Professor at the Institute of Cognitive Science at Carleton University, Jim Davies, is the director of the Science of Imagination Laboratory. In the first half, he discussed the science of human imagination, including everything from hallucination to imaginary friends, and how using it correctly can make you happier and more productive. Davies began with a definition of imagination as "two basic things…creativity and the ability to generate some kind of structure in your head." He stressed the value of daydreaming as a time when we can practice "disengaging from the real world and focusing on your thoughts." This can allow us to work out problems and make plans even while we engage in some mundane activity.
Davies said that those who are blind from birth don't have any sense of how things appear, but that they do have a capacity of "spatial imagery," which allows them to intimately know where everything is in their homes. He cited how research has shown that we cannot increase the vividness of our imaginations. Yet, many more people show a capacity for varied imagery when dreaming, which Davies said could be "practice for things that might happen in real life." He discussed the development of "imagination" in computers, such as video games, which create entire randomized environments out of lines of code. Imagination, Davies concluded, is "one of the things that makes us really human."
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Michael Goddart is a writer and researcher who, as a child, started searching for the truth about death and how to obtain everlasting bliss. He discussed his recovery of past lives from his higher consciousness, and how people might interpret their own defining traits as signs of who they've been in their past lives. He stated that he has lived "over 4000" past lives, including 884 on Earth, with the rest on other planets. Most of us do not remember our past lives, Goddart believes, because "we're not really meant to remember all the suffering we went through," although "who we are is very much defined by who've we've been in past lives." He mentioned that he knows that this present life is going to be his last one, and he will no longer reincarnate.
Goddart said he first encountered the concept of past lives at the age of 12 while reading the works of early 20th-century psychic Edgar Cayce, and at that time, "it became self-evident" to Goddart that the concept of past lives was the closest to a reality of a soul which reincarnates. He claimed that his first life was "a bush on another planet," and that he had to "go through all kinds of lives until I became a human." Along the way, Goddart says he even had a life as "a female cow that gave birth to three calves." The guest described seven heavenly realms, where souls might go when they die. He says this present time offers "the greatest opportunity for spiritual progress."
News segment guests: Dr. John Curtis, Howard Bloom.