David Bailey
Member
Yes, too much caution can be a bad thing - imagine how limited our discussions would be if we followed that approach - indeed even physicists need to speculate.I liked this interview and the topic. Good questions from Alex. Debra was very cautious in her answers, which is a double edged sword. I appreciate her humility and cautiousness, but found myself wishing at a few points that she'd go out on a speculative limb once in a while. Definitely a guest I hope that returns for more.
Some people veer the other extreme, and come out with endless speculation until you end up not knowing what what they believe.
This is something I am inclined to believe, though it does mean that 'up there' isn't quite as pure as it might like to appear.Re; the inconsistencies - IMO, too many people want the spirit world to be mechanistic and to behave like material physics, but mind doesn't work that way. Mind creates realities. It is largely free from mechanistic determinism.
So, IMO, in the spirit world there are "cultures"; i.e. groups of spirits that have banded together and that create separate realities and systems. Some of these cultures reincarnate for various reasons. In other cultures, reincarnation isn't an option. They handle things differently.
That is an interesting idea, though it would need refining a bit, otherwise after a war or natural disaster there should be large numbers of such cases. Of course, it would probably need more research to gather enough data to resolve things like that.In the work that has come out of the University of Virginia we can see that most of the cases suggestive of reincarnation, there was a traumatic and/or untimely death. Perhaps those souls tend to band together in a group that has explored the ability to return to earth in a new body, whereas people lived out their life's natural span tend to band together in groups/cultures that are focused on other avenues of growth/adventure/issue resolution.
Alex, I know you are interested in this question too, and I wonder if you couldn't get a trusted medium to join the forum, and we could discuss with her (or him) just what experiments might be possible. For example:
1) How easy would it be for her to detect if someone had had a previous life?
2) Would it be possible to detect when a foetus acquires a spirit?
3) Could a medium recognise a spirit that she used to know, after it had reincarnated as someone else?
4) Maybe a medium could explicitly ask a contact about other cultures?
Could we make such experiments rigorous? Maybe Julie Beischel would be a useful guest (but I can't remember if she herself has abilities as a medium).
David