Dennis Prager Show - Is Reincarnation Real?
Aired: 2025-05-31
Duration: 09:41

[00:00:00]  Do you believe in is that the word the word because reincarnation has two two meanings?
[00:00:08]  You come back in your own body at some point, or you come back as another person in the next life.
[00:00:15]  It's very it's a very common belief.
[00:00:17]  By the way, it it's it's held by all sorts of people that you might not expect.
[00:00:25]  I know that uh in mystical Orthodox Judaism, there is a belief, Gilgul Nifashot, the transmigration of souls.
[00:00:40]  Now I happen not to believe in this.
[00:00:42]  I believe that there is a heaven, I believe there's a hell, or if you will, in more not sophisticated but acceptable language, I believe that there is punishment and reward after death.
[00:00:59]  But I don't believe that I come back as another person.
[00:01:02]  It's a tempting belief, because let's say, you know, you what if you're a baby that dies?
[00:01:07]  That's it, is that your whole chance at existence?
[00:01:10]  For the people who believe in reincarnation, well, that baby it will come back just as another another human being.
[00:01:25]  But if you have no remembrance of who you were in the past life, for all intents and purposes, you're dead anyway.
[00:01:34]  If you're Joe Smith in this life, and you come back as Mary Gonzalez, Joe Smith is dead.
[00:01:47]  Now you say Joe Smith's soul continues, but Joe Smith's soul is not aware, at least has not transmitted that awareness to Mary Gonzalez.
[00:01:58]  You are really Joe Smith.
[00:02:00]  On the other hand, to be fair, I have a close friend who studied hypnosis.
[00:02:07]  He hypnotized a young woman many years ago who believed that she was on a, I believe, a nineteenth century caravan in the United States.
[00:02:18]  She described I don't know where it was.
[00:02:23]  So Oregon?
[00:02:24]  She was in Oregon.
[00:02:25]  Oh, yeah, you know this really well.
[00:02:27]  Oh, yeah.
[00:02:28]  So remind me.
[00:02:30]  Well, what was she?
[00:02:32]  She was on a wagon train and she the details she knew.
[00:02:36]  Yeah.
[00:02:37]  She I don't even think she'd ever been to Oregon.
[00:02:40]  Not in this life, anyway.
[00:02:41]  Yeah.
[00:02:42]  And she knew details of the of the crossing of Oregon, which really only somebody who did it or had studied for years Oregon wagon trains, which I suspect she didn't study, would know.
[00:03:03]  So I want you to understand.
[00:03:05]  I don't have passion on this subject.
[00:03:10]  It may be true that we do come back as somebody else.
[00:03:17]  Now call 1-8 Prager 776 877 24376.
[00:03:26]  Do you believe in this?
[00:03:28]  Do are you skeptical?
[00:03:31]  Are you antipathetic?
[00:03:36]  How do you react to it?
[00:03:41]  The problem of the unjust suffering in this life is so great that people have devised many, many solutions to it, and this provides one of them.
[00:03:57]  But I was raising the difficult issue of karma in Hinduism, that you come back in this life and it's a reward or a punishment based on how you acted in a previous life.
[00:04:13]  But then why would I want to show pity to somebody who's suffering in this life if I believe that they were evil in the last life and that's why they were suffering?
[00:04:27]  I don't know the uh answer to that one Either.
[00:04:33]  877 24376.
[00:04:40]  Do you know somebody who believes in it?
[00:04:42]  Do you believe in it?
[00:04:43]  Do you reject it?
[00:04:44]  Do you think it's more than wrong?
[00:04:46]  It's actually against your faith.
[00:04:50]  Or your moral convictions, whatever it might be.
[00:04:56]  One eight Prager 776.
[00:05:01]  All right, let's uh see what you folks have to uh say here.
[00:05:04]  Santa Clarita, California and Sean, hello.
[00:05:09]  Hey Dennis, how are you today?
[00:05:11]  Really well, thank you.
[00:05:14]  So uh in a philosophy 101 class, I gave quite a few examples of why I reject it, but I end with this strong one.
[00:05:22]  Let's say I get called to work on an emergency and I have to call a friend or family member to come watch my young child while I'm at work, that family member uh sexually abuses my child.
[00:05:35]  Now, in karma or reincarnation, something my child did in a previous lifetime demanded that this would happen to him in this lifetime.
[00:05:45]  And so my question to my professor was should I call the police or should I just let karma act out?
[00:05:52]  Yeah, well, that that was what I raised as a problem.
[00:05:55]  If I if all suffering is merited, you did such awful things in past life.
[00:06:02]  Why would I feel bad for you?
[00:06:05]  Let alone help you.
[00:06:06]  You're right.
[00:06:06]  You're not allowing karma to work itself through if you help the person.
[00:06:11]  I have one historical example.
[00:06:13]  If if you have the time.
[00:06:14]  If you're brief, I have the time.
[00:06:17]  Okay, the killing fields in Cambodia, there were Christian organizations in Buddhist countries handling all the Buddhist refugees, but there were no Buddhist organizations helping their fellow Buddhists.
[00:06:30]  And the reason is is because Buddha said you're an island unto yourself.
[00:06:34]  And so that was the distinction that the Judeo-Christian view of compassion was taking care of these refugees, whereas the Buddhist understanding rejected compassion.
[00:06:48]  Well, I'd love a Buddhist to respond.
[00:06:51]  What you said made sense to me, but I would like to have a Buddhist response.
[00:06:58]  I had a Buddhist monk on my first radio show.
[00:07:01]  My first radio show was called Religion on the Line.
[00:07:04]  It was on ABC in in LA.
[00:07:07]  This incredibly popular show.
[00:07:09]  And I I don't take credit for it.
[00:07:11]  I inherited a popular show.
[00:07:12]  I made it more popular, but I inherited one.
[00:07:15]  Priest rabbi minister, different ones each week.
[00:07:18]  After five years, I had I opened it up to every religion on earth.
[00:07:23]  And I had virtually every religion on earth.
[00:07:25]  I I had a Buddhist monk on once, and I said, because this was the way I could bounce off my understanding of religions off people who practice it.
[00:07:34]  That was the best.
[00:07:39]  Ten years to the week.
[00:07:42]  So I said to him, I said, I just want to understand something.
[00:07:48]  Is it the Buddhist ideal that if you lose a loved one?
[00:07:56]  you don't lament, you don't cry.
[00:08:03]  That's the way of things, and you accept it, and you don't...
[00:08:08]  Because you don't place your emotional world in the hands of others, as it were.
[00:08:15]  Anyway, he said, yes, ideally you would you would not cry.
[00:08:19]  That's right, if you're a Buddhist.
[00:08:21]  Because he didn't have children, he was a monk.
[00:08:28]  So I used a brother or sister as the example.
[00:08:37]  So people work these things out if they can.
[00:08:43]  Yeah.
[00:08:44]  San Fernando, California, Joe, hello.
[00:08:49]  Hello, Joe.
[00:08:50]  Hello, Mr. Brager.
[00:08:51]  I'm not gonna ask you how you are because you're wonderful, period.
[00:08:54]  Thank you.
[00:08:55]  Sweet.
[00:08:57]  Uh I don't I definitely reject it to the fact that uh in this universe, everything, oh, most things have do have a purpose.
[00:09:07]  And if we come back and we don't have any memory of past life, was the point?
[00:09:12]  It's a real waste of time.
[00:09:15]  That is common sense religiously.
[00:09:18]  Right, so yeah, I I I fully understand that.
[00:09:23]  But I I want you to understand nobody has a good answer to many of these problems.
[00:09:29]  What do you do with a a baby that that has suffered?
[00:09:34]  I'll keep you on because it's I'm curious.
[00:09:37]  There's no great uh religious answer to that either.