James G. Matlock with scientific proof that children can remember past lives

We speak today with Jim Matlock, an anthropologist and parapsychology researcher specializing in reincarnation.  Jim discusses his book "Signs of Reincarnation" and the course and incredibly popular Facebook group of the same name. 

The conversation delves into the reasons some individuals recall past lives, the concept of intermission periods between lives, and cultural practiced related to reincarnation.  

Jim also shares personal anecdotes about his daughter's memories of choosing her parents and offers insights into how physical traits and memories might carry over between lives.

Transcript

1:40

I'm very pleased to be here, interviewing Jim Matlock. His official name is James g Matlock. But is it true that you like to be called Jim? Yes, I much prefer to be called Jim. Thank you. Alright. Me, me too, me too. Welcome, Jim. Thank you. Yes. And very good to be here. You and I attended a reincarnation Symposium and you were a speaker there. This is an annual symposium that's offered by Carol Louie, and this year it was really, really fascinating and I'm really glad to get a chance to talk to you here today. I know that from looking at your. Information before we started here that you were a research fellow at the Parapsychology Foundation. Is that true? Yes. Yeah. What do you do there? It's just an affiliation for me. The Parapsychology Foundation in New York has been around for for a while now, for several decades. I think since the late sixties, it was founded by a medium, Aline Garrett in association with a benefactor. And they, they were very important in parapsychology for many years giving grants, organizing conferences and things like that. What, what is parapsychology anyway? When I say parapsychology, I'm talking about academic parapsychology which is, has two, basically two branches, a lab branch and a field branch. Okay. In spontaneous cases. It's concerned with again, maybe we can break it into two areas. One is Psychic phenomena like clairvoyance, remote viewing, telepathy, precognition, this type of thing, and that tends to be studied in the lab. And then survivor research, including study of mediumships, apparitions. and Reincarnation Research, which is of course where I am. know in your talk yesterday, you at one point, you referred to yourself as a researcher. You started off something saying as a researcher. Right. And that's basically what you do. Yes, that's basically what I do. I'm an anthropologist by training. By academic degrees in anthropology. But my love has always been parapsychology or specifically the reincarnation research, and field research. As a matter of fact, you've written what I guess people are calling like a textbook on, recognizing reincarnation and your book is called Signs of Reincarnation. Right. It's intentionally a textbook. It was based on lectures that I wrote for a course that I teach, a semester long, 15 week course that I teach, also called Signs of Reincarnation. And so the book is a compilation of the lectures that I wrote out, for that course. And it's now the textbook for that course. The subtitle is, exploring beliefs, cases, and theory, and so it covers the whole range of reincarnation from beliefs to all the research that's been done to trying to develop a theory to understand it all. Okay. As far as social media goes, you also have a very popular Facebook group. Yeah, it's yes. Again, I like the name Science of Re Condition. It's called Science of Re Condition. And so for any of your listeners who are on Facebook, I mean, would be very happy to have you join us. The. So Signs of Reincarnation, Experiences in Research, and so we invite people to contribute their experiences or their children or whatever that they have and then we relate it back to the research. So I say we, I and the other admins, many of whom have gone through my course, so they have a good solid background in the research and can relate. The the experience is back to that. So unlike many social media groups where people just get on there and talk and give their opinion we actually try to, to bring it back to the research and let people know. How their experiences relate,, to the research patterns that we see. That's basically it, but it's gotten quite large. Now we've got 350, 000 members. Oh my gosh. Oh, wow. That is. And how long has this been 10 years? About 10 years. Yeah. Wow. It's gotten that large in 10 years and for, for eight or so of those years, eight and a half, I mean, we were just, we were at 50, 000 level and it suddenly just shot up. I don't know. Facebook has been. pushing us or something. I mean, we just, we just began to shoot up. Well, 50, 000 is a pretty big number. I have 50, 000 and now we're at 350, 000. That is wild. That is wild. I can see that, from what I've gotten to know about you is that, The nuts and bolts reincarnation that's just something that you are steeped in you live it. and so I can understand how, when someone puts a post on a Facebook, your first thought is. Okay, what is this experience, what category kind of does it fit into and, what are the, the foundations of it? And so today I want to kind of go through a little bit of those things with you because there is a lot to know. Yes, there is. We know a lot. I guess what I want to say is so when I talk, it's from the basis of, the research that's been done over the last 60 plus years, by Ian Stevenson, what I, I've been in this myself for 40 years now, but the, the research that I represent is, you know it follows on Stevenson, and we should start there, you know, saying that Stevenson He got into this in the early sixties in 1961 is when he first went India, first went to India and Ceylon. And he didn't he didn't take a casual approach to it. No, not at all. And you know, and that's what appealed to me when I found his research, because he actually went out to India and Ceylon, those are the first countries he went to and, interviewed children who had these past life memories. Not only that, but then. They went back and interviewed the families of the people, the deceased people whose lives the children recalled. And so you get both sides of this, right? Yes. And so that's what the research is about. And so when I talk, it's based on the research findings and not just, not channeled teachings or philosophical ideas about reincarnation, but, but actually bringing it back to the research findings. When you mentioned the field research, it made me think about the book that you wrote, which I read recently, I Saw a Light and Came Here. Right. Right. Right. There was another person that wrote the first section Erlander Harrelson. An Icelandic, parapsychologist, right? And then you wrote the second section of it. That's right. And in the first section, I was, I guess I was surprised At at how much follow up was done. Yeah. When a study is done, they hear the child, you, you hear that, what the child says, or someone tells you what they said and then it, it is followed through to. an incredible degree. Yes, that's right. That's what we do. Yeah. It's, it's, it's people that knew the person, neighbors, all kinds of different people. And, I guess I was surprised at the depth of the followup. Right. That's how you do what you do. That's why we do what we do. Critics just try to dismiss this as anecdotal and what I'd like to point out is that these are case studies and the sophistication of these case studies in interviewing all these people and in addition to the interviews of the people, you collect documents as much as you can. You know, death threats. birth certificates, birth certificates, you know, also if there are police reports, autopsy reports, you know about the way the person died, you get all that, and so, in addition to all these interviews and multiple firsthand, always firsthand witnesses on both sides, you get the written documentation too. So these are really sophisticated. Yes. You know, and and to dismiss them as anecdotal as if they're just stories that somebody collected is just wrong. It's wrong. It's wrong. Now, when you say on both sides, do you mean one side would be the current life and the other side would be the past life? Yes, that's what I mean. Okay. one of the things that, you talk about in the book was that why, Do only some people remember past lives? Why doesn't every single person remember them? And can you talk about that a little bit, please? Yeah, I think it's an important question. I mean, why don't we all remember past lives if we all have them? And, you know, er, do we all have them? We can start there. I think we probably do. I think it's just much easier for me to imagine that we all have lived before than some of us because we're all similar as human beings, right? Our cultures differ, but as human beings, we're all very similar. And so it's harder for me to imagine that some of us have had past lives than it is that we all have. So the question becomes, why then do we not all remember? And I think the answer to that has a lot to do with subconscious resistance to the memories coming up to the surface. I think of these memories as being in the subconscious part of the mind. I think they're registered there. I think that's where memory is registered, not in the brain. They're in the subconscious. And consciousness is what survives death and reincarnates or possesses a new body and bringing with it. than the subconscious material. And so the question then is why does the subconscious material come into conscious awareness for some people and not for others. And this is where it gets kind of interesting. let me break down a little bit on that you just covered a pretty big area there with a couple of sentences, in that it's when my human body stops functioning My consciousness is going to continue on. That's right. And so people call consciousness a lot of different things, right? That's right. Like some people call it soul and mind, I guess. And which I like, I like consciousness because it's a pretty big thing, right? Consciousness. When my physical body stops functioning, my consciousness is going to continue on, and at some point in time, that consciousness is going to Possess a physical body again. Could you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, that's how I understand reincarnation, simply as possession. I mean, you know, we talk about, I mean, there are different kinds of possession, right? I mean, it's not just the old demonic possession which you talk about. You get mediumistic type possession too, right? Not all mediumship involves this type of a possession of some, you know, psychic mediums are not, possessed by the entities that are communicating through them. But some, some trans mediums more often are. So that's one type of possession. You know, and then there can be transitory types of possession, too, where a person is sort of taken over temporarily by, another consciousness. In reincarnation, it's more of a permanent possession, right? Right. But we can think of reincarnation as simply the possession of the body. of a newly created body by a stream of consciousness that's carried over from a previous life. So that means that the reincarnation does not have to occur at conception always. Okay. it can occur at any point during gestation, or as we can talk about later, even in some cases after birth, with, with placement. But it's always a possession of the body, and if we think of it that way, it just becomes, I think, much easier to understand what's involved in, with reincarnation. And there are some cultures that believe that, the soul does not come into possession of the new body until the time of birth. There are, well, the there is one in particular, the Druze of Lebanon who believes that. That Druze is D R U Z E. Right. Yeah, they're actually Shia Islamic nominally. In Lebanon, Syria some in Jordan, Israel, in that, that area. Yeah. The Golan Heights part of Israel. So yeah, their, their belief system holds that that reincarnation occurs at the moment of birth. Okay. So, and immediately after death. So immediately after death, Oh, I didn't realize that. Right. Immediately after death, one is supposed to be reborn in a child that's then coming to birth. And so. That means that they then hypothesize if there's any sort of lapse of time between the death and birth, there must have been some intermediate life, maybe a very short one, that's what they imagine. For the Druze, it's always. Life in a human body. That's correct. Yeah. And it's God that's directing this. So God immediately puts the consciousness into a new body. Okay. But there is a lot of thought that, that when the soul, or the consciousness, leaves the human body at the end of that human life, that there's a period in between that and when. It comes into possesses another body. The intermediate period. That's right. And could you talk about that a little bit, please? Right, sure. Yeah, that's another whole very interesting area. We call that the intermission period. This was Stevenson's term. Okay. The intermission period. And the way he defined it is from birth from, excuse me, from death to birth. And the reason he defined it that way rather than death to conception. Is because we know that there are a number of cases where the intermission period is less than nine months. So the death occurred after conception. and furthermore, we can't be sure at exactly what point the consciousness joins the body. Right. And so it makes more sense than to define the intermission period as being from death to birth. And then we break it down into, into stages. They, it's sort of like analogous to near death experiences. We can say the first stage is leaving the body and then there's a longer stage of indeterminate length. This then the third stage with near death experiences is to return to the body. With reincarnation, it's going on to the new body, choosing the parents very often. And then a fourth stage it can be the time in the womb, and then the fifth stage is birth. So those are the five stages of the intermission experience. There are a lot of people that talk about particular things that go on during the intermission period but those are not scientifically Provable, right? Well, some of them are. Just like in near death experiences, you have people who say that they saw something at the accident site, or something going on in the operating room, Right. or, or, or something else that they actually saw that can be shown to be accurate. You know with With the reincarnation of the intermission memories, the children will sometimes say things, and typically we're talking about children here will say things that their parents confirmed that actually occurred. So yeah, those things, it can be it can be confirmed. Yeah. And sometimes the child might say in their current life that they, chose a particular parent or they chose parents. And I think in your own life. Your daughter did communicate something about choosing parents or coming to you and your wife. Is that accurate? Yeah. Could you tell a little bit about that, please? Sure. She was three at the time. And this is a typical age for these children to come out with these sorts of memories. She told us that that she chose us. The way she put it was, I saw you and mommy were looking for a baby. And so I came to you,, which implies that my wife was already pregnant at the time. Right? Right. But there was not yet a consciousness associated with the body. There was no reincarnation. And she saw the available body. She also told us that Something quite interesting that may have set up this link between us. Okay. I may have drawn her to us. With her first memories that she told me about she talked about being on a pink farm. Okay. Now the curious thing about that is that which I just to interrupt you, In my experience, I have never seen a pink farm. I've seen a lot of farms that are typically red or white or green or something like that, but never pink. I've never pink farmed, but now it just so happens that about a year before she was conceived, now before she was born, before she was conceived, my wife and I had been driving up We were living in the Washington, D. C. area at the time. We were driving up I 81, and we passed a farm that was pink. Perimeter Finks was pink. All of the buildings were pink. And this is really, this made a profound impression on us. And we got back to D. C. We talked about this to everyone for weeks, I would, I guess you would. Yeah, I guess we would, right? But this sort of you know, our impression of the Pink Farm, if that was indeed her Pink Farm, you see what I'm suggesting here? That that sort of, that psychic resonance could have set up, what drew her to us. Okay. Right. And she did tell me. Okay. that she had seen us. Now, at the time I was, that sort of puzzled me and I should have caught on because this was, she was born in 2001. I had been studying these things since 1980, so I was well versed in all of them, but it wasn't until later that I realized, well, maybe she was talking about having seen us during her intermission period. Oh, okay. Okay. Sort of clairvoyantly, the way people will see things. I wish I had thought about that at the moment because I would have followed it up, but I didn't., I suspect that's what she meant. That then, She somehow saw us and maybe she even saw us when we were passing the Pink Farmer at some point, but anyway, she was drawn to us. Now, I was working, I was busy. We never, even though we knew where the farm was, we never went back to it. A year or two after her birth, the next time I drove that route, I was looking for the pink farm. I saw it, but it was no longer pink. Okay. Okay. It was back the traditional way, a gray fence, you know, whatever, you know, whatever. Now, unfortunately it's a KOA campground. Oh my goodness. All right. But it was at one time. It was at one time a farm. It was at one time a pink farm. And I was able to. To locate it again, but it changed, which, you know, I mean, it's suggestive. We don't really know, but perhaps the, owner of the farm then passed on. And when I told my daughter this, her reaction was very interesting. Her reaction was, it makes me sad that they didn't follow my wishes after I left. Oh my goodness. That was her response. Oh my goodness. Now the Pink Farm part of it is interesting, too, for another reason, and that is that she showed from very early in life an artistic talent. Okay. And she then talked about the, the person that she remembered having been in the Pink Farm as being an artist. Okay. So I, I think that in Pink is still one of her favorite colors. So I think that the owner of the farm painted it pink out of artistic inclination. Right, right, right. So that brings us to another topic, which is when the consciousness possesses the new body, A lot of different traits, I guess, can be brought through from this consciousness from previous life or lives. Right. Can you tell a little bit about what are the different things that, different consciousnesses display? Right. Well, part of it is that I think I mentioned before that I think of memory as being recorded in the subconscious part of the mind. And it's not just memory. I mean, it could be personality traits behavioral dispositions emotional ties, all of these elements, all this informational type stuff, which makes up our personal identity, I believe is recorded in our subconscious. And then so after the reincarnational possession, all that is still there in the subconscious. Okay. And that can influence us. But there's something else too, that we see in these cases, And that's physical elements. Many of your listeners may be aware of birthmarks and birth defects or similarities in facial form and structure. There are many other things too. I mean, internal diseases can be similar. All sorts of physical traits can be similar. How does that happen is the question then. I mean, because these are, physical features are features of the body, right? Right. The body has died. It's passed. You know, and so how are physical features then transferred? And I think it's through a a psychogenic, operation. That is, that the mind. Is what is responsible here. What I mean is that it's still part of the personal identity that one's, physical stature, one's looks, one's facial appearance marks one has on one's body are gonna be part of one's identity at some level, and it's, that is sufficient then, particularly if one has an emotional attachment to them, will be sufficient for one, either consciously or unconsciously, then to carry them over and mentally, impress one's new body with them. I think that's how it happens. Oh, that is so interesting. And one of the things that you and I were talking about yesterday was that in certain cultures that there are marks that are put on the body, either before death or after death and that those marks can be carried through to the new possession. Yeah. This is a particularly interesting thing. Stevenson called these experimental birthmarks, which is a little bit awkward name and what is an experimental birth mark. But the way he got there is through what I call I, I, my preferred term is cadaver marking and it's because it's typically the body after the person is deceased that's marked, but it is marked intentionally, and this is where it becomes the experimental part of it, that the, the marking is intentional in order to stimulate a birthmark, to allow then for the identification of the person in their next life. So it's a way that these societies have thought up to follow. through. It seems obvious that it's based on the observation of birthmarks and birth defects related to reincarnation. And this is a practice that's found in a very wide swath of South Asia from India all the way east to Japan and from Thailand, Burma, down in the south to Mongolia, all the way past China in the north. It's been reported in societies throughout that very broad area. Kind of most, most of Asia, I guess, really. Well, most of South Asia, mainland Asia. We do not see it in Sri Lanka. We don't see it outside of South Asia other than Japan. but through this area, and of course Japan has been heavily influenced by China culturally. So yeah, but it's just a very large area, which suggests that it's a very ancient practice. I mean, we have an axiom in anthropology that says the more widespread a trait is, the older it is likely to be. And so this, this, the widespread. Nature of this practice of cadaver marking resulting in a birthmark it suggests that it goes back a long way. That is so interesting. Well, we're basically out of time for this particular episode, but I have many more things to ask you about. So if you're willing to stay on and talk a little more, then we'll finish up on this episode and we'll start another one. Yeah, absolutely. I'll be happy to. Great. Okay. Thanks.