Dying to Know

Holy Watermelon

Why are there no bear ghosts?

Nearly all the ghosts in the world seem to come from a specific period of time, long before any of us were born.

There is a universal obsession with death, so we're going to explore death from the perspective of those left behind. (Traditions about what lays beyond will be the subject of another episode.)

We talk about the Shiva tradition in Judaism, and the ghastly tradition of shades that dates back to at least as far as the monarch's encounter with the witch of Endor.

We explore some traditions common among Christian denominations, and also WAKES! Another strong ghostly tradition exists among Christians, but not universally shared.

We look at funerary and ghostly traditions among Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, and Zoroastrians; and we take some time to ponder the Ghanaian Fantasy Coffins, and the New Orleans Jazz Funeral.

What really deserves attention is the phenomenon of near-death experiences, not that they teach us about the world beyond, but they teach us an awful lot about ourselves. Raymond Moody put a lot of work into that field of NDEs, too bad it's all completely subjective neural chaos. DMT has been reported to offer a similar experience.

All this and more....

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[00:00:11] Katie Dooley: Hello, Preston.

[00:00:12] Preston Meyer: Hi, Katie.

[00:00:14] Katie Dooley: Get off your phone.

[00:00:15] Preston Meyer: Okay.

[00:00:18] Katie Dooley: It'll rot your brain on today's episode of--

[00:00:21] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast!

[00:00:24] Katie Dooley: I don't know how to make a segue into this one.

[00:00:27] Preston Meyer: This is a bit of a bummer.

[00:00:28] Katie Dooley: It's... I feel like it's a more awkward conversation than even our sex talk.

[00:00:33] Preston Meyer: I don't feel like it's more awkward.

[00:00:34] Katie Dooley: People don't like talking about death. We're going to talk about some gross things today.

[00:00:38] Preston Meyer: A little bit. But yeah, death is around us all the time. Can't really avoid it. That's the deal.

[00:00:44] Katie Dooley: No, it's, uh, inevitable. Like Thanos.

[00:00:48] Preston Meyer: That's what they say. Yeah, so I was talking to. A person that I work with the other day about his concern with ghosts. He was actually really worried about, um, the Titanic 2 expedition and all that nonsense, but the conversation led very quickly to ghosts, and it boggles my mind that we haven't just agreed that everywhere on the planet is super haunted or nowhere is.

[00:01:21] Katie Dooley: I have had that thought as well. Um, I don't disagree with him because. My house alone has been around since the 50s. You can't tell me something hasn't died nearby,

[00:01:33] Preston Meyer: Right?

[00:01:34] Katie Dooley: Actually, I have heard that there is an unfortunate story with the next-door house, so, um,

[00:01:40] Preston Meyer: Tell me more.

[00:01:41] Katie Dooley: Uh, apparently someone killed themselves next door before the current people...

[00:01:44] Preston Meyer: Bummer. Lived there. Are there haunting stories?

[00:01:46] Katie Dooley: Not that I've heard of.

[00:01:48] Preston Meyer: Okay. Just the unfortunate circumstances of death.

[00:01:51] Katie Dooley: Yes, but that's typically.

[00:01:54] Preston Meyer: What leads to a...

[00:01:55] Katie Dooley: Haunting story. And I always think about how I'm like, you know, get haunted by your cat or your dog. How come ghosts are only humans? There's no bear ghosts.

[00:02:03] Preston Meyer: It's a great question. Cocaine bear has unfinished business.

[00:02:09] Katie Dooley: We should name this episode, "How come there are no ghosts?" Though I do really like your title, which we will probably stay with. Um. But I have often thought.

[00:02:21] Preston Meyer: Yeah, for sure.

[00:02:23] Katie Dooley: Or, like... I don't know...

[00:02:25] Preston Meyer: Dinosaur ghosts? Why are we not haunted by the soul of absolutely ravaged Triceratops?

[00:02:33] Katie Dooley: And also there's like, I don't know, ghosts feel like they're from a very specific time-period. Like, if you hear, like, how come we all have a ghost kicking around from the 1200s?

[00:02:42] Preston Meyer: Right? All ghosts are Dickensian.

[00:02:44] Katie Dooley: Yeah, or more modern but, uh, anyway.

[00:02:54] Preston Meyer: Death is great, and we have really weird ways of dealing with it.

[00:02:58] Katie Dooley: We really do. And I will sort of preface this before we break it down by religion is like we kind of think our way is the right way or the normal way. And reading some of these, some was like, that actually makes a lot of sense on how they handle death. And then some of them, I'm like, that's fucking weird, I won't...

[00:03:18] Preston Meyer: Well, if you see one thing often enough, even if you aren't behind it theologically, the habits are still your habits. Normal gets normal.

[00:03:27] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So that was, you know, eye opening to say the least.houldUm, anyway, so we kick it off with our good old Abrahamic buddies.

[00:03:39] Preston Meyer: Let's do it. Stick with what's most familiar, and then we'll dig into. Yeah, the good stuff. So in Judaism, respect for the dead is one of the most important mitzvot. I feel like we've used this word before. It's commandments. So really take care of the dead. Traditionally, Jewish people bury their dead intact. Some people mostly, you know, you're more reform, more liberal Jewish groups will do the cremation thing. I think that's generally the the theme we'll see moving forward is the more conservatives will not like cremation. We're going to run out of space real soon. An interesting thing that I have read about Judaism is that cremation is counted as destruction of property.

[00:04:31] Katie Dooley: Who's property?

[00:04:35] Preston Meyer: That's an interesting question.

[00:04:37] Katie Dooley: God's property.

[00:04:38] Preston Meyer: That makes sense. But there's also the strong family thing in Judaism where there's like you, you belong to your family in this way that you are. If you're not moving that body around yourself anymore, you're property.

[00:04:56] Katie Dooley: Oh. We'll, move you around. Oh, wait, that's a different tradition to talk about.

[00:05:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Uh, Jewish people tend to observe a strict week of mourning after a funeral. They call this the shiva. Uh, it's just the number seven. So seven days of mourning. And during this process, mirrors in the home are often covered. And it's good to keep candles burning. And mourners will sit on nice low stools, like low as your squatty potty.

[00:05:33] Katie Dooley: I'm too old for that. I'm not even that old.

[00:05:36] Preston Meyer: It's a little tough, but these are all indications of mourning. Black veil is good for that. Things like that. Yeah.

[00:05:43] Katie Dooley: Abrahamic and Western favour black for mourning.

[00:05:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah and traditionally. Uh, you don't want to hasten up a death. You don't want to speed things along, even if you know death is imminent. Our country has a pretty interesting relationship with assisted death.

[00:06:05] Katie Dooley: I think it's going to have to change anyway. That's not to digress too much. We could go on and chat about that, but I have my opinion.

[00:06:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah, having it available makes perfect sense. The reality of the government actually pressuring people into it. I'm not a big fan of.

[00:06:26] Katie Dooley: But I yeah, I mean it shouldn't be a government decision, but just like your pets, to let someone live in pain just so they can live as long as possible. And health care costs are only going to get more expensive, for whomever.

[00:06:42] Preston Meyer: If the only activity on your schedule of day-to-day for months on end is eating up resources, at some point you got to figure out maybe there's a better plan.

[00:06:54] Katie Dooley: Well, and I care less about resources as opposed to quality of life. Like we have family members that live every day in pain and then they're also paying. For fentanyl patches, which are very expensive to manage that pain that they're still in.

[00:07:10] Preston Meyer: Fentanyl is a wild thing.

[00:07:13] Katie Dooley: Anyway, wild.

[00:07:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah. But as you may have deduced, we're going to talk about some ghosts today.

[00:07:23] Katie Dooley: Really wants to talk about ghosts today. So.

[00:07:25] Preston Meyer: So the Tanakh does mention ghosts. Um, there's a lot of different kinds of ghosts I've been in unrelated studies, been trying to suss out how different people categorize ghosts.

[00:07:39] Katie Dooley: Like angels.

[00:07:40] Preston Meyer: with A little bit. Yeah. Okay, so you've got poltergeists who can legit interact with the physical world, and then you've got shades which are not so much.

[00:07:51] Katie Dooley: They're there, but they're they can't do anything.

[00:07:53] Preston Meyer: Right. Like maybe you can communicate them. Maybe not, but they just they may be barely visible. They might be more visible, but they're not going to interact physically with the world. So they're like a shadow. So that's a shade sort of thing. So what we have in the Tanakh usually talks about shades more than poltergeists that we have in ancient Israel, the belief that ghosts, the spirits of the departed, could be summoned and you could have conversations with them and learn things from them. The story of Saul and the Witch of Endor is an example.

[00:08:35] Katie Dooley: That's from Star Wars, right?

[00:08:38] Preston Meyer: George Lucas is not half as original as he likes to get credit for. And Endor was just an old place. No Ewoks, which is just Wookiee backwards. Almost not perfect.

[00:08:55] Katie Dooley: I see your theory. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:08:57] Preston Meyer: No, the plan was that they were going to go to the Wookiee homeworld in Return of the Jedi. And then they couldn't figure out how to do it in a reasonable way. So they decided, okay, we'll make smaller costumes and just cast little people.

[00:09:15] Katie Dooley: Okay. Wow. Also, some Star Wars backstory from Preston today. Sorry, I interrupted, and I regret interrupting now.

[00:09:26] Preston Meyer: So the shades are a thing that is a matter of concern in Jewish folklore. And in their theology a little bit as well. There are explicit commandments. Do not mess with people who summon ghosts. Which makes sense. And they also talk about shades that can linger in the land and just stay near the place where they lived or where they died. Isaiah talks a little bit about those too. So I think it's kind of interesting. Ghosts, very solid, part of the religious tradition and there are in more recent than biblical texts, traditions of these shades actually possessing a body usually for a short time just to accomplish a specific task. We talked about this a little bit in our voodoo episode. Actually, it's the same sort of idea.

[00:10:22] Katie Dooley: Which makes, I was gonna say, makes a bit of sense knowing the origins of Voodoo, right?

[00:10:27] Preston Meyer: Well, especially the way it interacted with other religions on its way here. Yeah. So kind of interesting that this possession business is really interesting. And as we get into Christianity, there's stories of ghosts in the New Testament, in Jewish populations where the story feels a lot different, knowing that there's this belief locally that these would be things that dead people are coming back to accomplish, rather than demons like the Greek interpretation jumps onto it. Mhm. It's kind of weird. Kind of fun.

[00:11:06] Katie Dooley: Um, you know who loves death? Christian?

[00:11:09] Preston Meyer: Uh, I don't even remember where the quote came from originally, but I feel like I've quoted it a few times. Christians are just way too excited to die. '

[00:11:19] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Oh, man, they love it. Why is that Preston?

[00:11:23] Preston Meyer: That we talk so much about the promise that the next life is going to be better. And yeah, there's there's so much wrong with this world that it makes sense to hope for something better. But when it gets anywhere close to somebody else realizing that you're too excited to die, you have really screwed up where your focuses are.

[00:11:44] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And even like trying to try to make it all happen faster, trying to bring up the Second Coming. It's like.

[00:11:52] Preston Meyer: Well, there's there's a lot of different ideas of what is supposed to trigger the Second Coming.

[00:11:58] Katie Dooley: Humans aren't going to do it.

[00:12:00] Preston Meyer: It's outside our control. We can't control God.

[00:12:03] Katie Dooley: Doesn't mean people aren't trying because they can't wait. Yeah. Anyway, um, as I mentioned in Christians historically also don't like cremation because there would be no corpse when Jesus comes back and raises everyone from the dead, or he Christians believe in a physical resurrection.

[00:12:23] Preston Meyer: Yeah, your body's got to rise from the grave. And as you pivot at the waist, you got to be facing east.

[00:12:28] Katie Dooley: That sounds horrifying. It's all these and they all have to claw up six feet. Wow. Yeah.

[00:12:37] Preston Meyer: Imagine the horror that this event would be.

[00:12:39] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Anyway. But again, a lot of them are more relaxed now. I mean, I think it's just even people in my world, both of my grandparents were cremated and they were Christians. So. Anyway, I feel like they're the most relaxed now of any of the groups.

[00:12:59] Preston Meyer: Probably,yeah.

[00:13:02] Katie Dooley: I mean, Christian is a really big umbrella.

[00:13:06] Preston Meyer: It sure is

[00:13:07] But I'm sure there's groups within Christianity that still love a good burial, probably Catholic.

[00:13:13] Preston Meyer: So I went to my granddad's funeral last...

[00:13:17] Katie Dooley: We both did a bunch of funerals recently.

[00:13:18] Preston Meyer: Yeah. What a time.

[00:13:20] Katie Dooley: Yeah.

[00:13:21] Preston Meyer: And I mean it was interesting that I had never talked about religion at all with my granddad. I'd never thought that he identified as Christian. Found out at his funeral. This was an important detail to somebody. Yeah. So there was a little ash cross dropped on his coffin and was laid down on the ground, making sure that he was facing in a way that if you were to bend at the waist, he'd be facing east.

[00:13:52] Katie Dooley: In six feet of dirt.

[00:13:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah it was it was an interesting learning experience.

[00:13:59] Katie Dooley: Well, good.

[00:13:59] Preston Meyer: And now we're talking about death.

[00:14:01] Katie Dooley: Now we're talking about death in the terms of Christian wakes are a Christian thing.

[00:14:08] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I haven't heard the word wake used a lot outside of a Catholic context. Um, though I'm certainly can't say that that's not happening, but it's certainly an old tradition.

[00:14:20] Katie Dooley: Yeahand as someone who's involved with the Irish community, the Irish still love a good wake. I don't know too many other groups that do it. And I don't know if that's because it's Irish or because it's Catholic, like what that Venn diagram looks like. And how much is just the circles I run in. But the Irish love a good wake. The name comes from staying up long hours watching over the dead while reciting psalms.

[00:14:43] Preston Meyer: So we're not talking about the risk of the dead waking up. It's just that you got to stay awake to watch the body.

[00:14:50] Katie Dooley: To watch.

[00:14:51] Preston Meyer: In case it wakes up.

[00:14:53] Katie Dooley: in case it wakes up to make sure.

[00:14:55] Preston Meyer: I mean, there it does make sense because historically we we have had situations aplenty enough that we've taken precautions.

[00:15:05] Katie Dooley: Bells and...

[00:15:05] Preston Meyer: Where the bodies do occasionally get back up again after we thought they were dead. But we're just dumb.

[00:15:13] Katie Dooley: If you want to hear a great vaudeville song about exactly that, it's called Tim Finnegan's Wake and basically he's dead and everyone's sad. And then someone spills whiskey on him and he comes back to life because whiskey.

[00:15:27] Preston Meyer: It's like the plants in my office.

[00:15:31] Katie Dooley: Water. Oh. That's terrible. Preston.

[00:15:38] Preston Meyer: Uh, no one's perfect.

[00:15:41] Katie Dooley: You know, you don't need to keep plants if that's... If you're just gonna kill him.

[00:15:45] Preston Meyer: I'm gonna be honest. I don't keep plants in my office, and the person who generally takes care of them generally takes very good care of them. But there are occasionally exceptions.

[00:15:59] Katie Dooley: We're not going to do a full episode on Heaven or Hell. But Christians and even Muslims and Jews, depending on whether you're good or bad, good or bad, you get sent to heaven or hell. Dun dun dun. Yes, that definitely deserves its own episode.

[00:16:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah, for most of history, the majority of Christians and an awful lot of segments of the Jewish population as well, have believed in a tiered series of heavens. In our angels episode, we talked about the ninth heaven, where like, the greatest of the angels live forever with God. And, um, the seventh heaven is a thing that happens occasionally in the way. What's the word I'm looking for? It's a common enough English idiom. Um, there's a TV show.

[00:16:48] Katie Dooley: I know.

[00:16:49] Preston Meyer: Who is in that TV show. I watched it for a year.

[00:16:53] Katie Dooley: The most famous person out of Seventh Heaven was Jessica Biel. She was the second oldest daughter. Um, the guy who played the Christian pastor ended up being a pedophile in real life.

[00:17:03] Preston Meyer: Oh, no.

[00:17:04] Katie Dooley: Yeah, she was the most famous. I can't think of any of the other actors names now. Um, the older there was another.

[00:17:10] Preston Meyer: Singer who was, like, really popular for a really short time. That was from that show, wasn't there? I don't know. I've got nothing.

[00:17:17] Katie Dooley: Maybe as a side character, but of the family, only Jessica Biel made it anywhere significant. I mean, JT and all and actually having some decent movie roles afterwards,

[00:17:27] Preston Meyer: Right? Good for her.

[00:17:30] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I mean, considering no one else.

[00:17:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The phrase I'm on cloud nine. Yeah, I don't think you hear that a whole lot anymore either. But that was a thing.

[00:17:38] Katie Dooley: That Cloud Nine superstore.

[00:17:39] Preston Meyer: Your grandpappy, probably said... Man, Superstore was a good show.

[00:17:43] Katie Dooley: It was a good show. Better than better than Seventh Heaven.

[00:17:45] Preston Meyer: Yes. Um, yeah. So for a long time, we talked about these tiered heavens that. Yeah, salvation is universal, but because people suck to different degrees, some of us are going to achieve a better situation.

[00:18:04] Or hell yeah.

[00:18:05] Preston Meyer: Protestants, especially, like the evangelical movement, mostly believe in the simple dichotomy of black and white, no shades of gray. Everything that's wrong with you is going to be fixed or burn forever in hell. It's hard to say that I see the appeal to that. I don't really like it.

[00:18:23] Katie Dooley: I mean.

[00:18:24] Preston Meyer: It takes away your identity.

[00:18:25] Katie Dooley: Well, and if it's that black and white, then everyone's going to hell because nobody's.

[00:18:28] Preston Meyer: And that's absolutely contrary to the mission of Jesus. Oh, well.

[00:18:34] Katie Dooley: I guess we'll find out one day.

[00:18:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I think it's a lot more reasonable to accept this more classical idea of shades of gray. It just makes sense. Um, different types of people organized and divided based on the way they choose to live their lives would merit different levels of heaven, I think is really a really clean way of explaining it. There was a lady I used to visit for a while when I lived in New Jersey who hated the idea that God would separate people based on any judgment at all. It makes a lot more sense that we would separate ourselves, right? If you like stealing but hate violence, there's a community for you where you're safe from the violent. But the people who don't like being robbed are safe from you.

[00:19:32] Katie Dooley: That's good. So you just all rob each other for all time.

[00:19:35] Preston Meyer: Yeah,

[00:19:37] Katie Dooley: That's a pretty good punishment.

[00:19:38] Preston Meyer: Right?

[00:19:39] Katie Dooley: You steal something, then you turn around and your shit's got. Ah.

[00:19:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah.

[00:19:42] Katie Dooley: So you got to steal more.

[00:19:44] Preston Meyer: It feels a lot like the punishment fitting the crime. Yeah.

[00:19:49] Katie Dooley: Um, we didn't put in our notes, but I know, I mean, I went to a Catholic funeral recently. We were... I don't know if you want to touch on that.

[00:19:57] Preston Meyer: Sure, yeah. What is it that you experienced that you want to share?

[00:20:00] Katie Dooley: I mean i've been told 2 or 3 Catholic funerals, now? Obviously, this one, most recently Catholic funerals are long because they do a full mass. I will say the thing about Catholic funeral, there's a lot of talk about God and not nearly as much about the person.

[00:20:18] Preston Meyer: Sure. Now, is this a mass in addition to the daily mass, or is it just a not just a funeral attached to the daily mass?

[00:20:27] Katie Dooley: No, they do... My understanding is they do a separate funeral mass.

[00:20:31] Preston Meyer: I mean, nobody's accusing the Catholics of being efficient.

[00:20:35] Katie Dooley: No, because it also took a long time. And then of course, I was like looking for the reliquary, because now we know from our lovely guest, Frank McMahon, confirmed that there is a holy relic in every Catholic church. So I'm looking for bits of saints.

[00:20:49] Preston Meyer: Well, at the bare minimum, they'll have one locked away in the tabernacle, right? And you wouldn't get to see that. But yeah, if there's more about on on display.

[00:20:59] Katie Dooley: There was something pretty fancy in a corner. And I was like, I don't know what that is. Okay, I didn't get close enough because I left the front for the family, but, uh.

[00:21:07] Preston Meyer: No, no, you got to push your way through during a funeral.

[00:21:10] Katie Dooley: During it. I need a front row seat, please, because I just need a front row seat. Um, but that's the biggest thing. Like. I mean, the last funeral I went to was as secular as a funeral gets. And they talk a lot about the person that passed. Um, so it's just. Different. But yeah, you know, everyone, priests especially very hopeful that she's in a better place. And we're the ones who are the losers an I don't know, I mean, you know, I don't believe any of that. I was like, is she. I mean, it's nice to think, but. Why are there no bear ghosts?

[00:21:54] Preston Meyer: Because they don't have unfinished business. They got their honey. They're happy.

[00:22:01] Katie Dooley: But. Right. If there's no bear heaven and bear hell, why is there human heaven? Human hell? Why are there no bear ghosts? That's my thesis.

[00:22:14] Preston Meyer: I have a hypothesis. That bear heaven is fish hell. It's a very efficient system, and it's good enough that they don't need to linger here on Earth.

[00:22:29] Katie Dooley: I've heard that, uh, squirrel hell is dog heaven.

[00:22:32] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Perfect. So Christianity does inherit a lot from Jewish thought. It makes sense. Dispensationalism has got some tricky bits to it, but the inheritance system is inarguable. And that includes the matter of ghosts and the idea of possessing spirits I already mentioned shows up with the New Testament, but Greco-Roman thought shows a lot of its influence in the way that we see demons described in the Christian tradition that almost every ghost that you see described in the New Testament, apart from when they think that maybe Jesus is a ghost until he says, touch me and find out.

[00:23:17] Katie Dooley: Pull my finger. Preston just wiggled his finger at me, so... "Pull my finger." - Jesus, Matthew 22:34.

[00:23:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah, all the the ghosts are, well, terrible demons possessing people or making everybody have a bad time. Jehovah's Witnesses and Christadelphians outright deny the possibility of ghosts, which is really frustrating for them when you point out the holes in that logic. But. Oh, well they just stopped visiting.

[00:23:52] Katie Dooley: As much as I, uh, you know, try to be fair to... They're the least Christian of the Christians.

[00:23:59] Preston Meyer: I mean, it's so hard to delineate what what is Christian and what isn't.

[00:24:03] Katie Dooley: I know, but that's was my point. I was trying to poorly word, but yeah, but they're at least Christian.

[00:24:12] Preston Meyer: I can't argue with that in this moment.

[00:24:15] Katie Dooley: My next thesis.

[00:24:18] Preston Meyer: Um, Seventh-day Adventist got a lot of those in my family. They teach that any ghost you might encounter is absolutely, certainly a demon in disguise.

[00:24:28] Katie Dooley: Cool.

[00:24:29] Preston Meyer: Sure. Not that I'm encountering a whole lot of ghosts.

[00:24:34] Katie Dooley: No, but I just, like. I'm imagining a ghost pulling off its ghost mask, like in Scooby Doo and be like there's a demon under here.

[00:24:43] Preston Meyer: I like that imagery.

[00:24:44] Katie Dooley: Thank you.

[00:24:45] Preston Meyer: But generally everybody agrees they can basically shapeshift.

[00:24:48] Katie Dooley: Oh, oh that makes a lot more sense, but it's way less cool.

[00:24:54] Preston Meyer: Right? Most other Christians admit the possibility of the disguise problem, but acknowledge that a ghost could genuinely be the dead person you're after. The ghost that we see in the Witch of Endor story. It's not really answered in a really concrete way. Whether or not this should be expected to be a demon in disguise or the dead prophet returned. Because that wasn't the important part of the story. The important part of the story was stop getting witches to summon demons. Many Christians believe that the dead can take on the role of angel.

[00:25:34] Katie Dooley: Which is where, as we're writing these notes, I was like, we need to separate heaven and hell. And even we talked about angels. And I was like, but dead people become angels.

[00:25:43] Preston Meyer: Right.

[00:25:43] Katie Dooley: One so yeah, there's like a whole other piece to this.

[00:25:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Um, the Revelation talks about how there's like a third of the host of Heaven fell with Lucifer, as most people prefer to call him.

[00:25:57] Katie Dooley: Satan is accurate.

[00:25:59] Preston Meyer: [00:25:59]Satan is a far more helpful thing here. And so those generally [00:26:03] get to be the ones that we call demons within Christian theology models. But there are also talks of, well, if you're just a bad person, you can become a demon that way too. It's exciting. It gives you something to aspire to if you don't want to change your ways. Lots of goodies.

[00:26:23] Katie Dooley: Cool. The last of the Abrahamic religions, of course, is Islam. And I mean last chronologically

[00:26:23] Preston Meyer: Of course and the last one we're talking about.

[00:26:33] Katie Dooley: And the last one we're talking about today.

[00:26:34] Preston Meyer: Because we usually stick.

[00:26:36] Katie Dooley: Last but not least. Very similar, obviously, it's been influenced by Judaism and Christianity. When death is imminent, a family member or close friend is present to say the shahada, which is the, uh,

[00:26:49] Preston Meyer: There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet.

[00:26:53] Katie Dooley: Yes. Uh, there's a word for it. Something of faith.

[00:26:57] Preston Meyer: Uh, statement of faith. Statement.

[00:26:58] Katie Dooley: Declaration. Declaration. Thank you. Declaration of faith. We talked about this in our Islam so years ago. But the shahada is also recited when you're born. So it's this. If you're born a Muslim, it's kind of a nice full-circle moment.

[00:27:12] Preston Meyer: It's a very convenient conversion tool. All you got to do is shout that in somebody's ear and bam.

[00:27:18] Katie Dooley: You actually shout it?

[00:27:20] Preston Meyer: I mean, some people like like the video of the guy who doing like a really awful baptism of a baby with dunk, dunk dunk dunk dunk.

[00:27:28] Katie Dooley: Baby gets shaken baby.

[00:27:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And the parents are just horrified. There are people who shout at the children. But that's not likely the typical format.

[00:27:39] Katie Dooley: All right. Again with like with the other Abrahamic faiths and more strictly Muslims do not cremate their dead. Some Jews do. I'd say half of Christians do, and no Muslims do. They do not cremate their dead because they believe in the physical resurrection that will happen. And autopsies are also forbidden. Unnecessary autopsies, obviously. I presume in the case of murder they would do an autopsy. But if someone dies in their home, they don't do autopsies

[00:28:11] Preston Meyer: Right. There's I mean, there are places where autopsies just aren't happening. But here in North America, yeah, if something bad happens, it's going to happen. And you can put on your frowny face all you want. It's still going to happen. You just muscle through it.

[00:28:30] Katie Dooley: Uh, but organ donation is okay because it helps people.

[00:28:33] Preston Meyer: So I'm really glad that exception exists. It feels weird.

[00:28:39] Katie Dooley: It feels contradictory.

[00:28:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah. But I appreciate that exception exists because it helps people.

[00:28:45] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I mean, you know, someone's dead and you don't care why they died. What is the point of an autopsy? Right. If they're 80 something years old.

[00:28:56] Preston Meyer: Yeah.

[00:28:57] Katie Dooley: And they died at home in their bed or in a hospital in the bed.

[00:29:00] Preston Meyer: There's gonna come a time 100 years from now, and our podcast will still be available on podcast libraries. And somebody's going to hear that it was normal for us to die at 80 and go. What the hell was wrong with these people?

[00:29:16] Katie Dooley: You think our life expectancy is going to get that?

[00:29:18] Preston Meyer: I think our life expectancy can reasonably be expected to be extended by decades. I got high hopes. We'll see.

[00:29:28] Katie Dooley: Uh, bodies are originally washed and wrapped in a white sheet before burial. And they are washed three times by a family member of the same gender as the deceased. Sharia law dictates that funeral planning start immediately after the death, and bodies are buried quickly. There are no viewings, so no wakes. You did not stay up all night drinking with your dead grandma. Have you seen Derry Girls?

[00:29:55] Preston Meyer: I've seen a little bit of Derry Girls, but I definitely have not seen whatever has come to your mind.

[00:30:00] Katie Dooley: There's an episode and they're at someone's wake. And my favorite character, Sister Michael, she's a curmudgeonly nun. Who I don't even know if she has that much faith. And there's one part. She's at this wake and she's talking to a family member. The family member is very annoying. She's like, oh my God, is this my wake? Am I dead? Am I in hell?

[00:30:23] Preston Meyer: I love it.

[00:30:26] Katie Dooley: Sister Michael, I'll show it to you after I love her. I watched through the whole series, and it's filled with charming teens. I was like, no, that grumpy old lady. That's my favorite.

[00:30:38] Preston Meyer: That sounds right. So, if you were wondering. Yes, Muslims believe in ghosts. Uh, the spirits of the dead are supposed to go on to an underworld called Barzakh.

[00:30:51] Katie Dooley: Oh, that's a good name.

[00:30:52] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I like the name. Be honest, I did not look up what the name means. I'm sure it's got meaning, but I'll look it up later. Improper burial can impede the journey to this underworld.

[00:31:03] Katie Dooley: Oh, that's why they're so regimented in it, okay.

[00:31:06] Preston Meyer: Because you don't want to risk screwing this up, and then you've got a ghost wandering around because, I mean, if you ever notice ghosts, it's not because they're doing nice things for you. Nobody's emptying your dishwasher. It's not happening.

[00:31:19] Katie Dooley: Oh, you seen that webcomic of this little ghost? And he's like, I love home decorating. And he's, like, moving around frames and vases, and the family's like, ah, but he's just this cute little ghost. It's like, I love this work. It makes me way too happy, but also sad.

[00:31:34] Preston Meyer: I love it. Yeah, that's great. Um, so the shades of righteous spirits are expected to linger at their own graves, which feels a little bit weird. I had to dig at this. There's like, the soul goes on to the underworld and awaits resurrection. But a shade, a shadow of that soul lingers at the grave so that people can come and talk to it and get whatever great mystic knowledge is reserved for, not the living. But apparently the shades are willing to share it sometime.

[00:32:16] Katie Dooley: It feels like a pretty common practice of like.

[00:32:18] Preston Meyer: Yeah.

[00:32:19] Katie Dooley: Visiting grave to talk to a loved one.

[00:32:21] Preston Meyer: I would say it's pretty close to universal that you would go to wherever you buried your loved ones to talk to them, hoping to get some sort of answer.

[00:32:32] Katie Dooley: But they believe that they actually stay there. That's cool.

[00:32:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's kind of nifty.

[00:32:38] Katie Dooley: Yeah. All right. Heading to the East air quotes.

[00:32:44] Preston Meyer: Vaguely eastward from where we were.

[00:32:46] Katie Dooley: Or where we're heading to the Dharmic religions is actually a better title. Hinduism.

[00:32:52] Preston Meyer: Yeah.

[00:32:54] Katie Dooley: So when death is near, it is common to obtain water for purification from the Ganges River, which is considered sacred.

[00:33:02] Preston Meyer: Remember we talked about how the Hindu people are the river folks.

[00:33:05] Katie Dooley: The river folk is the part to be surrounded by loved ones at the time of your death. If the body is left alone, uh, light, ideally, a candle should be left near the body as close to the head as can be done safely so.

[00:33:19] Preston Meyer: Yeah. You don't want them catching on fire.

[00:33:20] Katie Dooley: No. Uh, to comfort the lingering spirit. Generally for Hindus, families are encouraged to remain conservative in their mourning, allowing the soul to move on quickly to its next stage. The soul is said to linger as long as people hold it with their thoughts. So mourners are encouraged to focus on happy thoughts and memories. I like that.

[00:33:41] Preston Meyer: Right? So it's okay to mourn, but not too long and not too negatively. Which is good. Remember the good times.

[00:33:51] Katie Dooley: Families typically prefer to bury the body within a day. Any work the coroner might need to do is a major inconvenience.

[00:33:58] Preston Meyer: I mean, that's true, generally.

[00:34:02] Katie Dooley: All organs need to be returned to their place before burial. So no organ donation here.

[00:34:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I'm there's definitely going to be exceptions to that. Some people are a lot more liberal than but the the general religious expectation is leave it be.

[00:34:20] Katie Dooley: The soul is believed to carry on to its next incarnation, whether as an angel, a human or an animal. Or better yet, escape the cycle of samsara and recombine with Brahma, the source of all creation, potentially to be recycled into creation. But that would be as a nearly totally new soul.

[00:34:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah, the this cycle of samsara is. A really interesting thing to study so much potential or just go back and recombine with God. And maybe he'll use you again.

[00:34:54] Katie Dooley: Maybe he'll use you for something else. You've done it. But now you're a rock. Because he needed a rock right here. Yeah, ad if you'll recall, the you come back based on how good you are. Good you were your karma in your past lives. So if you're doing good, you'll come back as something better. You're not doing so good. You're heading back to that rock.

[00:35:18] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And that's historically that was like the way to move between casts was just.

[00:35:26] Katie Dooley: Being reborn.

[00:35:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And now we've seen in some places some movement between castees is more possible than in other places.

[00:35:37] Katie Dooley: I mean, this generaetion, I think, is caring less about caste than ever before. And I'm sure in the next 20, 30, 40 years, it'll...

[00:35:47] Preston Meyer: Get a little bit better every generation. Yeah, one can hope anyway.

[00:35:52] Katie Dooley: Tell me about the Ghost, though.

[00:35:53] Preston Meyer: Oh, man. So there's some there's some baggage here with Hindu ghosts. You're supposed to move on to the next life.

[00:36:01] Katie Dooley: So if you don't, you're downgrading.

[00:36:05] Preston Meyer: Right? You're supposed to get a new body.

[00:36:07] Katie Dooley: So a ghost is like a variant of Loki. You've come out of the timeline.

[00:36:14] Preston Meyer: A little bit.

[00:36:15] Katie Dooley: Interesting.

[00:36:16] Preston Meyer: I mean, to the point where you've got folks like the TVA saying, no, you need to get back in line. Yeah, that's a little that is a fair enough analogy of what we're looking at. Okay. It's not perfect.

[00:36:29] Katie Dooley: But you're right because you're either supposed to come back better or come back worse. So if you're not coming back at all and you're not escaping samsara, there's a problem. Okay. I can't wait to hear this.

[00:36:40] Preston Meyer: So go start a very serious matter. Reincarnation is the normal path. Something is keeping spirits from passing on to the next phase, which could theoretically be nirvana. But if you're in this situation where you're lingering here, maybe that next step isn't Nirvana. So there's a good list of things that might prevent a spirit from moving on, and thus lingering is a noticeable and likely malevolent spirit. We've got improper burial. So a lot of religions worry about burying people properly to prevent ghost problems. Uh, we've got violent death. Loads of fun there. Unfinished business. I mean, that's bad karma. Most of these are bad karma type things. Sometimes it's not your karma, but other people's karma on you. But if you've got unfinished business, that's your own karma. And the worst of all of these, the one that had some serious baggage that I thought was really interesting is if a woman dies in childbirth or at the abuse of her in-laws, then she is said to return as a churel or chudel or whatever. 400 different ways are pronouncing that based on the various languages of the region. A malevolent and destructive spirit is what a churel is, and they are focused on the destruction of the family that wronged her. Yeah, it's apparently very dramatic, caused a lot of problems, and they've got ghost hunters to deal with that.

[00:38:15] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I was going to say that sounds like the plot of a good Bollywood movie.

[00:38:20] Preston Meyer: There's got to be one, right? The odds are good.

[00:38:23] Katie Dooley: The odds are... I might have to do some digging. Yeah. Cool. Buddhism.

[00:38:30] Preston Meyer: So I remember showing you a video a little while ago that looked super suspicious.

[00:38:35] Katie Dooley: I remember when I saw this, I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. Um, so Buddhism sort of overarching, very similar to Hinduism, trying to escape the cycle of life and death. But there's some nuances and some practices within Buddhism that are neat slash kinda gross.

[00:38:52] Preston Meyer: Yeah, they're care for the dead is completely incompatible with what we see in the Hindu tradition.

[00:38:58] Katie Dooley: I'm tempted to put a trigger warning on this part of the episode. I found it a bit gross. Sure, mostly the sokushinbutsu.

[00:39:06] Preston Meyer: You've been warned. Skip ahead five minutes if you don't want to handle this.

[00:39:09] Katie Dooley: Yeah, it's just like body horror is a bit strong, but it is a little gross. So we're gonna talk about Tibetan sky burials. Tell me about this video that you showed me.

[00:39:18] Preston Meyer: So there was this person in a little corral full of vultures because they don't always just fly around waiting for stuff. Sometimes they know where the good stuff is, and sometimes they're part of a farm. And this person was just chopping up a human skeleton up. It was a pretty clean skeleton. Somebody had already taken care of business.

[00:39:39] Katie Dooley: And it was very clear from the rib cage that it was a human skeleton.

[00:39:43] Preston Meyer: It was very obviously human.

[00:39:45] Katie Dooley: So this was a Tibetan sky burial. Sky burial. I don't know if it was in Tibet, but that's where it comes from. The term sky burial is a Western term. The actual practice, the translation translates to giving alms to the birds, which I kind of love.

[00:40:00] Preston Meyer: It's for the birds.

[00:40:02] Katie Dooley: This is a practice where the corpse is placed on a mountain to decompose through exposure to the elements and animal scavenging. Obviously, in the case Preston's talking about, for whatever reason, they need to speed it up. Or.

[00:40:14] Preston Meyer: I mean, this could have been taking care of the skeleton after the scavenging. Yeah.

[00:40:20] Katie Dooley: So Vajrayana Buddhists believe that the body is an empty vessel once the spirit has left. So none of this physical resurrection and therefore there's no reason to keep it. The person's got a new body somewhere else. They died. They've resurrected. They're not sorry, reincarnated somewhere else.

[00:40:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah, Buddhists just generally aren't terribly worried about the corpse. And that's nice. I can appreciate that. Just don't worry about it.

[00:40:49] Katie Dooley: Another Buddhist practice that mildly traumatized me. And it has a I feel like a deeper theological discussion we could talk about is Sokushinbutsu is the practice of self-mummification.

[00:41:06] Preston Meyer: So gross.

[00:41:06] Katie Dooley: Japanese. It started by Japanese Buddhist monks. Um, it's an ascetic practice. Acetic, ascetic? I always say it wrong.

[00:41:14] Preston Meyer: Acetic is a kind of acid.

[00:41:17] Katie Dooley: It's an ascetic practice that takes about 3000 days. That's what, eight years, roughly.

[00:41:22] Preston Meyer: Sure.

[00:41:23] Katie Dooley: To complete. And it involves essentially eating a tree. Monks would eat pine needles, resin and seeds found in these trees, and the process eventually eliminates all body fat.

[00:41:38] Preston Meyer: So you've you've had Buckley's tastes awful, but it works.

[00:41:42] Katie Dooley: Yeah, that's part of the tree.

[00:41:43] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So the reason that it tastes awful and works is because pine needle oil is mildly toxic. That's why grass doesn't grow right up to the base of the tree. Why would you want to eat pine needles? Unless, of course, this is your plan.

[00:41:59] Katie Dooley: Well. And yes. And this is I'll finish explaining it. But this like this idea and I guess it's like self-flagellation of, like, what is so important that you're willing to do this. And as an atheist I'm like, mm, nothing. Anyway, we'll we'll come back to that. Continue explaining this horrific process. So eating the tree eliminates all body fat. It does result in the starvation that it leaves the body well preserved, and they found corpses with skin, hair, teeth, nails in the forest, which is wild, and obviously probably because you're right of the biotoxins animals don't touch them right, and the skin doesn't rot away. So I don't know who figured this out. I don't know why anyone wanted to figure this out, but.

[00:42:44] Preston Meyer: Right. There's there's so much that we do that like knowing it. Sure. We can keep going. How did we first find out? Like cheese. The milk went so bad and then all of a sudden was fine again.

[00:43:03] Katie Dooley: There's a lot of things in life. I'm like, how did we figure this out? This is one I don't think we needed to figure out but... So the practice has been banned since the late 1800s in Japan. But and there's pictures of this if you do like this kind of stuff. The Buddhist monk Luang Pho Daeng died in 1973. He was a Thai monk from Thailand after practicing sokushinbutsu, and his body is actually on display and they just die while meditating. So he's sitting there cross-legged and they put sunglasses on them because apparently his eye sockets are pretty horrific. But, uh, I mean, it's an interesting example of... They didn't do anything to him. He's just he's behind glass now.

[00:43:47] Preston Meyer: But I would hope so because people, you know, people are going to be touching. Right.

[00:43:53] Katie Dooley: Yeah. But he's they didn't do any other sort of embalming to him besides...

[00:43:58] Preston Meyer: What he did himself, what he...

[00:43:59] Katie Dooley: Did to himself. So anyway, um, yeah, it's an interesting like but I guess we even have cases like 9/11. What do you believe in so much that you're willing to die for it? Something that takes 3000 days of some commitment

[00:43:59] Preston Meyer: Right? I mean, there's a lot of things I like to eat that would slow this process down.

[00:44:20] Katie Dooley: I don't I don't think you're supposed to eat other things.

[00:44:23] Preston Meyer: I know it's a major commitment.

[00:44:25] Katie Dooley: You'd be like, you'd eat like pine needles and then be like, oh, but a burger sounds great.

[00:44:29] Preston Meyer: Right?

[00:44:32] Katie Dooley: Um, yeah. And the the Luang Pho Daeng, he had six kids and a wife, and he left to become a Buddhist monk. And then he decided.

[00:44:41] Preston Meyer: He would end it all the slowest way possible.

[00:44:43] Katie Dooley: The slowest way possible. And I just, I, I don't know, I just I can't wrap my head around it, but I guess it's.

[00:44:50] Preston Meyer: Not for me.

[00:44:51] Katie Dooley: I guess. But John Paul II flogged himself and people flew into the Twin Towers and Luang Pho Dang starved himself to death. I don't, I guess. Maybe I'm just too apathetic, Preston.

[00:45:05] Preston Meyer: Maybe, I don't know.

[00:45:08] Katie Dooley: Maybe I just like life too much.

[00:45:10] Preston Meyer: There's a lot to like about life.

[00:45:12] Katie Dooley: I think so, but.

[00:45:14] Preston Meyer: All right. Well, believe it or not, Buddhists believe in ghosts, too.

[00:45:19] Katie Dooley: What? I'm seeing a theme. This might be the only universal belief in the entire world. I don't believe in ghosts, though, so.

[00:45:26] Preston Meyer: Well, we've already pointed out a couple of groups that deny the universality of the belief. Jehovah's Witnesses and Christadelphians.

[00:45:34] Katie Dooley: But I do know atheists that believe in ghosts, which is funny to me.

[00:45:37] Preston Meyer: Right? You can believe in ghosts without believing in God.

[00:45:39] Katie Dooley: No, but I just.

[00:45:41] Preston Meyer: No. I think if you do believe in ghosts, it's easy to talk somebody into believing that there's more. And then bam, you get into the mysterious agnostic belief in some sort of god.

[00:45:56] Katie Dooley: Or some sort of something.

[00:45:58] Preston Meyer: Well, even even if the universe is God, you still got all God.

[00:46:01] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Anyway, I was so excited to find a universal belief, its not even universal that puppies are adorable.

[00:46:09] Preston Meyer: Right? Puppies are haram.

[00:46:12] Katie Dooley: Are haram. Anyway.

[00:46:14] Preston Meyer: All right, so many Buddhists celebrate a ghost festival. Where they offer food to ghosts who might linger. This is an expression of compassion mostly, which is one of the greatest virtues of Buddhism. And in return, the ghosts do not bother the community, which seems to usually work, or, depending on your measure of things, maybe always works.

[00:46:39] Katie Dooley: Because they don't exist.

[00:46:41] Preston Meyer: Right? Um, ghosts might also move onto a realm specifically for hungry ghosts, where there are no offerings and everybody is just hungry all the time.

[00:46:57] Katie Dooley: That sounds scary.

[00:46:58] Preston Meyer: That sounds like hell. I feel like this is a really nice way of saying they're in hell.

[00:47:04] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I don't want to be hungry.

[00:47:06] Preston Meyer: Yeah. That sucks. In the Tibetan tradition. A bothersome ghost can be captured with a special trap and extra killed with a ritual dagger, sending it to be reborn again.

[00:47:20] Katie Dooley: My, do you know what that reminds me of? When people say he was killed to death, I'm like, uh huh, uh huh. Yep.

[00:47:27] Preston Meyer: Redundant.

[00:47:28] Preston Meyer: Murder-Death-Killed.

[00:47:29] Katie Dooley: Murdered. Death killed. He was murdered to death.

[00:47:33] Preston Meyer: But if a ghost is sticking around, that's. Yeah, there is a procedure in place to kill the ghost so that it is not an operating ghost any further.

[00:47:44] Katie Dooley: I was going to say that's the only context in which I will accept killed to death is when you're killing a ghost.

[00:47:51] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's. It doesn't fit in the frame that we have for ghosts here. It's different than exorcism, which is kind of what we would talk about, about getting rid of a ghost. But there there are some, some commonalities. There is one particular ghost that I think is rather interesting. And the Dalai Lama agrees. Maybe not for the same reason. Dorjee Shugden is a powerful 17th century monk, I say is because that's what some people believe. In Tibet, he's revered by some who claim that his lingering ghost is a god. Most Buddhists don't really mess with arguments about theology. Don't worry about God's worry about your own path through samsara.

[00:48:40] Katie Dooley: This one is hot topic.

[00:48:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah, because a lot of people believe that Shugden is a God that is, like worthy of worship and like focus on him a fair bit. And other people, not so much. Of course, the Dalai Lama is not a fan at all. He says that Shugden is an evil spirit. And yeah, this division is causing a lot of contention in Tibet.

[00:49:06] Katie Dooley: Sikhs, Sikhism, like Buddhists and Hindus, believe in reincarnation, which is interesting because it's also a monotheistic religion. Remember, it's the baby of Hinduism and Islam.

[00:49:18] Preston Meyer: Hindu's a little bit monotheistic. That's true. Depending on your interpretation of all of the things and expressions of God.

[00:49:26] Katie Dooley: Um, so Sikhs believe in reincarnation that comes from the Hinduism side and to eventually escape the cycle and become one with God, but only one God. I guess, as you pointed out, Brahma.

[00:49:39] Preston Meyer: Right, one, three, 700 million, whatever.

[00:49:43] Katie Dooley: It's fine. Cremation is the preferred and traditionally accepted method to deal with the deceased in Sikhism. This is the first time we've seen that.

[00:49:54] Preston Meyer: It's like a system built around being wise in a very densely populated part of the world. Thought of a solution to one of a few problems.

[00:50:06] Katie Dooley: Family members are expected to witness the cremation process, which I thought was interesting. I don't think that's very typical here.

[00:50:12] Preston Meyer: I don't know if we make it very convenient to witness a cremation here.

[00:50:16] Katie Dooley: I think you can if you ask, but I don't think it's typicalbecause when we put down Paige, if you've heard our little jingles on the podcast, there's no more jingles anymore. It was an option to watch her be cremated. And I was like, no, I'm good. But I haven't had a human in my life cremated recently, so I don't know.

[00:50:35] Preston Meyer: Fingers crossed that it doesn't happen.

[00:50:37] Katie Dooley: I'm gonna do that.

[00:50:38] Preston Meyer: And if you're curious why people cross their fingers or knock on wood, we did an episode on that a little while ago.

[00:50:45] Katie Dooley: Ashes are scattered into a river. They believe that the body should be returned to the earth, and that the family left behind doesn't carry this attachment to the body. In instances where Sikhs may choose burial, headstones are not allowed because the body is just that shell that we've seen in the other Dharmic religions. There should be no attachment to the body. A Sikh funeral is antam sanskar. Antam Sanskar which translates to final ceremony. TThe deceased Sikh is dressed in their five Sikh articles of faith before the funeral and cremation. So that's the Kesh, Kanga, Katcha, Khara and kirpan. If you want to know what those are.

[00:51:31] Preston Meyer: Check out.

[00:51:32] Katie Dooley: Our episode. One of those is a little knife. Yeah, that's the kirpan. After a funeral service, family and friends gather to read the Sri Guru Granth Sahib. Which is the final guru and the holy book.

[00:51:46] Preston Meyer: So as an heir to both Hindu and Muslim philosophies, the ideas of ghosts live in both realms. To some extent, we do have the worry of the ghosts of the abused, that maybe they'll come back and cause some problems, and it's kind of hard to work that out of the faith when it's still living in at least the more secular portion of the Hindu reality. Yeah. Nothing terribly new and exciting there.

[00:52:13] Katie Dooley: Now we have some outliers, some that attach directly to religion. Some are just cultural practices around death. Now that we all know what Zoroastrianism is. They are actually doing something very similar to the sky funerals, they have a tower of silence.

[00:52:27] Preston Meyer: That sounds really cool.

[00:52:29] Katie Dooley: It does. They put their dead on this tower raised platform for scavengers and the elements to aid in decomposition. It is a circular ray structure used just for this purpose. This keeps corpses which are considered to be unclean, away from the sacred elements of fire, earth and water.

[00:52:53] Preston Meyer: Up in the air.

[00:52:55] Katie Dooley: Well, there's not much you can do about that. I figured it this way. Right. You either has to be Earth. Well, I guess any of them. One of them has to be tainted, though, to get rid of the body. So they've opted for air and give it to the animals. I didn't read the full article because it was behind a paywall, which I hate, but, uh, there's no Towers of Silence in in the West. So that has led Zoroastrians to have to compromise on their last funeral rites and traditions, which is kind of sad. I mean, right, and this is where.

[00:53:28] Preston Meyer: Fire is such a big thing, there's always these these fire temples for Zoroastrianism. And part of me wants to say, well, just build a separate fire for cremation, but that is still putting an unclean thing in sacred fire.

[00:53:44] Katie Dooley: But and this is where, you know, I said at the top of the episode, some things make a lot of sense, like getting rid of a body in a very both economical and ecological way makes a ton of sense, and I don't think it gets more sanitary than a tower of silence. Whatever, you could argue a sky burial mound could get into the water system or whatever. But yeah, you're right. The West is so uptight about.

[00:54:14] Preston Meyer: Dead bodies.

[00:54:15] Katie Dooley: Dead bodies, so do I think. You know, eating a tree to die makes a lot of sense. No. Do I think, uh, sky burial does? Yeah.

[00:54:24] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Fair.

[00:54:25] Katie Dooley: And so it made me sad for them. Like, imagine not being able to have a funeral the way you won't have a funeral for a loved one.

[00:54:32] Preston Meyer: There's. There's got to be a way that we can work around existing systems to make that work out.

[00:54:39] Katie Dooley: I don't know, I feel like you. Well, no, because there'd still be laws. But the solution is buying private land, right? But you still have to circumvent laws with dead bodies. And I don't know what laws.

[00:54:49] Preston Meyer: Cops aren't allowed on our property.

[00:54:51] Katie Dooley: Yeah, um.

[00:54:52] Preston Meyer: What's the tower for? None of your business. It's a religious structure.

[00:54:55] Katie Dooley: You can't see what's on top of it. Of course we have, of course, drones and airplanes and all sorts of things. People know there's dead.

[00:55:01] Preston Meyer: There's. Yeah. New project. I'm going to design a structure that isn't super friendly to drones, where you could have a tower of silence.

[00:55:13] Katie Dooley: Okay.

[00:55:16] Preston Meyer: This would be a thing that will happen a lot more easily if I knew people who were Zoroastrians.

[00:55:24] Katie Dooley: Well, if you know a Zoroastrian... If you know Zoroastrian, put them in touch with us. I would just love to interview them and, uh, Preston can talk about his scheme with them.

[00:55:37] Preston Meyer: Yep. All right. New Orleans jazz funeral is a fun little extra thing to talk about. Yeah. So, Louisiana. I've never been. Have you been to Louisiana?

[00:55:50] Katie Dooley: No. It's actually quite high on my list of places in the States to go. Um, I would really like to go to New Orleans.

[00:55:56] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's from from what I've seen on TV and movies. A great collection of people. That's about what I got for my own knowledge. But luckily we do reading.

[00:56:09] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And I mean, I this is nice because we have talked about Voodoo and a little bit of Hoodoo in the past.

[00:56:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So there's strong colonial past there. Connects to Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. There is a great tradition of military style brass bands at these funeral processions. You can you can find videos on YouTube. They're great. Mix that with African spiritual practices, Catholic influences. And you know, this being the birthplace of jazz, New Orleans has a pretty unique funerary tradition. Lots of dancing. I've seen more than one casket drop.

[00:56:48] Katie Dooley: I mean, that person doesn't care anymore.

[00:56:52] Preston Meyer: And everybody's having a good time. You're like, for sure there are going to be a couple living people who are a little uncomfortable with dropping a casket, but that's not a thing that has to be remembered. Yeah. They really incorporate celebration into the mourning. Yeah. You lost somebody you love, but you get to celebrate the time you did enjoy with them and celebrate the fact that you've been brought together with your community and family.

[00:57:17] Katie Dooley: You know, I'm just going to touch on this right now because I'm thinking of it. Our good friend Sarah Snyder, our very first ever guest on the podcast, she shared a I guess it's a meme that's not a funny one the other day. And she said, things that are said at funerals should be set at birthdays. And I thought, I'm going to start doing that. I'm going to write long loving cards to my friends now. So I like it. It doesn't all get left to the last minute.

[00:57:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah.

[00:57:42] Katie Dooley: Ghanaian fantasy coffins. So interesting. We'll post some pictures on the day this launches on our Discord. These are works of art used by the Ga people of Southern Ghana. They believe that our lives continue into the next world the same as they did on Earth. So the coffins represent the deceased by using different symbols. Fantasy coffins are shaped and painted. You can get them in ships, mermaids, chickens, shoes and so much more. And yeah, often they use it to represent what your job was in life. So pilots will be buried in planes and.

[00:58:20] Preston Meyer: So I can get I wrap my head around a lot of careers that would get you buried in something that's shaped like a ship. What do I do I have to do to get buried inside a mermaid?

[00:58:32] Katie Dooley: I would also say ship related work. Ocean navigating. You can also be a professional mermaid now.

[00:58:41] Preston Meyer: Okay, fair.

[00:58:43] Katie Dooley: I don't know how popular that is in Ghana I feel like it's a real white person thing.

[00:58:46] Preston Meyer: Famadihana is the traditional Madagascar ceremony of the Malagasy people, of turning of the bones. It's basically just a way to continually remember the deceased. Bodies of ancestors are removed from their resting place, rewrapped and their names written on the shroud to be remembered. That's kind of nice. A little gross.

[00:59:11] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I was gonna say I want to be the person. There's like a there's a point where is horrible. And then once they're just bones, it's fine. But there's like the first couple of years where they're still icky. I wouldn't want to be that person.

[00:59:24] Preston Meyer: But yeah, when it's sticky, it's a bad time. Yeah.

[00:59:27] Katie Dooley: But once they're just clean bones, yeah, that's not so bad.

[00:59:32] Preston Meyer: And depending on the situation, I mean, it might not even be a long time, right?

[00:59:36] Katie Dooley: I don't know how long the body takes to decompose.

[00:59:39] Preston Meyer: It varies on region. Right. Well Madagascar is wet.

[00:59:42] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And then I mean over here they don't decompose because we put so many fucking toxic shit into them, which.

[00:59:47] Preston Meyer: There is that

[00:59:49] Katie Dooley: Please don't do that to me. I want to be a mushroom.

[00:59:52] Preston Meyer: Okay?

[00:59:53] Katie Dooley: Hollow me out and then turn me into mushrooms.

[00:59:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Okay, so there is more to this process. They don't just wrap them up and then stick them back where they found them. They dance with their skeletons. They have a real party. I'm almost. I'm gonna say Mexican Day of the dead level.

[01:00:12] Katie Dooley: Yeah.

[01:00:13] Preston Meyer: But there's this practice creeps a lot of people out, and so they're doing it less and less. I don't know if it needs to be stamped out. It doesn't feel like that is necessary, but the Christian missionaries have really put a lot of pressure on them to stop, even though the Catholic Church is okay with it.

[01:00:32] Katie Dooley: The Catholic Church has come out to say they're okay with it. So I'm guessing these are Protestant missionaries that are like, maybe we shouldn't dance with bones. Catholic Church has come out and said, no, it's fine. Have fun.

[01:00:43] Preston Meyer: I mean, especially this newest pope. He's mostly like, yeah, keep doing your good things. Please don't leave the church.

[01:00:52] Katie Dooley: I just heard by the time this episode comes out, this will be really old news, but that he's, like, not approved of gay marriage. But there's steps being taken to... You can't call them marriage, but you can get blessed.

[01:01:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The Pope did a little while ago announced that he will bless gay unions, which is. It's a step. It is a step.

[01:01:24] Katie Dooley: So, anyway, uh, Preston mentioned the day of the dead, and we've talked about it a little bit before. And it is, of course, the subject of video or popular animated films. The day of the Dead is November 2nd, religiously. Secularly. It has extended to more than a single day, and the festival is much more fun. The ghosts aren't likely offended, right?

[01:01:47] Preston Meyer: It's just loads of rum. Loads and loads and loads of rum.

[01:01:50] Katie Dooley: For that part of the world.

[01:01:51] Preston Meyer: Bright colors and parades. All right, so I did a bunch of deep diving into near death experiences. Um, so research into this field of near-death experiences is relatively new. We haven't been talking about it for even 200 years quite yet, really. And so it started when people started regularly falling from heights great enough to have time to contemplate their lives. So fairly recent history. And so when we started reviving people from clinical deaths, then we started getting a lot more people giving reports on their near-death experiences, experiencing the sorts of things in huge numbers, even enough that we could study them more effectively. So in 1975, a fellow named Raymond Moody. I think he was credited by most people as coming up with this term near-death experience. He studied about 150 patients who all claimed to have had a near-death experience. His findings outlined nine common steps in this experience, though not everybody experienced all nine steps, but they were nearly universally in this order, so.

[01:03:06] Katie Dooley: Almost everyone experienced one, and then they get less common. Is that my understanding?

[01:03:11] Preston Meyer: Sometimes you could have number two, number five, and then number eight.

[01:03:14] Katie Dooley: And I wasn't sure if one was the most common.

[01:03:16] Preston Meyer: And then no, this the these are all the this is the order of all the steps. Which ones you get to experience may vary.

[01:03:25] Katie Dooley: But this is okay I see. Okay.

[01:03:27] Preston Meyer: So the first is immediate peace and pain relief. Really sucks when this one's not on your list. And then there's this unfamiliar but calming sound or even music. And then there's the the moment where yourself is elevated above your own body. And sometimes watching medical professionals trying to bring you back or whatever.

[01:03:50] Katie Dooley: Bryant's aunt experienced that. Yeah, yeah, she's talked about that one. I don't know she if she experienced others, but she has talked about number three.

[01:03:58] Preston Meyer: Cool. Uh, and then the person leaves Earth and ascends quickly through a dark sky into a bright tunnel. And then the person arrives in a brightly lit heavenly space. Maybe it's a nice garden. Maybe it's at a fountain. Whatever. It's a nice place where you feel comfortable and you are in awe of your surroundings. And then the person is met by deceased friends and family. And then the person meets a god that usually matches their religious tradition. Or a brilliant mass of just tangible love and bright lights. And then the person undergoes an instantaneous life review and understands how all the good and all the bad they have done has affected them and the people around them. Usually this happens in the presence of that God. And then finally, after all of that, the person returns to the awareness of their body and they are told that it's not their time to die, or they choose to return to be with their loved ones who are not dead yet. Remember, not everybody has all of them, but this is the steps in that order, almost always in this order. And it's kind of nifty. There's there's been a lot of out of body experiences that people have reported on, and there's been loads of trials to try and figure out these out of body experiences. They've even done weird tests like, oh, we're going to hide a thing in the room that you're not going to know what's there when you're sleepy, whatever. But when you are outside of your body, maybe you'll spot it. And never has anybody ever successfully identified the hidden target. But there's also loads of reasons why they wouldn't like. Maybe they didn't look that direction, maybe they didn't get high enough out of their body to really see it. Whatever.

[01:05:56] Katie Dooley: See, I think it'd be more like a dream state where you dream. Even this afternoon I took a nap and I dreamed I was awake getting ready for the podcast. And then I actually woke up and I was like, shit, I'm not ready for the podcast. Um, but in my dream, I was sitting up on our couch. Um.

[01:06:10] Preston Meyer: Right.

[01:06:12] Katie Dooley: I'm getting ready to record.

[01:06:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah. We'll get into the more theories, that's how I want to finish this. I think it's normal to see personalities change in some way after this experience. I don't know why some people like Jehovah's Witnesses and other people like them, blame this on the soul transfer that comes with the blood transfusion. This is why you're a different person after a near-death experience, because you have somebody else's blood in you.

[01:06:42] Katie Dooley: Okay, but like reading your list, which you'll get into, most of these look pretty positive. So why would you be against blood transfusion? These all sound pretty good for the most part.

[01:06:51] Preston Meyer: Yeah, these nine steps are a pretty pleasant experience. Not universal. There are people who.

[01:06:58] Katie Dooley: No, but the changes that we haven't gone over. At first glance, all are quite positive. So why would you be against blood transfusion when, um. When it looks like it's a positive change?

[01:07:10] Preston Meyer: See, I think that it's just normal to be a little bit changed after a traumatic experience.

[01:07:16] Katie Dooley: Trauma, yeah, absolutely.

[01:07:18] Preston Meyer: Trauma changes you. That's the deal.

[01:07:20] Katie Dooley: That's literally science.

[01:07:22] Preston Meyer: But the changes that are typically happening with this experience, if we've got greater compassion. that's a win. Oh, no. The blood transfusion ruined it.

[01:07:35] Katie Dooley: Blood transfusion made me nicer, no!

[01:07:39] Preston Meyer: Uh, we've got higher self-esteem, greater sense of their purpose in the world. Less concern for acquiring material wealth.

[01:07:50] Katie Dooley: But capitalism.

[01:07:54] Preston Meyer: Um, we've got a desire to learn more about the world around them. Elevated spirituality, though not necessarily a greater commitment to any religion. Just generally more aware of feelings.

[01:08:06] Katie Dooley: Spirit level. Yeah.

[01:08:08] Preston Meyer: And just the greater self and the thing that binds us all together. There's also they usually stop worrying about death as much, but they're more willing to and more interested in really living their life as much as they can. And most notably, these folks often claim to have witnessed an afterlife, and we're talking about millions upon millions of people reporting these experiences. The most recent number I got for the United States is unfortunately ten years ago or more. But they said 9 million people in the United States in 2011 had reported a near-death experience. And that's just the United States.

[01:08:52] Katie Dooley: In that sense. Such a huge number. But then you forget how big the states is. So like in the grand scheme of things, it's not a huge number. But that's a lot of people.

[01:09:00] Preston Meyer: And you're we're talking about a country that builds itself in a way that makes it super likely to have a near-death experience. But I think it's really interesting that this is nearly universal. These things have been recorded in nearly every culture group around this planet. I think the stats are 95% of culture groups, 95% have reported at least one instance of somebody reporting a near death experience. Okay. Yeah. And I found a really cool article came out just a few years ago in 2019 on an LDS study on the subject. So I'll post that in our Discord. It's kind of nifty. An awful lot of people who go through near death experience that there's a panic. And so it makes sense that when they suffer a clinical death, um, maybe they don't have this experience. Maybe they do a lot of them. Instead of reporting this near-death experience like we've described it, report nothing at all. That and then they come back. So there's nothing on the other side. Nothing even matters. I feel like that's exactly as valid as all of the others. I don't think there's any reason to believe that these experiences positive, negative or nothing at all really define anything beyond the self. It just makes sense to me.

[01:10:27] Katie Dooley: And I know this is impossible to like test, but it'd be interesting to see if you could change it without. Like what a near death experience would be like without cultural and religious influence. Like, because you can't.

[01:10:43] Preston Meyer: You always have culture.

[01:10:44] Katie Dooley: Even an atheist has seen the movies and read the stories, right? So is there an afterlife or is it just that I think this is how it's supposed to go, and when your body goes into panic mode?

[01:10:57] Preston Meyer: Right. Yeah. It's it's a tricky thing.

[01:11:01] Katie Dooley: So anyway, again, you can't test it because even if you go to another country, they have their own guts and their own belief in the afterlife, so they would have that experience program in their brain, whether they are religious or not. Right? If you're someone living in India and you're an atheist, you could still have a religious death experience just from the cultural influence. Yeah, is my point. I hope that was clear.

[01:11:24] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there's there's a lot of different models that explain the phenomenon. And I'm a big fan of the expectancy model that you see what you hope or expect to see, if you see anything based on everything that you've just listed. Yeah, there's alternative models too, and I can't just list the one that I prefer.

[01:11:45] Katie Dooley: All right, well, lay them on me.

[01:11:47] Preston Meyer: There's the depersonalization model that posits that the trauma of an event causes something like a schizophrenic break. Depersonalizing the experience, the experience of impending death. The problem with this is that not everybody has an out of body experience when they have this near death experience, and the survivors almost never display anything that looks like they've had a personality break.

[01:12:13] Katie Dooley: Yeah, but I think that's still a good explanation of an out of body experience. Like because. You know what the room was like when you were in it, and you know what your body looks like lying there. You know, so I think your brain projects that the as opposed to an actual spirit. Spirit watching.

[01:12:35] Preston Meyer: There's the dissociation model, which I think is a better alternative to the depersonalization model. Yeah, that, but it's still it really only addresses the out of body experience. Then there's the birth model that tries to explain why you have this tunnel, part of the experience, that it's a revived memory of your birth experience. So the weird thing about that is that we're actually really close to about half and a half on. Some of these people were born vaginally, others were born through the cesarean. And that's that's one trouble that half of these half of these people weren't born in the typical way that you might expect anyway. I mean, cesarean section is getting a lot more common. So it's not I don't think it's fair to call it atypical.

[01:13:26] Katie Dooley: Or I mean, you know, my brother came out feet first. So we're very reverse tunnel.

[01:13:33] Preston Meyer: Briefly wore your mom as a hat. Also, it's noted by an awful lot of scholars that have issue with this birth model that infants are not equipped to process or remember being moved through the birth process. So the memory of the tunnel experience is not supposed to be even possible.

[01:13:57] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I mean.

[01:13:58] Preston Meyer: The mind is a puzzle.

[01:13:59] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I mean, there's a few instances where people claim to have birth memories, but even then that's so hard to prove. Again, same thing is, I mean, how many times have you seen a birth, whether it's in sex ed or on TV or so you can say, yeah, I have a memory of birth, but like...

[01:14:15] Preston Meyer: And it's, it's so easy to construct memories if you just build it an emotional connection to a thing that you've seen, you can build it into your memories so that later on when you reflect and say, oh yeah, no, I've got this memory stored. Yeah. It's wild.

[01:14:31] Katie Dooley: I mean, I the it's not really addressing this, but I mean, people have talked about this before of like, what do you think happens when we die? Well, what do you think happens before we're born? Right. And probably that, you know, the first time you yeah, have any sort of cognitive function is not in utero. Right.

[01:14:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's interesting stuff though. There are also models that get into the brain chemistry stuff. I don't think we're really prepared to discuss that. But we did talk about drugs a little while ago. Several episodes ago, High and Mighty, I think was the name of the episode. .

[01:15:06] Katie Dooley: That was I mean, that's the question a year ago now.

[01:15:08] Preston Meyer: Easily DMT might get you something pretty close to a near-death experience and honestly, it's likely that there's a combination of psychological and physiological elements that play into the near-death experience. But it's fascinating stuff.

[01:15:23] Katie Dooley: This whole episode was fascinating. Not that I don't enjoy all of our episodes, but this was a particularly.

[01:15:29] Preston Meyer: And so I really want to hear from our audience in our Discord some things that maybe we shouldn't have left out. And build some conversations around that.

[01:15:39] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Or even funerals. Right, right. I've only I shouldn't say I've only ever been to Catholic funerals, but I've been to in relatively to a lot of Catholic funerals. So which is weird because I'm not Catholic. Um, but yeah, just different traditions and practices. And I'd love to hear people's opinions on things like the sky burial, which again, I think is very economical and ecological. Why don't we do that here? Why can't I just leave a body on my backyard? Why aren't there bear ghosts? Let's get to the real root of the problem. Bear ghosts!

[01:16:18] Preston Meyer: You can also join the conversation on Facebook and Instagram. Our best conversations are on Discord, though we're also on YouTube and Patreon, where we can hopefully talk you into giving us some of your money in exchange for goods and services.

[01:16:34] Katie Dooley: For bonus content. And of course, the subscription model is not your thing. We have our Spreadshop where you can buy some sweet merch.

[01:16:42] Preston Meyer: I think that's about it for today. Thanks for joining us.

[01:16:45] Katie Dooley: I wasa going to say stay alive everyone.

[01:16:47] Preston Meyer: Yes, join us next time.

[01:16:51] Both Speakers: Peace be with you.

[01:16:52] Katie Dooley: Don't die, we need listeners