe a choice, but a reluctant
one made with eyes open, which raises a
847
01:11:47,111 -->
01:11:50,390
question this whole chapter has been
circling.
848
01:11:52,690 -->
01:11:54,950
Is that reluctance a sign of freedom?
849
01:11:55,400 -->
01:11:58,610
Or a sign that the choice wasn't entirely
ours?
850
01:11:59,430 -->
01:12:04,570
Because several traditions say flatly that
there was no choice at all.
851
01:12:06,830 -->
01:12:14,610
Now to the other side, where the answer is
no choice, and the clearest version comes
852
01:12:14,685 -->
01:12:20,630
from the Jewish tradition in a collection
of teachings called the Midrash.
853
01:12:22,920 -->
01:12:25,990
In that telling, the soul doesn't want to
go.
854
01:12:27,215 -->
01:12:30,446
It's living in a pure
place close to God, and
855
01:12:30,447 -->
01:12:33,430
it has no wish to be
squeezed into a body.
856
01:12:34,515 -->
01:12:36,030
So it's sent anyway.
857
01:12:37,770 -->
01:12:44,790
An angel escorts it, shows it paradise and
the place of punishment, then lays out the
858
01:12:44,791 -->
01:12:49,030
whole life ahead, where it will live and
where it will die.
859
01:12:50,865 -->
01:12:52,430
And the soul protests.
860
01:12:53,295 -->
01:12:58,090
It argues, it pleads, it says it would
rather stay.
861
01:12:59,345 -->
01:13:01,190
The angel's reply is blunt.
862
01:13:01,865 -->
01:13:05,410
You are formed against your will and you
will be born against your will.
863
01:13:05,835 -->
01:13:09,650
Another saying in the same tradition puts
it in one breath.
864
01:13:10,750 -->
01:13:16,210
Against your will you are formed,
born, live and die.
865
01:13:17,725 -->
01:13:21,010
Then the soul is born and the memory is
gone.
866
01:13:23,765 -->
01:13:26,550
India gives a version from inside the
womb.
867
01:13:27,970 -->
01:13:34,450
A short text called the Garba Upanishad
says that in the ninth month the child
868
01:13:34,451 -->
01:13:40,410
remembers thousands of past births,
all the wounds it has passed through,
869
01:13:40,755 -->
01:13:43,910
all the deeds whose results it now has to
carry.
870
01:13:45,550 -->
01:13:47,290
And what carried it here?
871
01:13:47,730 -->
01:13:52,890
Karma did, not a decision, not a visit to
a potter's house.
872
01:13:54,555 -->
01:13:59,850
The weight of what it had done simply
swept it toward this particular mother.
873
01:14:00,790 -->
01:14:07,330
And the soul, remembering all of that,
begs to be let out of the cycle for good.
874
01:14:09,600 -->
01:14:15,670
A living teacher, Sadguru, makes the same
point in modern words.
875
01:14:16,570 -->
01:14:20,175
He says that when you
die, you lose what he calls
876
01:14:20,176 -->
01:14:23,850
discretion, the ability to
weigh things and decide.
877
01:14:25,660 -->
01:14:31,570
A living person who's grieving can
eventually say, enough, I'll move on.
878
01:14:31,890 -->
01:14:33,770
A dead person can't.
879
01:14:34,415 -->
01:14:37,110
Whatever tendencies you had, keep
multiplying.
880
01:14:38,295 -->
01:14:41,670
And they carry you toward the life your
karma points at.
881
01:14:43,215 -->
01:14:46,310
No browsing, no standing at a door.
882
01:14:47,130 -->
01:14:48,750
Momentum does the choosing.
883
01:14:51,140 -->
01:14:53,090
Even ______ hints at this.
884
01:14:54,090 -->
01:14:57,530
Remember that most of the souls picked a
life out of habit.
885
01:14:59,430 -->
01:15:06,430
Plato says, the ones who'd lived decent,
middling lives, chose middling lives again.
886
01:15:07,325 -->
01:15:11,870
Not because they were wise, but because
they'd never done anything else.
887
01:15:12,930 -->
01:15:17,410
If your choices are made by habit,
how free are they really?
888
01:15:19,500 -->
01:15:20,530
Think of a river.
889
01:15:22,280 -->
01:15:27,550
You can swim hard or float lazily,
you can pick which stroke to use,
890
01:15:28,350 -->
01:15:32,090
and you can feel completely in charge of
your own arms.
891
01:15:34,320 -->
01:15:38,890
But the current is going where it's going,
and when you climb out downstream,
892
01:15:39,060 -->
01:15:41,410
you're not where you aimed to be.
893
01:15:42,380 -->
01:15:45,810
You had effort, and the water had
direction.
894
01:15:47,960 -->
01:15:50,250
That's the picture these sources paint.
895
01:15:51,370 -->
01:15:55,485
Choice, if it exists
at all, is a small thing,
896
01:15:55,486 -->
01:15:58,850
sitting on top of
something much larger.
897
01:16:01,670 -->
01:16:06,710
So now we've got two stories that seem to
flatly contradict each other.
898
01:16:07,260 -->
01:16:11,550
A soul that kneels and picks, and a soul
that's carried.
899
01:16:12,500 -->
01:16:15,150
Let's see whether they can both be true.
900
01:16:17,150 -->
01:16:23,250
Let's put both sides together,
and the way I do it is with one idea.
901
01:16:23,945 -->
01:16:27,430
How much you choose depends on how awake
you are.
902
01:16:28,945 -->
01:16:30,930
Look back at what we've got.
903
01:16:32,555 -->
01:16:37,490
Ur's souls pick their lives, but the
careless ones pick badly.
904
01:16:39,260 -->
01:16:43,217
The Tibetan text teaches
you to choose your womb, but
905
01:16:43,218 -->
01:16:47,410
only if you can see through
your own pull toward it.
906
01:16:48,520 -->
01:16:54,550
Sadguru says discretion is gone at death,
but he also says that someone who keeps
907
01:16:54,551 -->
01:17:00,090
awareness while losing the body has a very
different passage.
908
01:17:02,490 -->
01:17:10,430
Every source, even the ones that say no
choice, leaves a little door open for the
909
01:17:10,580 -->
01:17:12,070
person who's paying attention.
910
01:17:13,680 -->
01:17:17,150
So the question may not be whether
choosing is on the table.
911
01:17:18,635 -->
01:17:21,150
It may be whether you can read the menu.
912
01:17:23,095 -->
01:17:27,750
Picture two souls arriving in the same
place at the same moment.
913
01:17:29,010 -->
01:17:30,070
One is awake.
914
01:17:31,415 -->
01:17:33,390
It knows what it's looking at.
915
01:17:33,710 -->
01:17:38,890
It can tell a pull from a decision,
and it reads the options one at a time.
916
01:17:41,130 -->
01:17:45,116
The other is dazed, still
wrapped up in the last
917
01:17:45,117 -->
01:17:48,830
life, grieving or frightened
or simply confused.
918
01:17:50,140 -->
01:17:52,470
The same options sit in front of both.
919
01:17:54,920 -->
01:17:57,730
But only the first one can actually read
them.
920
01:18:00,080 -->
01:18:04,678
The second one drifts
toward whatever feels familiar,
921
01:18:04,679 -->
01:18:08,910
and from the outside it
looks exactly like being carried.
922
01:18:09,910 -->
01:18:15,270
Same place, same offer, and a completely
different amount of choice.
923
01:18:16,810 -->
01:18:20,350
That clears up a lot, but it leaves a
harder question.
924
01:18:21,430 -->
01:18:23,170
Why would anyone come at all?
925
01:18:24,495 -->
01:18:29,710
If the place before is home, and a soul is
whole there, what's the draw?
926
01:18:32,330 -->
01:18:36,070
Two thinkers give answers that sound
almost like one.
927
01:18:37,970 -->
01:18:44,030
Origen, an early Christian teacher in
Alexandria, said that in the beginning,
928
01:18:44,510 -->
01:18:49,090
all souls were equal minds, fixed in
contemplation of God.
929
01:18:50,810 -->
01:18:52,290
And then they got full.
930
01:18:53,025 -->
01:18:55,990
His word means something like being
glutted.
931
01:18:58,430 -->
01:19:02,321
They grew tired of the good,
their attention slackened,
932
01:19:02,322 -->
01:19:06,730
and they drifted away, each
one to a different distance.
933
01:19:08,369 -->
01:19:09,950
Nobody pushed them out.
934
01:19:10,910 -->
01:19:12,070
They wandered off.
935
01:19:12,930 -->
01:19:16,070
For that the church later condemned his
teaching.
936
01:19:18,455 -->
01:19:24,350
Plotinus, his near contemporary, has
a word for the same impulse, ptolema.
937
01:19:25,640 -->
01:19:27,590
It means audacity, daring.
938
01:19:29,900 -->
01:19:33,329
It's the soul's wish to
belong to itself, to be
939
01:19:33,379 -->
01:19:36,270
a separate someone
instead of part of the whole.
940
01:19:37,380 -->
01:19:38,910
He didn't see it as a crime.
941
01:19:40,050 -->
01:19:43,030
He saw it as something
close to nature, the
942
01:19:43,031 -->
01:19:46,050
way a young animal
eventually leaves the nest.
943
01:19:48,890 -->
01:19:51,370
So here's one way to answer the question.
944
01:19:52,705 -->
01:19:56,277
A whole being has
everything, and the one thing
945
01:19:56,278 -->
01:19:59,670
it can't have is the
experience of being a part.
946
01:20:01,550 -->
01:20:04,637
It can't know what it
is, to be small, to be
947
01:20:04,638 -->
01:20:07,830
unsure, to reach for
something it can't see.
948
01:20:08,920 -->
01:20:11,790
The only way to find that out is to try
it.
949
01:20:12,515 -->
01:20:14,390
Coming here is the experiment.
950
01:20:16,340 -->
01:20:19,670
That's what a child does at an open front
door.
951
01:20:20,890 -->
01:20:26,830
The house is warm, there's food on the
table, and nobody has ever been unkind.
952
01:20:27,885 -->
01:20:32,830
And still the child looks past the door
frame at the street, at the noise,
953
01:20:33,850 -->
01:20:37,632
the strangers, the loose
dog down the block,
954
01:20:37,682 -->
01:20:41,590
and wants to go see
what it's like out there.
955
01:20:43,395 -->
01:20:45,310
Nothing is wrong with the house.
956
01:20:46,450 -->
01:20:48,850
The street is just much more exciting.
957
01:20:51,150 -->
01:20:55,170
If that's the reason though, a question
follows.
958
01:20:58,170 -->
01:21:02,790
A soul that sets out on purpose,
knowing what it signed up for,
959
01:21:03,050 -->
01:21:05,070
would never take any of it seriously.
960
01:21:06,280 -->
01:21:11,470
So something has to be done about what it
remembers, and every tradition we've
961
01:21:11,620 -->
01:21:16,550
looked at has a promise on the table
before that happens.
962
01:21:20,575 -->
01:21:23,810
Now let's talk about the agreements made
before birth.
963
01:21:26,010 -->
01:21:30,238
Because it turns out that
before you forget everything, a
964
01:21:30,239 -->
01:21:33,730
lot of traditions say you were
asked to promise something.
965
01:21:35,645 -->
01:21:39,890
The cleanest version is in the Quran,
and it's a single scene.
966
01:21:41,000 -->
01:21:46,470
Before anyone was born, God draws out
every human being who will ever live,
967
01:21:46,955 -->
01:21:51,470
all of Adam's descendants at once,
and asks them one question.
968
01:21:52,315 -->
01:21:53,610
Am I not your Lord?
969
01:21:54,490 -->
01:22:01,150
And every one of them answers,
yes, we bear witness, that's it.
970
01:22:01,375 -->
01:22:03,630
One question, one answer.
971
01:22:05,890 -->
01:22:09,914
The verse even says why
it happened, so that on
972
01:22:09,915 -->
01:22:13,350
the last day no one can
claim they never knew.
973
01:22:14,440 -->
01:22:18,288
The scene has a name
in Persian poetry, the Day
974
01:22:18,289 -->
01:22:21,430
of Al-Ast, after the first
word of the question.
975
01:22:23,170 -->
01:22:27,370
And Sufi poets built whole lifetimes of
longing on it.
976
01:22:28,490 -->
01:22:32,783
They say we all said yes
on that day, and ever since,
977
01:22:32,784 -->
01:22:36,270
we've been trying to
remember what we agreed to.
978
01:22:38,530 -->
01:22:43,250
The Talmud has its own version,
and it's more of a pledge than a question.
979
01:22:45,110 -->
01:22:50,370
In the teaching we looked at earlier,
the unborn child is taught the whole
980
01:22:50,371 -->
01:22:56,070
Torah, and then, before it's born,
it's made to swear an oath.
981
01:22:57,044 -->
01:23:01,090
The oath is to be righteous, and not to be
wicked.
982
01:23:02,710 -->
01:23:06,011
Then the angel taps
it on the lip, and the
983
01:23:06,012 -->
01:23:08,930
oath goes with everything
else into forgetting.
984
01:23:12,100 -->
01:23:16,890
And in the Gaba Upanishad, the vow comes
from the child itself.
985
01:23:18,660 -->
01:23:23,030
Remember that in the ninth month,
it remembers thousands of lives.
986
01:23:24,065 -->
01:23:26,290
In its distress, it makes a promise.
987
01:23:27,250 -->
01:23:31,736
If it's allowed out of this
womb, it says, it will live
988
01:23:31,737 -->
01:23:36,750
well, turn toward the divine,
and work to end the cycle.
989
01:23:37,680 -->
01:23:41,910
And then comes the wind at birth,
and it forgets that too.
990
01:23:43,990 -->
01:23:51,370
Three traditions, three very different gods
and teachers, and yet the same small shape.
991
01:23:52,850 -->
01:23:58,310
Something is asked, something is promised,
and then the memory is switched off.
992
01:24:00,435 -->
01:24:04,790
Let's slow down on that last one,
because it's the strangest.
993
01:24:05,930 -->
01:24:13,170
Picture the soul in the ninth month, with
every past life laid out in front of it.
994
01:24:14,800 -->
01:24:18,170
It has a kind of clarity it will never
have again.
995
01:24:19,050 -->
01:24:24,790
It sees the pattern, sees its own mistakes,
sees exactly what it would do differently.
996
01:24:25,820 -->
01:24:29,790
And it says, quietly, I'll do better.
997
01:24:30,720 -->
01:24:32,270
It means every word.
998
01:24:33,055 -->
01:24:34,090
Then it's born.
999
01:24:35,000 -->
01:24:39,249
And a few hours later, it's a
screaming, hungry baby, who
1000
01:24:39,250 -->
01:24:43,810
couldn't tell you its own
name, let alone what it swore to.
1001
01:24:45,960 -->
01:24:48,890
That may be the point of all three
stories.
1002
01:24:50,490 -->
01:24:53,310
The promise isn't there to be recalled.
1003
01:24:54,590 -->
01:24:59,050
It's there to be lived out, without anyone
looking over your shoulder.
1004
01:25:00,520 -->
01:25:04,550
And these are the solo versions,
one soul and one oath.
1005
01:25:07,130 -->
01:25:11,430
Other accounts show these agreements as
something done in groups.
1006
01:25:14,130 -->
01:25:17,630
In some accounts, the agreement isn't made
alone.
1007
01:25:18,850 -->
01:25:21,190
It's made in a room full of other people.
1008
01:25:22,005 -->
01:25:23,890
And everyone has a part to play.
1009
01:25:26,900 -->
01:25:32,200
The Latter-day Saints, the Mormons,
teach what they call the Council in Heaven.
1010
01:25:34,200 -->
01:25:40,160
Before the earth existed, they say,
the Father laid out a plan to all the
1011
01:25:40,161 -->
01:25:44,695
spirits, they would go down,
get bodies, forget where
1012
01:25:44,696 -->
01:25:48,220
they came from, and be
tested by living on faith.
1013
01:25:51,040 -->
01:25:56,060
The plan depended on free choice,
which meant you were free to fail.
1014
01:25:57,070 -->
01:26:00,340
Then every spirit had to decide whether to
come.
1015
01:26:01,375 -->
01:26:04,880
And the story says most of them said yes.
1016
01:26:06,070 -->
01:26:10,432
So here the promise is a
vote, taken in a crowd, and
1017
01:26:10,433 -->
01:26:14,700
everyone who's ever been born
is someone who raised a hand.
1018
01:26:16,545 -->
01:26:20,900
Michael Newton's clients describe
something smaller and more practical.
1019
01:26:22,270 -->
01:26:25,580
They talk about what he calls a
recognition class.
1020
01:26:26,770 -->
01:26:30,252
It's where souls who
are about to be born near
1021
01:26:30,253 -->
01:26:33,920
each other sit down
together and agree on signals.
1022
01:26:35,140 -->
01:26:40,460
A particular look, a phrase, a smell,
or a song.
1023
01:26:42,360 -->
01:26:49,020
Something small and strange enough that
you'd notice it on earth without knowing why.
1024
01:26:51,380 -->
01:26:58,020
The idea is that in the confusion of a new
life, with no memory left, you'd still
1025
01:26:58,021 -->
01:27:03,660
have a few small tripwires to tell you
someone you know is nearby.
1026
01:27:06,205 -->
01:27:10,100
Dolores Cannon heard the same thing from
the other direction.
1027
01:27:11,595 -->
01:27:17,113
Her clients, speaking under
hypnosis as their own deeper
1028
01:27:17,114 -->
01:27:21,800
selves, described signing
contracts for a life's lessons.
1029
01:27:22,940 -->
01:27:24,200
Who would be the parent?
1030
01:27:24,820 -->
01:27:26,000
Who would be the partner?
1031
01:27:26,365 -->
01:27:28,520
Who would be the one who walked out?
1032
01:27:29,110 -->
01:27:30,980
The hard roles included.
1033
01:27:32,500 -->
01:27:39,760
Someone who hurt you in that telling may
have agreed beforehand to play that part.
1034
01:27:42,520 -->
01:27:48,140
The Yoruba have the darkest version,
and it's worth hearing, because it shows
1035
01:27:48,141 -->
01:27:51,400
an agreement can be a trap as well as a
gift.
1036
01:27:52,440 -->
01:27:58,212
They talk about Abiku, spirit
children who've made a pact
1037
01:27:58,213 -->
01:28:02,760
with their companions in the
other world to come back early.
1038
01:28:04,250 -->
01:28:08,100
These children are born, and then they die
young.
1039
01:28:09,655 -->
01:28:15,062
And then they're born again
to the same mother, over and
1040
01:28:15,063 -->
01:28:18,760
over, because they promised
their friends they'd return.
1041
01:28:21,105 -->
01:28:23,060
The families fight it.
1042
01:28:24,520 -->
01:28:31,000
They have rituals to break the pact,
and names meant to hold the child here,
1043
01:28:31,500 -->
01:28:36,800
and marks cut into the body so the spirit
companions won't recognise it.
1044
01:28:37,780 -->
01:28:43,900
A promise made in another world, still
pulling against a mother's grief in this one.
1045
01:28:46,110 -->
01:28:50,820
Now take the gentler version, the one
Newton describes.
1046
01:28:52,695 -->
01:28:55,960
Two souls sit in a room and agree on a
signal.
1047
01:28:57,270 -->
01:29:03,000
Say it's a certain way of tilting the head
when they laugh, or a half-remembered tune.
1048
01:29:04,380 -->
01:29:08,157
Then they're born, on a
different day, in different
1049
01:29:08,158 -->
01:29:11,000
towns, and they forget
the promise entirely.
1050
01:29:14,305 -->
01:29:19,290
Thirty years later, they're sitting at the
same crowded table at a stranger's wedding.
1051
01:29:20,310 -->
01:29:26,190
One of them laughs, tilts her head,
and the other stops mid-sentence.
1052
01:29:29,090 -->
01:29:31,170
Neither of them could tell you why.
1053
01:29:32,050 -->
01:29:34,630
They just know the whole evening has
changed.
1054
01:29:36,690 -->
01:29:39,130
You've felt a smaller version of that.
1055
01:29:40,490 -->
01:29:46,410
You meet someone at a party, a co-worker's
friend, a stranger on a train.
1056
01:29:47,830 -->
01:29:51,450
And within ten minutes it feels like
you've known them for years.
1057
01:29:52,510 -->
01:29:54,870
You finish each other's thoughts.
1058
01:29:56,280 -->
01:29:59,070
You can't explain it, and you don't try.
1059
01:30:00,060 -->
01:30:03,510
You just feel, quietly, that you've done
this before.
1060
01:30:05,630 -->
01:30:10,230
That feeling, in these accounts,
is the signal going off.
1061
01:30:11,260 -->
01:30:15,150
And for it to go off, the memory of the
room had to go first.
1062
01:30:17,120 -->
01:30:19,350
Now, let's talk about coming down.
1063
01:30:20,190 -->
01:30:26,830
The agreements are made, the choice is in
place, and what's left is the trip.
1064
01:30:27,600 -->
01:30:34,370
And for this, the best map we have comes
from a Roman writer named Macrobius,
1065
01:30:34,875 -->
01:30:36,710
around the year 400.
1066
01:30:39,820 -->
01:30:43,690
He wrote a long commentary on Cicero's
Dream of Scipio.
1067
01:30:44,570 -->
01:30:50,110
And in it, he describes the descent as a
staircase through the planets.
1068
01:30:51,110 -->
01:30:57,290
The soul leaves the Milky Way and passes
down through seven spheres, one at a time.
1069
01:30:58,045 -->
01:31:02,410
And at each stop, it picks up something it
will need.
1070
01:31:04,100 -->
01:31:09,430
From Saturn, the highest and slowest,
it gets reason and understanding.
1071
01:31:10,460 -->
01:31:13,650
From Jupiter, it gets the power to act.
1072
01:31:14,219 -->
01:31:17,630
Mars gives it boldness, the heat of
passion.
1073
01:31:19,330 -->
01:31:25,550
The sun gives it the senses and the
imagination, the ability to see and to picture.
1074
01:31:26,530 -->
01:31:28,110
Venus gives it desire.
1075
01:31:29,350 -->
01:31:33,350
Mercury gives it speech, and the knack for
explaining things.
1076
01:31:34,000 -->
01:31:39,590
And the last stop is the moon,
which gives it growth, and with growth,
1077
01:31:39,745 -->
01:31:40,745
decay.
1078
01:31:41,950 -->
01:31:48,170
The moon is what makes a body that can be
born, get bigger, wear out, and fall apart.
1079
01:31:50,220 -->
01:31:51,430
So picture it.
1080
01:31:52,180 -->
01:31:58,130
A soul that began as pure, unclothed
awareness drops through the heavens,
1081
01:31:58,975 -->
01:32:01,930
and at every sphere, another garment goes
on.
1082
01:32:02,695 -->
01:32:06,430
By the time it reaches the moon,
it's fully dressed.
1083
01:32:07,125 -->
01:32:11,190
It can think, act, fight, feel,
want, and talk.
1084
01:32:12,005 -->
01:32:13,830
And now it can also age.
1085
01:32:14,410 -->
01:32:17,410
That last item is the one that makes it
mortal.
1086
01:32:18,090 -->
01:32:22,706
The soul takes on a body
that's built to grow and
1087
01:32:22,707 -->
01:32:26,710
built to end, and the
ending is part of the outfit.
1088
01:32:28,795 -->
01:32:32,610
And on the way back up, the garments come
off in reverse.
1089
01:32:34,030 -->
01:32:37,909
At death, the soul sheds
them one by one, until
1090
01:32:37,910 -->
01:32:41,090
it's bare again at the
top of the staircase.
1091
01:32:44,240 -->
01:32:46,830
But he leaves one thing out of the
staircase.
1092
01:32:51,310 -->
01:32:57,190
And the next section is about everything
that goes into it.
1093
01:32:58,530 -->
01:33:03,970
Now the forgetting, and every way the
traditions describe it.
1094
01:33:04,730 -->
01:33:10,590
Because once you start collecting them,
you realise nobody agrees on the method,
1095
01:33:11,215 -->
01:33:12,510
only on the result.
1096
01:33:14,850 -->
01:33:17,770
The oldest is a cup, and the last one is a
cup, and the last one is a cup.
1097
01:33:18,470 -->
01:33:24,590
In the Orphic account, the soul is handed
the cup of Dionysus on its way down,
1098
01:33:25,050 -->
01:33:28,085
and Macrobius keeps
the idea alive, placing
1099
01:33:28,086 -->
01:33:31,130
it near the boundary
of the crab and the lion.
1100
01:33:32,375 -->
01:33:35,490
The more the soul drinks, the more it
loses.
1101
01:33:38,125 -->
01:33:40,370
Plato turns the cup into a river.
1102
01:33:41,800 -->
01:33:46,730
After the souls choose, they cross a
burning plain called Lethe.
1103
01:33:47,380 -->
01:33:49,370
Which just means forgetfulness.
1104
01:33:50,395 -->
01:33:55,090
And they camp beside the river Aemeles,
the river of carelessness.
1105
01:33:56,085 -->
01:33:57,910
Everyone has to drink some.
1106
01:33:58,645 -->
01:34:01,570
The unwise drink too much and forget
everything.
1107
01:34:02,775 -->
01:34:04,470
And the sensible ones sip.
1108
01:34:07,190 -->
01:34:09,470
The Talmud does it with one finger.
1109
01:34:10,850 -->
01:34:14,872
The angel comes at the
moment of birth, and taps the
1110
01:34:14,873 -->
01:34:18,830
baby on the lip, and everything
the child knew is gone.
1111
01:34:20,160 -->
01:34:24,590
Folk tradition says that's why we have the
little groove above the upper lip.
1112
01:34:25,530 -->
01:34:26,850
India has a wind.
1113
01:34:28,465 -->
01:34:33,150
In the Gharbar Upanishad, a wind of birth
touches the child.
1114
01:34:34,360 -->
01:34:39,910
And every past life and every vow fades
out like breath off a mirror.
1115
01:34:42,200 -->
01:34:46,910
The Gnostics hand over the cup too,
but they're not being kind about it.
1116
01:34:48,530 -->
01:34:55,650
The rulers of the lower spheres give the
soul a cup of forgetfulness, so it won't
1117
01:34:55,651 -->
01:35:01,350
know where it came from, and they keep
refilling it, life after life.
1118
01:35:03,740 -->
01:35:05,370
The Yoruba use a gate.
1119
01:35:06,905 -->
01:35:11,190
The soul passes from Oran into the world
through a gatekeeper.
1120
01:35:12,700 -->
01:35:17,530
And somewhere in that passage,
the choice it knelt and made is lost.
1121
01:35:18,630 -->
01:35:23,910
And the Mormon image is a veil,
a curtain that drops over the mind at
1122
01:35:23,911 -->
01:35:29,170
birth, so the pre-mortal life is still
there, only out of sight.
1123
01:35:30,600 -->
01:35:35,450
A cup, a river, a finger, a wind,
a gate, and a curtain.
1124
01:35:36,310 -->
01:35:37,950
Six pictures of one event.
1125
01:35:40,790 -->
01:35:45,710
And then there's __________, who's the
reason we're talking about any of this.
1126
01:35:47,195 -->
01:35:52,050
When the other souls lined up at the
river, he wasn't allowed to drink.
1127
01:35:53,300 -->
01:35:55,530
He just stood and watched them go.
1128
01:35:56,845 -->
01:36:01,250
And when he woke up on the funeral pyre,
he remembered everything.
1129
01:36:02,255 -->
01:36:07,130
Plato says so outright, that's why the
story wasn't lost.
1130
01:36:09,770 -->
01:36:12,138
The one man who
skipped the water is the one
1131
01:36:12,139 -->
01:36:14,830
who could tell us
what the water was for.
1132
01:36:17,180 -->
01:36:21,590
So why does every tradition put the
forgetting right at the doorway?
1133
01:36:24,220 -->
01:36:27,910
You'd think a soul would do better
remembering everything.
1134
01:36:29,520 -->
01:36:32,610
But think about what remembering would
actually do.
1135
01:36:35,450 -->
01:36:37,190
The life has to feel real.
1136
01:36:39,030 -->
01:36:45,210
If you walked into this world knowing you
were whole, knowing you'd chosen every
1137
01:36:45,211 -->
01:36:52,290
piece of it, knowing it ended in a warm
room with friends, then nothing in it
1138
01:36:52,440 -->
01:36:56,410
could frighten you, and nothing could
matter much either.
1139
01:36:58,420 -->
01:36:59,790
A loss would be a scene.
1140
01:37:00,445 -->
01:37:02,410
A betrayal would be a plot point.
1141
01:37:03,150 -->
01:37:07,570
You'd be a spectator in your own life,
nodding along.
1142
01:37:09,360 -->
01:37:11,190
Try it with something small.
1143
01:37:12,750 -->
01:37:15,619
Imagine sitting down to
a board game where you
1144
01:37:15,620 -->
01:37:18,790
already know every move
your opponent will make.
1145
01:37:19,755 -->
01:37:23,270
Every card that's coming and exactly how
it ends.
1146
01:37:24,360 -->
01:37:25,710
You could play it.
1147
01:37:26,470 -->
01:37:28,070
You just wouldn't want to.
1148
01:37:30,230 -->
01:37:35,970
There's nothing to decide, nothing to
risk, and no reason to lean forward.
1149
01:37:37,385 -->
01:37:40,170
The game only works because you don't
know.
1150
01:37:42,380 -->
01:37:44,410
That's the logic behind the forgetting.
1151
01:37:45,895 -->
01:37:50,495
The lessons can only be
real if the stakes feel real
1152
01:37:50,496 -->
01:37:54,810
and the stakes only feel
real if you can't see the exit.
1153
01:37:56,730 -->
01:38:01,790
The choices only count if you don't know
which one was supposed to be right.
1154
01:38:04,125 -->
01:38:07,650
And notice what that does for the
agreements we just covered.
1155
01:38:09,670 -->
01:38:15,390
The oath, the signal, the contract all
work because they're hidden.
1156
01:38:17,035 -->
01:38:21,810
A promise you can see in front of you is
just a chore you're following.
1157
01:38:23,630 -->
01:38:27,969
A promise you've forgotten
has to be lived out of who you
1158
01:38:27,970 -->
01:38:31,590
are, and that's the only
version that proves anything.
1159
01:38:33,790 -->
01:38:40,390
It's like a note you hid in a coat pocket
for yourself, and you're only surprised by
1160
01:38:40,391 -->
01:38:45,090
it months later because you'd forgotten
you left it.
1161
01:38:48,320 -->
01:38:50,970
There's a small version of this you've
already met.
1162
01:38:52,555 -->
01:38:56,890
You watch a good movie for the second time
and something is missing.
1163
01:38:57,955 -->
01:39:02,630
The twist lands on you flat because you're
waiting for it.
1164
01:39:03,670 -->
01:39:09,250
The scary scene doesn't scare because your
body knows what's behind the door.
1165
01:39:10,730 -->
01:39:15,327
You can admire how it's
made, but the surprise is
1166
01:39:15,328 -->
01:39:19,490
gone, and the surprise
was the original experience.
1167
01:39:21,970 -->
01:39:25,574
The traditions are
saying, in their different
1168
01:39:25,575 -->
01:39:28,630
languages, that a
life is the first viewing.
1169
01:39:30,460 -->
01:39:33,690
For it to land, nobody can have read the
ending.
1170
01:39:36,225 -->
01:39:38,870
Which raises an uncomfortable question.
1171
01:39:41,150 -->
01:39:47,110
If the forgetting is that complete, how
would we ever know any of this was true?
1172
01:39:47,990 -->
01:39:51,268
And the strange answer
is that a few children
1173
01:39:51,368 -->
01:39:54,750
don't forget as
completely as the rest of us.
1174
01:39:56,715 -->
01:39:59,530
Now let's talk about the ones who didn't
forget.
1175
01:40:01,245 -->
01:40:06,847
Because the forgetting we
just looked at is nearly total,
1176
01:40:06,848 -->
01:40:10,650
but nearly is doing a lot
of work in that sentence.
1177
01:40:11,910 -->
01:40:15,718
Every so often, a very
small child slips through
1178
01:40:15,719 -->
01:40:19,190
the curtain with something
still in their hands.
1179
01:40:23,190 -->
01:40:27,803
The man who spent his life
following those children was Ian
1180
01:40:27,804 -->
01:40:31,770
Stevenson, a psychiatrist
at the University of Virginia.
1181
01:40:33,810 -->
01:40:39,290
He started in the early 1960s,
travelling to India to interview one
1182
01:40:39,291 -->
01:40:44,690
child, and found 25 more cases in about
four weeks.
1183
01:40:45,870 -->
01:40:48,230
After that he never really stopped.
1184
01:40:50,510 -->
01:40:54,237
Over 40 years he collected
around 3,000 cases of
1185
01:40:54,238 -->
01:40:57,850
children who said they
remembered another life.
1186
01:40:59,820 -->
01:41:07,470
India, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Turkey,
Thailand, Burma, and also the United
1187
01:41:07,471 -->
01:41:13,070
States, which in one early count had more
cases than any other country.
1188
01:41:15,090 -->
01:41:17,590
And the pattern is almost always the same.
1189
01:41:19,130 -->
01:41:24,910
A child, usually between two and five,
starts talking about another family,
1190
01:41:25,790 -->
01:41:28,630
another house, another name.
1191
01:41:29,710 -->
01:41:34,030
Sometimes it's just a few sentences said
in passing at dinner.
1192
01:41:36,590 -->
01:41:42,990
Sometimes the child insists, gets upset,
begs to be taken home, and then,
1193
01:41:43,430 -->
01:41:46,516
around age six or
seven, the memories fade
1194
01:41:46,517 -->
01:41:50,370
like a dream that thins
out as the day goes on.
1195
01:41:52,730 -->
01:41:55,630
Think about what that looks like inside a
house.
1196
01:41:57,350 -->
01:42:03,930
A little girl, barely old enough to tie
her shoes, tells her mother over breakfast
1197
01:42:04,055 -->
01:42:06,230
that this isn't her real home.
1198
01:42:07,840 -->
01:42:12,081
She says she has a husband
in another town, and
1199
01:42:12,082 -->
01:42:15,830
a shop, and she's worried
about who's running it.
1200
01:42:16,305 -->
01:42:17,790
Her mother laughs it off.
1201
01:42:18,990 -->
01:42:22,779
Then the girl says the name
of the town, which nobody
1202
01:42:22,780 -->
01:42:27,130
in the family has ever been
to, and names the street.
1203
01:42:27,905 -->
01:42:29,350
The laughing stops.
1204
01:42:32,235 -->
01:42:34,790
Stevenson's whole method was to go and
check.
1205
01:42:36,150 -->
01:42:41,130
He'd write down what the child said before
anyone went looking, then travel to the
1206
01:42:41,131 -->
01:42:45,750
village, find the family the child
described, and compare.
1207
01:42:46,835 -->
01:42:48,070
Did the house match?
1208
01:42:48,955 -->
01:42:49,955
Did the names?
1209
01:42:52,220 -->
01:42:55,750
Did the person the child talked about
actually exist?
1210
01:42:56,655 -->
01:42:59,530
And did they die the way the child said?
1211
01:43:00,595 -->
01:43:02,250
Some cases fell apart.
1212
01:43:04,570 -->
01:43:07,750
His critics have pointed out a lot of
problems.
1213
01:43:08,670 -->
01:43:10,930
That families often knew each other.
1214
01:43:11,480 -->
01:43:14,490
That stories got retold before he arrived.
1215
01:43:15,710 -->
01:43:18,630
And he never claimed to have proven
anything.
1216
01:43:20,750 -->
01:43:24,870
He said the evidence was suggestive,
not flawless.
1217
01:43:26,355 -->
01:43:29,677
But he also said the
strongest cases couldn't
1218
01:43:29,678 -->
01:43:32,670
be explained any
other way he could find.
1219
01:43:34,980 -->
01:43:37,430
Now here's the part that sticks with
people.
1220
01:43:38,930 -->
01:43:45,770
When Jim Tucker took over the work in
2002, he looked across the whole
1221
01:43:45,771 -->
01:43:49,530
collection and found something that's hard
to shake.
1222
01:43:52,700 -->
01:43:56,423
In about 70 percent
of the cases, the person
1223
01:43:56,424 -->
01:43:59,760
the child remembers
died an unnatural death.
1224
01:44:00,260 -->
01:44:01,500
Car crash.
1225
01:44:02,230 -->
01:44:03,230
A drowning.
1226
01:44:03,325 -->
01:44:04,325
A murder.
1227
01:44:04,455 -->
01:44:05,455
A war.
1228
01:44:05,630 -->
01:44:09,900
It was violent and it was cut off before
it was finished.
1229
01:44:12,900 -->
01:44:16,150
There's an old feeling
in nearly every tradition
1230
01:44:16,151 -->
01:44:19,620
that a death like that
doesn't settle cleanly.
1231
01:44:21,860 -->
01:44:26,380
The soul is pulled out of the body so fast
it doesn't know what happened.
1232
01:44:27,900 -->
01:44:33,220
It hasn't had time to look back,
to say goodbye, to let go.
1233
01:44:34,345 -->
01:44:38,500
And so it carries more that life forward
than it normally would.
1234
01:44:39,450 -->
01:44:42,972
Like a traveller who
had to run for the train
1235
01:44:42,973 -->
01:44:46,780
and left the house
with every light still on.
1236
01:44:48,515 -->
01:44:50,200
Then there are the birthmarks.
1237
01:44:51,800 -->
01:44:57,320
In a number of Stevenson's cases,
the child is born with a mark or a
1238
01:44:57,321 -->
01:45:03,260
malformation that matches something that
happened to the other person's body.
1239
01:45:05,220 -->
01:45:08,060
He studied about 200 of these.
1240
01:45:10,330 -->
01:45:16,520
A boy with small round marks, one on the
chest and a larger one on the back,
1241
01:45:17,015 -->
01:45:19,480
who talks about a man who was shot.
1242
01:45:21,250 -->
01:45:24,338
A child born with missing
fingers, who says he
1243
01:45:24,339 -->
01:45:27,300
remembers someone
whose fingers were cut off.
1244
01:45:28,980 -->
01:45:35,620
A girl with a three centimetre scar around
her skull, who says she was a man who'd
1245
01:45:35,770 -->
01:45:36,860
had brain surgery.
1246
01:45:39,520 -->
01:45:46,120
And in many cases, Stevenson tracked down
the autopsy report or the witnesses and
1247
01:45:46,121 -->
01:45:50,820
the wounds on the dead person's body
seemed to line up.
1248
01:45:53,035 -->
01:45:56,440
It's as if the life didn't just leave a
memory behind.
1249
01:45:57,250 -->
01:45:58,560
It left a signature.
1250
01:46:01,070 -->
01:46:04,460
Let me give you one case that Tucker
followed himself.
1251
01:46:06,400 -->
01:46:12,820
A little boy named Cameron McCauley,
living in Glasgow, Scotland, starts
1252
01:46:12,821 -->
01:46:18,660
telling his mother at around two years old
about his other home.
1253
01:46:19,930 -->
01:46:21,720
It's on an island, he says.
1254
01:46:22,620 -->
01:46:28,760
It has a white house and the beach is right
in front and the planes land on the sand.
1255
01:46:29,790 -->
01:46:34,360
He talks about his mother there and a
father he misses.
1256
01:46:35,660 -->
01:46:38,360
He's very clear that he wants to go back.
1257
01:46:40,040 -->
01:46:44,740
He says it with the kind of homesickness
you don't expect to hear from a toddler.
1258
01:46:46,400 -->
01:46:50,780
His mother, Norma, had no idea what to
make of it.
1259
01:46:52,080 -->
01:46:58,560
She eventually realised he was describing
Barra, an island in the Outer Hebrides,
1260
01:46:59,360 -->
01:47:06,020
where the airport really is a beach and
the planes really do land on the sand at
1261
01:47:06,170 -->
01:47:07,170
low tide.
1262
01:47:07,790 -->
01:47:09,460
The family had never been there.
1263
01:47:13,610 -->
01:47:19,372
So in 2006, Tucker travelled to
Glasgow, met the boy and then
1264
01:47:19,373 -->
01:47:23,310
went with the family on a
long journey out to the island.
1265
01:47:24,390 -->
01:47:29,610
And when they got there, Cameron led them
to the house, the White House,
1266
01:47:29,895 -->
01:47:32,590
near the shore, just as he had said.
1267
01:47:33,540 -->
01:47:39,790
It was real and the description of it was
accurate, right down to the layout.
1268
01:47:42,480 -->
01:47:43,970
Not everything matched.
1269
01:47:45,215 -->
01:47:50,750
The family name Cameron gave, Robertson,
did ring true on the island.
1270
01:47:52,615 -->
01:47:55,073
But when they went
looking for the man Cameron
1271
01:47:55,074 -->
01:47:57,970
said was his father,
they couldn't find him.
1272
01:47:58,445 -->
01:48:00,390
That's the honest end of the story.
1273
01:48:02,465 -->
01:48:07,070
Some details landed, one didn't,
and nobody could say why.
1274
01:48:09,240 -->
01:48:15,850
But there's a stranger group than the
children who remember an earlier life,
1275
01:48:16,980 -->
01:48:21,290
and these ones remember something
different, the time in between.
1276
01:48:24,429 -->
01:48:27,790
Stevenson's cases mostly deal with the
life before.
1277
01:48:29,715 -->
01:48:33,050
A different kind of child shows up in
other collections.
1278
01:48:34,570 -->
01:48:38,130
A child who talks about where they were
before they were born.
1279
01:48:38,900 -->
01:48:42,190
Not the last life, but the waiting.
1280
01:48:44,490 -->
01:48:49,170
And those accounts are much closer to
everything we've covered here so far.
1281
01:48:51,265 -->
01:48:59,150
In Japan, two researchers, Akira Ikigawa
and Yasuo Okado, went looking for this.
1282
01:49:00,090 -->
01:49:05,430
They asked thousands of parents and
children about memories from before birth,
1283
01:49:06,580 -->
01:49:10,250
and they found a surprising number who had
them.
1284
01:49:11,310 -->
01:49:15,010
Some described floating in a dark,
quiet space.
1285
01:49:16,350 -->
01:49:19,970
Some talked about time before they were
even in the mother.
1286
01:49:21,995 -->
01:49:24,070
And a pattern kept showing up.
1287
01:49:25,450 -->
01:49:28,897
Children saying they'd
been up above the house,
1288
01:49:28,898 -->
01:49:32,430
looking down, deciding
which family to go to.
1289
01:49:33,790 -->
01:49:38,950
Picking a mother, in some cases,
and being very specific about why.
1290
01:49:41,280 -->
01:49:43,290
Some of these children go further.
1291
01:49:44,730 -->
01:49:51,470
They describe a place with other beings,
sometimes with a guide, sometimes with a
1292
01:49:51,620 -->
01:49:53,310
group of other children waiting.
1293
01:49:54,720 -->
01:49:56,970
They describe a moment of deciding.
1294
01:49:58,420 -->
01:50:02,610
A few say they were sent, and a few say it
was their idea.
1295
01:50:04,890 -->
01:50:10,890
Now, notice how closely that lines up with
what we've been tracing from the beginning.
1296
01:50:11,950 -->
01:50:14,910
Ur's souls, lined up and choosing.
1297
01:50:16,570 -->
01:50:19,864
Helen Wambach's subjects,
saying they chose to be
1298
01:50:19,865 -->
01:50:23,010
born, even when they
weren't thrilled about it.
1299
01:50:24,210 -->
01:50:27,950
The Yoruba, soul kneeling before the
maker.
1300
01:50:28,880 -->
01:50:32,370
The Tibetan text, with its visions of
future parents.
1301
01:50:35,390 -->
01:50:38,701
And here, a child in
a bedroom in the 21st
1302
01:50:38,702 -->
01:50:42,350
century saying, I looked
down and I picked you.
1303
01:50:45,980 -->
01:50:47,850
Nobody taught them that.
1304
01:50:49,190 -->
01:50:51,710
These aren't children raised in a
tradition.
1305
01:50:53,095 -->
01:50:58,130
Many of them are growing up in houses where
nobody would know how to talk about it.
1306
01:50:58,920 -->
01:51:02,810
And the parents are just as surprised as
the rest of us.
1307
01:51:04,810 -->
01:51:09,270
The memories, like the earlier life ones,
tend to fade.
1308
01:51:10,390 -->
01:51:13,790
By six or seven, most of it is gone.
1309
01:51:14,750 -->
01:51:19,130
The curtain finishes closing, the way the
old teaching said it would.
1310
01:51:20,310 -->
01:51:25,490
The cup was just slower for these ones,
the finger tap a little softer.
1311
01:51:27,380 -->
01:51:29,710
But that's what makes them so useful.
1312
01:51:30,480 -->
01:51:32,690
They aren't telling us what to believe.
1313
01:51:33,480 -->
01:51:36,510
They're showing us that the forgetting
isn't a wall.
1314
01:51:38,730 -->
01:51:39,750
It's a curtain.
1315
01:51:40,530 -->
01:51:44,483
And every so often,
a small child leans on
1316
01:51:44,484 -->
01:51:48,110
it and the light comes
through for a moment.
1317
01:51:50,090 -->
01:51:54,630
And then they grow up and forget,
like the rest of us.
1318
01:51:56,385 -->
01:51:58,190
Go back to that quiet room.
1319
01:51:59,650 -->
01:52:02,370
The daughter is still in the chair beside
the bed.
1320
01:52:02,990 -->
01:52:05,270
And her mother's hand is still in hers.
1321
01:52:06,410 -->
01:52:08,410
The last breath has come and gone.
1322
01:52:09,630 -->
01:52:11,130
The machines are off.
1323
01:52:12,850 -->
01:52:17,530
The light through the curtain has gone
grey, and the room is very still.
1324
01:52:18,840 -->
01:52:24,830
If you could rise a few feet above it,
you'd see two women, one lying down,
1325
01:52:25,075 -->
01:52:26,510
one bent over her.
1326
01:52:27,770 -->
01:52:32,030
And nothing else that tells you where the
story goes next.
1327
01:52:33,970 -->
01:52:36,170
Now turn away from that room.
1328
01:52:37,310 -->
01:52:41,208
Somewhere else, far
from there, in a hospital full
1329
01:52:41,209 -->
01:52:45,930
of noise and bright lamps,
a baby has just been born.
1330
01:52:46,745 -->
01:52:48,990
Her face is crumpled and red.
1331
01:52:49,910 -->
01:52:52,050
Her fists are closed tight.
1332
01:52:52,950 -->
01:52:55,090
She can't hold up her own head.
1333
01:52:55,715 -->
01:52:59,850
And her neck wobbles when the nurse shifts
her to the mother's chest.
1334
01:53:03,080 -->
01:53:06,463
She doesn't know her
name, or the language
1335
01:53:06,464 -->
01:53:10,410
she'll speak, or the
people looking down at her.
1336
01:53:11,045 -->
01:53:12,790
She knows nothing at all.
1337
01:53:13,750 -->
01:53:18,206
And the woman holding her
is crying and laughing at once,
1338
01:53:18,207 -->
01:53:22,490
saying something nobody
else in the room can quite hear.
1339
01:53:25,030 -->
01:53:28,810
Maybe those two rooms have nothing to do
with each other.
1340
01:53:31,805 -->
01:53:34,560
Maybe they have everything to do with each
other.
1341
01:53:36,275 -->
01:53:39,840
The daughter by the bed doesn't know where
her mother has gone.
1342
01:53:41,165 -->
01:53:45,320
And the mother in the delivery room
doesn't know who she's holding.
1343
01:53:46,760 -->
01:53:53,000
Each one is standing at an open door,
looking into the dark on the other side.
1344
01:53:55,300 -->
01:54:00,860
But the old accounts all describe what
happens on the far side of that door.
1345
01:54:02,040 -->
01:54:07,380
And they describe it as a road,
with no real start and no real end.
1346
01:54:08,980 -->
01:54:12,560
People leave through one door and arrive
through another.
1347
01:54:13,340 -->
01:54:18,760
And on the way they're met and shown
things, and asked questions.
1348
01:54:20,090 -->
01:54:22,260
And given a little time to rest.
1349
01:54:23,480 -->
01:54:28,780
Then they're sent out again, small and
forgetful, into somebody's arms.
1350
01:54:30,760 -->
01:54:34,259
So the baby's wobbling
head and the old woman's still
1351
01:54:34,260 -->
01:54:38,820
hand might be the same
person, at two different stops.
1352
01:54:39,845 -->
01:54:43,980
What's strange is how ordinary it looks
from here.
1353
01:54:45,090 -->
01:54:51,080
A hospital room in the morning,
a chair, a blanket, a cup of cold tea.
1354
01:54:52,980 -->
01:54:55,840
And somewhere between the two,
life goes on.
