Reincarnation: Fact or Fiction? | Hear For Now Ep.19

The secrets of life after death revealed:

Does life come from matter or does life come from spirit? Why do bad things happen to good people? Is there a life beyond this life?

In this episode, we discuss the hidden mysteries of reincarnation.

Maybe you’ve woken up to the fact that you’ve been lied to. That your identity is more than your race, nation and gender.

Through spiritual awakening you can realise your true self which is beyond this body and mind.

Tune in to this episode of the Hear For Now podcast to be free from the ignorance that you only live once and thus find eternal happiness.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Another reason why it's actually quite easy to understand that reincarnation is a thing is that how can you have so much variety in people's likes and dislikes independent of their upbringing? You know, they always say like nature versus nurture, you know, and actually a vast majority of our ability to be happy, for example, you know, psychologists say it's just it's not up to us. It's uh genetics, they say. But there's no actual genes that they're able to connect to happiness, you know, scientifically. And so your past life that makes a huge impact on you. Otherwise, how can you have so much variety?

SPEAKER_02 1:05

How are you? How are you guys doing? Abby's actually fresh back from a trip in uh the land of the pyramids.

SPEAKER_03 1:10

Yes, spent time with the pharaohs, rode some camels, circumambulated the pyramids a few times every morning, actually. Just what you do in Egypt in the land of the pharaohs. Standard procedure, standard procedure. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Yeah, we're missing Abby. Obviously, we're doing the questions and answer sessions in the last two episodes, so please check those out if you haven't listened yet. Um, and comment as well. Don't be shy. I know some of the viewers are a little shy to comment, um, to have their questions spoken about, but yeah, it's good to have an interactive um dialogue. So please don't be afraid, put your questions in there, and we can address them in the episodes. Um yeah, we were gonna speak a little bit about reincarnation today, which is um a controversial topic for some people, depending on your maybe your religious faith, um, maybe your conditioned perspective or your experiences. Maybe you've had experiences of um what you consider to be a past life through through hypnosis or dreams, or um yeah, but there's many faith systems that consider the concept of reincarnation to be um practically logical, actually. I don't know if you guys have had any experiences that point towards the reality of reincarnation, or whether you think it's completely bogus or yeah, it was funny, is reincarnation is seen as quite a far-out idea.

SPEAKER_03 2:31

Usually, if you tell someone that you believe in reincarnation, they'd be like, What do you mean, mate? You think I'm gonna come back as a bloody cockroach? Yeah, something like that. Usually that's how people respond. And that's the classic example, like in TV shows or whatever, that's what they talk about. But it's actually very simple and it makes perfect sense, you know, because it's just it's like you're constantly constantly changing in this lifetime, so at the moment of death, you could easily change into something else. Who's to say that you can't continue changing? Who's to say that that change and transformation has to stop? Like a like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, you know, that's reincarnation. Did you guys know that a caterpillar rolls itself into a cocoon and doesn't just transform, it completely disintegrates into like a liquid and then reforms into a butterfly? I don't think anyone would argue that it's a new soul, everyone would probably say that's the same being, it's the same creature, just with a new form, but it completely turns into like a little goop, a liquid. If you opened up a cocoon early, you just find some liquid come out, and then that turns into a butterfly. I mean, that's reincarnation, just in this life, you can observe it. So it's pretty, pretty cool. Yeah. But you asked if we have any experiences. Do you have any experiences on Henitai?

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Um I mean, I I wouldn't claim to have any kind of um kind of very convincing experiences. I did a couple of past life regressions. When I was at Uni, I remember in my friend's room, she had this pink lava lamp, and all of us gathered in there around this pink lava lamp, and we played a YouTube past life regression. Oh, I did that once. You did that as well. The same one. How does it work? How does the video like guide you through it? So, in this video, there was a man who was very softly spoken speaking, and he said, You should imagine that you're on a beach, you step onto a boat, and this boat takes you out into the middle of the ocean. Um, and something like at a certain point, you jump off the edge of the boat into the ocean, and you start sinking. Anyway, and you sink further and further and further, and at some point you pop out of the other end of the ocean or whatever it is, and um you come to your senses, open your eyes, and what do you see? Anyway, the way he did it was a lot better than me. He did it, you know, very carefully, and you go deeper and deeper into this meditation, into this trance, and anyway, and then you open your eyes in in the hip in the kind of hypnotic state, and what do you see? And I saw um he said, Look down, what do you see uh at your feet? And I was wearing like a pair of brown loafers. What's interesting is that I um somehow I still I I still remember this very clearly, which is interesting, you know. Obviously, some things we forget, and but this experience I had for whatever reason I still can remember very crystal clearly. So um yeah, that's just interesting. Anyway, so I saw I was wearing these brown shoes, brown loafers, and I was wearing kind of cotton brown plead trousers that were quite nice, and a suit jacket. Um as it was very hot where I was. I was walking though like big skyscrapers actually, and I had like a newspaper. It felt as though it was probably around the 1950s, maybe 1960s, and um yeah, I was in quite I was in a city, it was quite um and my understanding was um I was probably somewhere like South Africa or Chicago. If you imagine what it used to be like back in my 1950s and sixties, um anyway, so I was walking through the city and I was going to my house, and my house was actually on the edge of the city, um, and there was uh it was like a gated home, and you walked in and there were um there were like maids and they were anyway, and they were they were working on the lawn, and I was like doing that explains a lot of house doing gardening and things like that. Uh my home was it was like a bungalow, it was quite nice, it was like a bungalow. Um and I was sitting in an office and I was I I I had a phone call to make and this phone on this phone call I got incredibly angry, and I was like pushing like the I had pitched uh piles of sheets of paper on the desk, and I was like pushing these sheets of paper on the desk. And this lady, maybe she was my wife, I don't know, she came in and she was consoling me. And um, yeah, what I looked like, I had um I wore glasses, I was a white man, I was maybe that also explains a lot. I was only 60 years old or something. My father is white for anyone watching.

SPEAKER_03 7:23

Oh and then there's also white secretly.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

And um and I considered that maybe I was in somewhere like South Africa, that's what I thought. Like I said, it's Chicago, the city, but South Africa because of the context, like um the buildings, and then you know, obviously, there was apartheid in South Africa, and and the um the people that were working for me were all black. Wow, yeah, it was it was interesting. I don't know if there's anything to this, but that was what I that was what I saw.

SPEAKER_03 7:56

Um maybe this is just how you see yourself in this life. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

SPEAKER_02 8:04

Well, you know, that's why I always I kind of feel like I set myself up for that whenever I share this. Yeah, because like I feel like I always set myself up for that. Um but yeah, that was the past life regression I did. I haven't had any kind of profound I was never had experiences which suggest of something more than that things more than just this body and mind exist, but in terms of reincarnation specifically, um yeah, I can't currently think of anything.

SPEAKER_03 8:32

I mean that's pretty I wasn't expecting you to give so much detail, but that's quite an experience. I never had anything like that. I never for some reason when you were speaking, I was imagining Miami.

SPEAKER_02 8:41

Really? Okay, interesting.

SPEAKER_03 8:43

Because you were saying hot weather and hot and tall skyscrapers, which I don't know how many places have both of those things. Probably nowadays or many, but back in those days earlier, not so many. And then you had this kind of I don't know, maybe it's just me, but the way you're describing the suit that you had and the lifestyle and this getting like I just imagine you as like you know, this like big business guy cooked up and has many things to worry about and gets you know is very easily agitated and different, Anthony. What were you thinking?

SPEAKER_02 9:14

I know what I was thinking as well.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

I know what I felt like actually you said. I was thinking that you were very philanthropic, and you like really wanted to help the black people, okay. And you're like using them as slaves, but you're like, oh, I really want to help these guys, and now you're like half-white, half-black.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Say that so positive was it to see it in that one.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

I like that. I like that one a lot. Of course, you of course you like that one. Very good comment as well. So it's true, it's true. So it would make sense.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

Makes more sense. Maybe. Like, did you ever did you guys ever see that movie Twelve Years a Slave? You did see it. Do you know who Benedict Cumberbatch is? He's an actor anyway. Yeah, he's Doctor Strange. We were just talking about Dr. Strange. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I know who he is. I was just trying to remember which part he plays in that movie. He's like, he's one of the um he owns one of the plantations that the slave, the main character, goes to. But he's like the sort of person that Joe's is describing. Like he was a good man, actually. Like he had slaves, but he was a good man, he treated everyone very well, and he actually looked after. Um, so yeah, I like to think that maybe I was that sort of personality.

SPEAKER_03 10:15

Oh, probably were.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

No seriousness, but um, but yeah, what I thought I was, I can't remember why, but I remember thinking that my I was very interested, I was interested in philosophy actually, and writing, and so I had all these sheets of paper. Not that I was writing anything philosophical per se necessary, but I was interested in that. And um I mean it's very easy to think as well that you just project what you want to see onto onto all these. Like my friend who also did it, he's just like he loves nature and being in the woods, and he said he was a lumberjack.

SPEAKER_03 10:51

Very convenient, very easy, but it still makes sense because it aligns with why why does he like nature and all these things in this life? It's because of probably something that he was doing previously, and that is something I was also thinking about when I was just speaking at the beginning, is like another reason why it's actually quite easy to understand that reincarnation is a thing, is that how can you have so much variety in people's likes and dislikes independent of their upbringing? You know, they always say like nature versus nurture, you know, and actually a vast majority of our ability to be happy, for example, you know, psychologists say it's just it's not up to us, it's uh genetics, they say, but there's no actual genes that they're able to connect to happiness, you know, scientifically. And so your past life that makes a huge impact on you. Otherwise, how can you have so much variety? Why is it if you have some idea that there's a purpose and some kind of motivator, some why behind all of this, then it makes sense that those tendencies and those abilities or skills or likes or dislikes or aversions, things that you're afraid of. I know one girl who's terrified of pigeons. I don't know. Like terrified of pigeons. But she's never and I asked her, Did you have some kind of scare when you were young with a pigeon? She said, No, nothing. I'm just terrif, just from a young child, I was terrified of pigeons. Where did that come from? Why?

SPEAKER_01 12:12

Yeah, there's also like scientific uh reincarnation theories or um case studies, whatever. My friend was telling me one where there's this young boy had a mini birthmark here on the right side of his head, and then like a slightly bigger one on the left side of his head. And he was saying how he was shot in the head from like a very young age. And he was saying like the family that shot him, where they were, yeah, and it was all verified and then confirmed. And there's multiple like that. But I think what I find most interesting about this topic is actually the traumas that we face in this life, and whether they're resolvable by knowing our past life or by just acknowledging that we maybe we've been here before. Um like for instance, I had some kind of spiritual therapy, as it were, from a couple different people going back to certain traumas from a young age. Um one of which was like a speech problem I had. Yeah. And um so going back to certain experiences I had from a young age, what why I I had that problem, why I had certain other problems, and I just remember thinking that if they were appearing in this life, they must have had their origin somewhere in a previous existence. Why would it just happen in this life? Yeah. These certain traumas. Why do some people have really good upbringings? When people wh why do some people have really bad upbringings? And so um yeah, that's something that I w I've always been interested in, that sort of trauma and talent side of of life as well. Why do we have these?

SPEAKER_03 13:43

I was talking to someone the other day and and just about spirituality in general, and and then this this idea of karma and and reincarnation came up, not just reincarnation exclusively, but karma as well, as like a whole genre of spirituality, you could say. And I realized while I was speaking to that person that all of the different doubts and confusion I had about spirituality, or you could say, like, all the holes that I saw in a spiritual body, you know, like whether it was the Quran or the the Bible or or different teachers that I met or sheikhs or whoever it was, religious teachers that I would speak to them and I'd ask questions, even just my parents and I'd ask them the questions, different holes that I found, you know, like these things we're talking about, like why okay, why are we here in the first place? You know, or why is someone born with an illness, a terminal illness, you're just born with it? Or why is someone born really rich and someone's born really poor? These different things are, you know, if I was born as that person, then what would I be like? Yeah, I'll be that person. Wait, but then what makes me me and what makes that person that person, you know, apart from the body and the mind. So I was always asking these questions, and all of those holes in the philosophy are completely filled with karma and reincarnation. You know, when you add karma and reincarnation, then everything starts to make sense. Nothing is unfair, nothing is out of the ordinary, nothing comes from nowhere, everything has a reason, every tendency you have, every skill you have comes for some specific reason. So it fills up all the holes, and that's in one sense, that's enough of a reason to believe that it exists. Of course, there's many other reasons, but that on its own is quite a powerful motivator to you know look into it. Because then everything makes sense when you have karma reincarnation in the picture, you know? It's quite interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:25

That was like one of the key questions that started me on the spiritual path as well. Was I used to think I would pray before going to bed and I would think when I was praying, um yeah, I pray for people in in different parts of the world who are suffering in different situations. And I would I would think though, why why am I why was I born here in this body? Like I've got food on the table every day, I've got a roof over my head. I was born in this part of the planet where there are no natural disasters. Um, I've I mean, we got money in my phone, and then you know, you'd hear about all yeah, every day on the news, you'd see natural disaster here, famine, poverty here, all this. And I'd think I would think, how on earth have I I thought I'm so lucky I've drawn, like I I've just come out so fortunate into this existence. I used to think of that all the time when I was little, like but yeah, and so I mean yeah, to what you were saying, yeah. The theory of karma and reincarnation fills or answers that question to a certain extent.

SPEAKER_03 16:33

Yeah, fills up the gaps, yeah. And so back to this this uh experience that you had, because you had quite a vivid image of your previous life. Well, I mean, in theory, yeah. Yeah, in theory, yeah, you never really know. But if someone was to say to you, Oh, you know, what if that's some kind of dream or some kind of image that you made up, how does that, you know, is that a possibility in your mind, or is it just very clear that this is something, a memory, or you know, how what what does that feel to you?

SPEAKER_02 17:02

Yeah, it's very possible. I kind of can't get it from my imagination, it's possible, but I just find it interesting that um it it was very particular and it's very clear, it was very clear visually, it was very vivid. I mean, yeah, I can recall it very clearly. I can see, as I'm telling you, I can see what I saw very clearly in my mind's eye. It's just interesting to me. Yeah. Um and yeah, as you were saying, in terms of consciousness, you know, scientists still haven't found where consciousness originates. They haven't located its origin yet. Um you know, our bodies are composed of the same things that all of us, the table and the microphone. We're all made, you know, it's all made of the same stuff. Um and eventually it'll deteriorate like everything else as well. But consciousness still hasn't been found, the source of that hasn't been found, and there are so many cases of experiences that people have of um you know, you can say near-death experiences, of um coincidence, particular dreams, spiritual experiences, all these things, out-of-body experiences. I know you have some stories of um that suggest that perhaps reincarnation is real from your own childhood, you know. Um ghosts, we've spoken about so many things. Anyway. Um and then yeah, if you go into a lot of these spiritual texts and study, I mean you can actually and you put into practice some of the um meditations, yogas, or prayers, whatever they might be, you can actually have experience. It's amazing, isn't it? Um so yeah, all in all, I consider that perhaps that was a that was a previous lie. Yeah, um, I can't say for certain, of course, but perhaps it was. I mean, I wanted to say also there's this case because we heard a talk at Studio 108 recently on reincarnation. I was desperately trying to remember this story that was told about reincarnation. Which one was it? It's about um I pulled it up on my phone, but it's about uh a a girl called Shantidevi. Have you heard this? Shanti Devi? I think I heard it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

You have you.

SPEAKER_02 19:11

Well, as an I can't remember it exactly, but um it says that as a young girl, she began to notice that she remembered details of her past life. When she was about four years old, she told her parents that her real home was in Mathura. She was born in Delhi, but her real home was in Mathura, which is about 150 kilometres from Delhi. Um discouraged by her parents, she actually fled from home, attempting to reach Matura. And when she when she came back home, she stated that in school she stated when she was in school that she was married and she died ten days after giving birth to a child. And she was interviewed by various people and she gave the name of her previous husband all of this. Um the name of her husband was Kedar Nathobe or something like that. Anyway, all these very specific details, what he looked like as well, where he lived. Um and it was something like anyway, Gandhi at the time, he conducted us an investigation into this case because he wanted to try and yeah, he wanted to try and prove that reincarnation might be real. And so they went and they investigated and they went to the home that she'd spoken about um and they found this man. And long story short, I can't remember all the details, but he came um or in fact, no, they brought um uh I think first they brought his brother or something, but but they claimed that okay, this was this is the man, um uh this is Kedanath Chelby. They brought him. And when she saw him, she said, no, no, that's not him, that's his brother, or something like that. Yeah. And then they did bring him, and he asked her some very specific questions, and um when they were conceiving their child, it was something like one of them had an injury or a disability or something like that, and so the way that they conceived the child was very particular very unique. They had they had to do it in a very strange way. Like arthritis or something, yeah, it was arthritis, something like that. And so he asked her how this like five-year-old child, like how did that happen? And she explained it in perfect detail. Crazy, isn't it? Anyway, something like that, yeah. And there are many other cases.

SPEAKER_03 21:29

Um there's a lot of cases. I heard this I heard of one study with with hundreds of cases um investigated by this one professor. Investigated hundreds of cases of children that I remembered previous lives, and we went to the place where they were speaking about and confirmed details, confirmed addresses, family members. You know, there's one case it was an army. He was previously in his previous life, he was an army man. I think he flew a fighter jet and he confirmed the number the the fighter jet had, like the serial number or Whatever it is, to identify that jet and where it flew over and where it crashed and how he died and all these different things. I mean it's crazy. Yeah. It's really crazy. I wasn't fortunate enough to be part of such a study, but when I was really young, you guys know, when I was three or four years old. It's too late now because I've forgotten all of it. But my mother, she tells me, I don't remember it, which is usually the case with these kids. It's always around three or four years old, uh, maybe five at the latest, and then they forget. They just forget, they lose their memory. Yeah, you know. And I was three or four years old, and I used to tell my family very seriously, not in a joking way at all, apparently. I'm told by my mom, that yes, you know, you guys are my family, but my real family's waiting for me back in England, of all places. They're waiting for me back in England and my wife, my kids, and I have to go back and see them eventually. And I was very serious about all this. And um, yeah, I mean, that's as much as I know, but I forgot about it eventually. I remember a few things from when I was three or four years old, but somehow I forgot all about this this previous life stuff. So it just shows that there's probably something going on, you know. So why would a kid have such a fixation on a family in England? It's strange.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

I've actually met a couple kids with with these tendencies. I did for one year I did nannying during COVID because I couldn't work. And so there's one family's like, oh, like a family friend, can you just look off my boy if you're not working a few hours a day? And this boy had one friend, and I think it was his first cousin who was a girl, and she, whenever she would come over, she would talk about being like a pirate and in a in a different life. A pirate. Yeah. She's like, My name was Dave, I was a pirate. And then she would just like speak about it very vividly about her ship and all of these things. So my mum would always be like, She's just so crazy. I don't know where she's getting this from. And so didn't really leave her with much confidence. But then I also have another family friend who um yeah, they've got a daughter as well, and that daughter said a few different things. Um, yeah. Do you remember what she said or not? Not not in detail, but she's just said, yeah, I used to um have a wife called Rose, and yeah, I used to have a bad knee and all of these sort of things, and um, and then they're actually quite a spiritual family, so they like fully believe her. But I myself haven't really had any past life experiences anymore, but apart from the past lives that you had.

SPEAKER_03 24:31

Yeah, yes, sir. Yeah, it's interesting. Anyway, these kinds of things, people will always dismiss them. Not everyone will always dismiss them, but there will always be people who will dismiss them because ultimately if it's just something that they don't want to believe, they're just not gonna believe it. We'll always find a reason, oh, it's this or that, or they they faked it, or or yeah, kids just have different fantasies and dreams. But when you're speaking about this past life regression that you had, it the reason why I was asking you that, like what would you say if someone said it was a dream? Because for me, the way you describe it, it doesn't really align with the way dreams work. Yeah, you know, it doesn't really align with that. First of all, when you're in a dream, you're you, you're not someone else. When have you ever had an experience where you're somebody else in your imagination? I've never had that experience, even throughout a meditation or some kind of guide that they I never have that. That's one thing. The other thing is how vividly you remember it. I mean, sometimes I have a dream that are is very vivid and lucid, and I wake up and I'm like, oh, I'm usually I don't remember dreams, but this one I'm definitely gonna remember. But then somehow dreams have this nature where they just fizzle out eventually, even if it's like a couple days later, they just disappear, and that doesn't align with what you experienced, and then also just these different details and feelings that you had and kind of all these different things, but especially that point that you're not you in the dream or in the in the imagination. That when when does that happen? That's a good point. When are you able to imagine that your whole if you this is the only body you've ever been in and the only mind you've ever had, how can you possibly even imagine what it's like to be in someone else's body so spontaneously, like what he experienced? How's that possible?

SPEAKER_01 26:09

I guess it comes to the question as well. Well, like where does life come from? Because if you're an atheist, it's like life comes from matter. Yeah, but does life actually ever come from matter? Yeah, it comes from two living beings coming together, and so in that way life is continuous, not a material material thing. Right.

SPEAKER_03 26:29

Yeah. Ultimately the haters are always gonna hate. I'm joking. Uh ultimately there will always be people that will dismiss it, but when you have that that science of reincarnation, it just it's such a in one sense it's such a motivator to be a better person, you know, because you might not see that at fr at f at first, you know. But if you know that you're gonna be coming back again and again and again, and that everything you do, there's a result for it, then you're gonna change your behavior, you know, and uh either that or you're gonna be hopeful for the future, you know, for what's to come. You know that if you do good things, that you'll have good coming at you, whether it's in this life or in another life. And many people actually, and this I find difficult to understand, but many people believe in karma, but don't believe in reincarnation. In fact, most of the world believes in karma in one way or another. So if karma is real and everything has to be balanced, everything is always balanced, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, then at the moment of death, if you're not completely balanced out your karma, then doesn't don't you have to go on? Don't you have to continue? Doesn't your you as a living entity have to continue in this battle of good and bad always coming at you? If you've done good things that you haven't received the reward for yet at the moment of death, then is karma really real? You can ask that question, you know? So if you hope if you believe in karma, you believe everything's balanced and everyone gets exactly what they deserve, then reincarnation has to be there, you know? So if you just explain it like that, then people have to kind of face that reality in one way or another.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

Yeah, I I do remember an experience which it kind of for me explains that your spiritual progress goes on life after life, even if you you know forget your material occupation, your material duties, you might just see a spiritual path and align with it completely. So I remember meeting this one lady, and yeah, we were at a course and it was right opposite a hospital, and um she was reading some book and I just started speaking to her about spirituality and these types of topics. She was saying how her children's names are like spiritual names, like stion and something else, and all of this type of thing. And then Scientology. I don't know, I know exactly. But then she um she said, Yeah, like what spiritual practice do you do? She asked me, and I said, you know, I chant a certain mantra and do other things, and she's like, Oh, what's the mantra? I said the mantra to her, and she's like, No way. And I was like, What? What's what's making you react like that? And she said that about ye one year ago, her father passed away just opposite the hospital we were opposite. Um, in that hospital, he passed away, and just after he passed away, a friend of mine uh from America sent me this mantra that he just chanted. I chanted it for like a a good few months, and it helped me a lot, and I just completely forgot about it. And now you just mentioned it, like almost like a year to his anniversary of his death, just opposite that hospital. And then I gave her a book, like um a book that I was reading in my bag, and she took it with her. And so that was for me, it was like a really, really profound experience because it reminded me that actually our spiritual progress will just as soon as we hear like I told her the mantra she just immediately went to where she was when she was chanting it. She never for like got off that platform of spiritual development as soon as she heard it, and so in a similar way, I've definitely had experiences, and I know other that others that I've had experiences of coming to spiritual life and just connecting with something very quickly, you know, and so that doesn't come from nowhere, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:11

Because this is like a science of spirituality, like all of these, you know, there's religion, but then what the Vedic pantheon seems to offer like all these yogas and meditations is like a subtle science. We have material science and empirical science and what we can see, touch, all of this, but then like the science of karma and reincarnation, all of this. You can't, I mean it's spiritual, but you can't physically perceive it, but it's there and it's working, and it's logical as well, and you can have experience of it at a certain level. So yeah, I love it like you said, yeah, it when she heard the mantra, it took her um to the place that she was in when she was chanting it. That there's no loss or diminution and the progress you make spiritually. And again, to to come back to reincarnation, you know, if you've um if you come to spiritual practice at some point during your life, um you often in theory you pick up from things that you've done before as well. Um you can observe on the spiritual path as well that some people seem to take to things like a duck to water or make rapid progress in their spiritual practice. Some people it's a bit a bit more slow, it's different for different people that um if we accept in theory that these statements on reincarnation are true, then it's um yeah, it suggests that something, like you said, you you pick up from where you left off essentially. Um another thing that's interesting, it says is that if you've um if you've kind of made some progress in your spiritual life, but you haven't gone all the way, so to speak, in terms of understanding yourself as a spiritual being and purifying yourself, your material conditioning, um enlightenment or self-realization, whatever term you want to use, then you get the opportunity to yeah, take birth in a better situation, essentially, um, which can give you facilities to do spiritual practice. So you might be born in a family of spiritual practitioners, or where you have good great material facility, so it gives you time and space to get interested in spiritual practice. Or maybe you'll just experience something in life that puts you in such a difficult situation that you have to turn to spirituality, which is suggestive of a higher plan as well, you know, when you look back. Um Yeah, I also wanted to say that with what you were saying, Abby Um Yeah, just that reincarnation, it's yeah, it's a very good way of explaining because people say, you know, how can an all-loving God create so much suffering in this world and so on and so forth? It's like well on an individual level, but yeah, um if we accept that there's more than one lifetime that we have lived, then um things that happen to us in this life which don't seem to have any immediate explanation, um or they they don't seem to point towards an an omnibala omni-benevolent higher being conducting like that situation, then you can understand that maybe in previous lives or you've experienced or done things that like you said, karma balance we have to account for. That was an interesting way of explaining. And I was also thinking that different faiths actually like in Judaism as well, there's um a suggestion that reincarnation might exist, isn't that? They believe in reincarnation. They believe in reincarnation.

SPEAKER_03 33:52

Yeah, I've heard that as well. I met a rabbi once who was saying reincarnation is real.

SPEAKER_02 33:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:58

Many different philosophies I think actually.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

Also, Christianity comes from Judaism, so Christians kind of yeah, maybe they should believe in reincarnation.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

In the Bible, even yeah, in the Bible, even it says because Jesus' um cousin John the Baptist, who baptized Jesus famously, there's a story in the Bible. But um, Jesus literally says, Oh, like he came as Elijah, but none of you recognized him, or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 34:23

Yeah, I remember hearing it. There's one place where it says Um the disciples of Jesus are asking him about this blind man, and um they ask him, Why is he blind? Is it because of sins that he performed in this life, or sins that he performed in previous lives, or is it previous to this life? Wow. So that suggests clearly it's that you can perform, you know, they could have had some sinful activity in a previous life. So what does that mean? You know, that means you were alive and on this planet doing things. And the Quran is also a very subtle message to reincarnation, which some may agree with and some may not, but it says basically, in you know, botched translation, God is explaining about afterlife, basically, and this is what Muslims they say is no, he's just talking about heaven or hell, he brings you back. But he says, You know, I cause you to die, and then I bring you back, and then I bring you back. He says it as in more than once, like I bring you back many times, basically, and so that's reincarnation again, you know. And you know, in the Vedic scheme, you have this whole map of the universe where you have, for those who don't know, you have the earthly realm, which is not the only realm, by the way, which I think scientists are now tapping into and everyone, there's different realms of reality, different dimensions, and so on. So you have the earthly realm, it maps this out, and then you have seven upper realms and seven lower realms below and above. It explains the seven higher ones are places where you can get a higher level of enjoyment. So if you do really good things, not necessarily do something to get you out of the cycle of birth and death, but you do things which are good, pious, and it brings you to a higher level of enjoyment, and then vice versa. And the this the planetary system, which is one of the higher ones, is called Jannah, Jannah Loka, the planet of Jannah. And in the Quran, the name for heaven is Jannah.

SPEAKER_02 36:21

Wow, that is a name.

SPEAKER_03 36:24

So, and and the Quran also explains that you have the earthly realm and you have seven layers of heaven and seven layers of health. Yeah, and it explains that you can go to different layers of heaven based on the different good things that you do, but that God's realm is beyond that. It's exactly the same as the Vedic paradigm. The Vedic literature explains that there are these seven higher realms, seven lower realms, the earthly realm where we're on right now, and through certain activities, you can go up and down, but ultimately the goal is to develop pure love and you get out of it completely, you know, eternal life, essentially. And so wonderful, you can't you can't just take half the the thing, you know. If they got if they got the same philosophy, they got the same philosophy. You have to take you take the source, you know. Yeah, um the yeah, the idea of heaven, the idea of the idea of heaven, the name for heaven, the different numbers, the number of of dimensions above, and the number of dimensions below, above and below, of course, not a geographical. But then God's realm is beyond that, yeah. And that whole thing is the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 37:20

Same as the Vedic paradigm, like yeah, because the spiritual world with God is beyond even heaven. But in the Christian paradigm, of course, you have the idea of heaven and you have the lower region. One interesting thing, I've told this on the podcast definitely, but for those that didn't hear, um, when I was at university, I got very into Christianity, and my friend, he would go regularly to church, and I remember now it makes sense, but he told me this story of going to church, and a guy went to the front and gave a testimony, and he said, I saw heaven in my dream. And the pastor said, Okay, please share with the congregation. And so he said, In my dream, um, it wasn't actually what I expected heaven to be like. He said, I was actually, I was in space, he said, it was like I was in space and I was traveling and I was seeing heaven, but heaven was actually so many different planets, all these different planets with different people enjoying on this different planet. So that's what it was like. It's like it's a bit different to what I expected it to be like. And yeah, I remember my friend telling me this, and now when I look back, it's like, yeah, this is exactly what's written about it. Yeah. You have higher, yeah, there's higher dimensional reality, as you said, which scientists kind of are now accepting. Um, but yeah, there's higher planets, I mean, there's places where people live, and yeah, it's there's life on higher planets, lower planets as well. But it's all still material. Yeah. That's why karma and reincarnation happens. Yeah. When you go beyond to God's around, there's um you're not doing material activities, you don't get karma, and you have you're eternal, yeah. You're in it, as it says in all scriptures as well.

SPEAKER_03 38:58

Yeah, then that difference also between you know, because it obviously in heaven, in the Vedic paradigm, a temporary place, not an eternal place that you go to, but somewhere you go temporarily. It's just another life that you can take. It's all about enjoyment, you know? And in the Quran longer life, yeah, longer life, more enjoyment, all that. But it's all about enjoyment. You have beautiful trees, beautiful rivers, the best-tasting fruits, all the you know, everything we have here is there, but at a higher level of enjoyment, you know, in a higher dimension, higher realm. So it's the same thing again in the Quran that these layers of heaven they have such pious levels of enjoyment. You know, everything is so much tastier, sweeter, the people are kind, you know, everything's just better, but not necessarily filled with love and and kindness and connection with the divine. It's not necessarily the emphasis. And I always wondered about that, and Muslims get confused that that's the goal of life. But then now, after reading the Vedic scriptures, I understand better what the Quran is pointing to, that there's these higher things that you can reach or achieve, higher levels of enjoyment and existence that you can achieve. But ultimately the goal is to go beyond that also, not get lost in that, you know.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

Yeah, I guess it depends on your motivation behind your spiritual life. It said four people come to spiritual life: those who are distrust, those looking for wealth, those who are inquisitive, those who are looking for the absolute truth, why I'm here, what's the purpose of life? And in spiritual life, it can be for many different reasons. You can go for a yoga course for a couple weeks in Bali, you can you do these reincarnation things, but what are you actually doing it for? If you're only doing it for your for yourself, then what can be the the biggest result from that? I met a person recently just on the street um who we were walking by and um she was just like looking really upset. Um but for some reason I just was called to just speak to her, I don't know why, and she just said she was diagnosed with cancer and she just looked like really, really, really upset. Um but she was also open to speaking, and so I I just said to her, you know, yeah, how are you feeling? What's going on? She started started explaining it to me and then giving me the story. She just found out she has cancer, she's she's really upset, she kind of wants to go, but something happened. I just said, you know, we're part of a spiritual community, please come along and we teach that you're not this body or the soul. So you can come, we have this place, stud Studio 108, and she's like, please tell me more about it. And then I told her about it, and then she she started crying right there, and then just by hearing about having some kind of spiritual practice. She was like, Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. And then she walked away. Um, with a yeah, they gave her the details of of our studio and things like this. And so what I was thinking about after that is that we have so many regrets in life. We regret, you know, I wish I had that material job, I wish that I saved financially, I wish that I took took care great care of my body so I wouldn't be in illness or distress or things like this. But when do we actually regret our spiritual life? When do we regret that, you know, I've been here for over 50 years, but you know, if I don't know who I am, and that actually material regrets are bad because they they leave you with lamentation, distress, depression, but actual spiritual regrets are actually a good thing because they cause impetus, impetus for change in that moment. Speaking to her when she was in tears, I could feel that she regretted her whole life in in a way that she had no spiritual impetus, but she wanted to change in that moment, and it just really touched my heart. And I realized that you know I've been here for over 20 years, and most of that time I've been neglectful of my spiritual life, and all of these material things that we've accumulated are gonna go. She was 20 years old. No, I was thinking from my own life that she was she was much older, but you know, so yeah, we can have these material regrets of all these things, or spiritual regrets, and those spiritual regrets can actually lead us to these higher realms, but even above that, maybe um, by contemplating these things.

SPEAKER_03 43:15

Amen to that. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, see, and this is what they say, you know, you never know if something's a blessing or a curse because something like that, cancer, okay, is very difficult and it's very tragic in many ways, but that could be something that sparks the most exciting time of your life. Yeah, you know, you ever see that movie bucket list? No, oh, that was one of my favorite movies Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. You ever see you ever heard of it even? No, I don't know. Oh, that's a good movie Morgan Freeman, Jack Nicholson in one movie, and they just both terminally ill, they meet in the hospital on the on what they thought was the deathbed. Anyway, they end up writing this bucket list of all these different things that they want to do. Jack Nicholson is really rich. Morgan Freeman's poor, so he's like, whatever, I'm gonna pay for everything. And they go skydiving, they ride race cars, they just do all this crazy stuff. But anyway, this is like the spiritual equivalent, you know. And they had the best time of their lives, by the way. And that's the whole idea is that you know, this thing, which is really tragic, actually ended up being an impetus for them to have the best time, the most fun, the most experiences, they learned the most, they went deeper into their sense of identity, who they are. So that's what spiritual life is like. Sometimes you have to go through something difficult, and you feel like, why me? It's not fair, you know. But actually, it helps you grow for amazing.

SPEAKER_02 44:33

And then they reincarnated as God in Bruce Almighty and Johnny and the shiny is a good ordeal. Anyway, yeah, I think sadly, we're gonna have to wrap up the effort today, but that was very sweet. I hope you guys relished um yeah, some of the knowledge and reflections. Please, like I said, inundate the comment section with questions. Um, yeah, we want to engage and or send any of us a message if you have our numbers and a lot of the listeners. And we've actually met now at Studio 108. Come on down to Studio 108 if you've enjoyed these episodes as well. We'd love to meet you. And yeah, take care, guys. See you on the next episode. Thank you very much.