【英语语言学习】投胎转世

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

 

We're going to spend the next few minutes talking about a controversial theory, about living and dying and living again; reincarnation. It's long been a central tenet of certain spiritual traditions, but it's not an experience that's been rigorously tested by many scientists. Enter Jim Tucker. He's a professor of psychiatry¹ and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia, and he is doing exactly that - testing claims of reincarnation, especially those made by children. Dr. Tucker joins us from the Virginia Foundation, to talk about the science behind this phenomenon. Thanks so much for being with us.

 

DR. JIM TUCKER: Thanks very much for having me.

 

MARTIN: When did you first begin to get interested in this, in the idea of reincarnation as a ripe subject for scientific inquiry²?

 

TUCKER: Well, I got interested in it in the late '90s, but this work has actually been going on at the University of Virginia for 50 years. Over the decades, we've now studied over 2,500 cases of children who report memories of past lives. And what we try to do is to determine exactly what they have said and what's happened, and then see if it matches the life of somebody who lived and died before. Once I got involved, I began to focus on American cases. And I have explained some of the cases in this new book that I have out and really, some of the American ones are quite compelling.

 

MARTIN: Let's talk about a few of those. You mentioned your recent book. It's called "Return To Life." And you chronicle the stories of many children, including one that got a lot of national attention. It was the story of James Leininger. He was a boy who remembered being a World War II fighter pilot. Can you walk us through that case?

 

TUCKER: Sure. So James is the son of a Christian³ couple in Louisiana. And when he was little, he loved his toy planes. But also around the time of his second birthday, started having horrific nightmares four or five times a week - of being a plane crash. And then during the day, he talked about this plane crash and said that he had been a pilot, and that he had flown off of a boat. And his dad asked him the name of it, and he said Natoma. And he said he had been shot down by the Japanese; that he had been killed at Iwo Jima; and that he had a friend on the boat named Jack⁴ Larsen. Well, it turns out that there was an aircraft carrier called the USS Natoma Bay that was stationed in the Pacific during World War II. In fact, it was involved in Iwo Jima. And it lost one pilot there, a young man named James Huston. James Huston's plane crashed exactly the way that James Leininger had described - hit in the engine, exploding into fire, crashing into the water and quickly sinking. And when that happened, the pilot of the plane next to his was named Jack Larsen.

 

MARTIN: And how old was James when he was making these claims?

 

TUCKER: Well, it started when he was 2 - and a very young 2.

 

MARTIN: That's amazing.

 

TUCKER: Like with most of these cases, it faded away by the time he was 5 or 6 or 7, which is typical. But it was certainly there, quite strong, for some time.

 

MARTIN: And how do you know that these kids aren't echoing things they have heard their parents talk about or making up stories, using their imagination, articulating dreams they may have had?

 

TUCKER: Yeah. Well, certainly with the imagination part - if we had never been able to verify that what the child said matched somebody who died, then you could certainly just mark it down as being fantasy. But in cases like James', the previous person, James Huston, was so obscure - I mean, he was a pilot who was killed 50 years before; and he was from Pennsylvania, and James was in Louisiana - I mean, it seems absolutely impossible that he could have somehow gained this information as a 2-year-old through some sort of normal means. In fact, it took his dad a couple of years - well, really more than a couple of years; three or four years - to be able to track it all down and see that in fact, that what James was saying all did fit for this pilot who was killed.

 

MARTIN: So break down the science for me - because there will be a lot of people who hear this who think, there's just no way.

 

TUCKER: Well, I think it's very difficult to just map these cases onto a materialist⁵ understanding of reality. I mean, if physical matter, if the physical world is all there is, then I don't know how you can accept these cases and believe in them. But I think there are good reasons to think that consciousness can be considered a separate entity⁶ from physical reality. And in fact, some leading scientists in the past, like Max Planck, who's the father of quantum theory, said that he viewed consciousness as fundamental and that matter was derived⁷ from it. So in that case, it would mean that consciousness would not necessarily be dependent on a physical brain in order to survive, and could continue after the physical brain and after the body dies. In these cases, it seems - at least, on the face of it - that a consciousness has then become attached to a new brain, and has shown up as past life memories.

 

MARTIN: This may be a dumb question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. So does that mean - does a consciousness need to inhabit a body?

 

TUCKER: Well, we don't know, of course. But in a case like James Leininger - I mean, it was 50 years between lives. Now, who's to say he didn't inhabit another body in the meantime? But my guess would be no. Now, in this world, it may need to be in a physical body in order to be expressed; but it may well be that our brains are conduits for consciousness, but it is actually being created somewhere else.

 

MARTIN: So what are you trying to reveal or prove? What, to you, would constitute an important scientific development in this field?

 

TUCKER: Well, I don't know that I'm necessarily trying to prove anything, but I'm trying to sort of find out for myself what seems to be going on here. And I think these cases contribute to the body of evidence that consciousness - at least, in certain circumstances - can survive the death of the body; that life after death isn't necessarily just a fantasy or something to be considered on faith, but it can also be approached in an analytic⁸ way, and the idea can be judged on its merits.

 

MARTIN: You were clearly interested in this for a long time, and it's what motivates your work. But I wonder, as you have evaluated so many cases over the years, how has that informed your own understanding of an afterlife and what happens when we die? Has that changed at all for you?

 

TUCKER: Well, I've certainly become more persuaded that there is more than just the physical reality. I do think it's quite likely that if we do survive, that there's not just one experience that everyone has; that the afterlife may be as varied⁹ as life in this world.

 

MARTIN: That's Jim Tucker. He's a psychiatrist¹⁰ at the University of Virginia, and the author of "Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children who Remember Past Lives." Thank you so much for talking with us.

 

TUCKER: Thanks very much for having me.

1 psychiatry   

n.精神病学，精神病疗法

参考例句：

• The study appeared in the Amercian science Journal of Psychiatry.这个研究发表在美国精神病学的杂志上。
• A physician is someone who specializes in psychiatry.精神病专家是专门从事精神病治疗的人。

2 inquiry   

n.打听，询问，调查，查问

参考例句：

• Many parents have been pressing for an inquiry into the problem.许多家长迫切要求调查这个问题。
• The field of inquiry has narrowed down to five persons.调查的范围已经缩小到只剩5个人了。

3 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。

4 jack   

n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克

参考例句：

• I am looking for the headphone jack.我正在找寻头戴式耳机插孔。
• He lifted the car with a jack to change the flat tyre.他用千斤顶把车顶起来换下瘪轮胎。

5 materialist   

n. 唯物主义者

参考例句：

• Promote materialist dialectics and oppose metaphysics and scholasticism. 要提倡唯物辩证法，反对形而上学和烦琐哲学。
• Whoever denies this is not a materialist. 谁要是否定这一点，就不是一个唯物主义者。

6 entity   

n.实体，独立存在体，实际存在物

参考例句：

• The country is no longer one political entity.这个国家不再是一个统一的政治实体了。
• As a separate legal entity,the corporation must pay taxes.作为一个独立的法律实体，公司必须纳税。

7 derived   

vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取

参考例句：

• Many English words are derived from Latin and Greek. 英语很多词源出于拉丁文和希腊文。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He derived his enthusiasm for literature from his father. 他对文学的爱好是受他父亲的影响。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 analytic   

adj.分析的，用分析方法的

参考例句：

• The boy has an analytic mind. 这男孩有分析的头脑。
• Latin is a synthetic language,while English is analytic.拉丁文是一种综合性语言，而英语是一种分析性语言。

9 varied   

adj.多样的，多变化的

参考例句：

• The forms of art are many and varied.艺术的形式是多种多样的。
• The hotel has a varied programme of nightly entertainment.宾馆有各种晚间娱乐活动。

10 psychiatrist   

n.精神病专家；精神病医师

参考例句：

• He went to a psychiatrist about his compulsive gambling.他去看精神科医生治疗不能自拔的赌瘾。
• The psychiatrist corrected him gently.精神病医师彬彬有礼地纠正他。