Greg Lozoff

Ok, so basically I’m going to ask you some questions about reincarnation.
Ok.

So, there’s this religion called animism and they believe that pretty much everything in the universe has a soul and a spirit. What do you think happens to your spirit once you die.
Uhmm.. your spirit… that’s a good question. I have to think about it for a sec.

Okay.
This is assuming that I believe people have spirits?

Yeah and that you have a soul. If you think you don’t have a soul, what…
I guess what I’ve been trained to believe is that your soul goes to heaven and lives there in some sort of magic fairy land with all the other good souls. And if you have a negative soul, then it goes to hell. But I don’t know if I really believe that, I don’t know if I really believe in any of it.

Do you think that there’s any possibility that when you die your soul could be reincarnated into another creature? Or considering that animism for example, believes that rocks and tress and stuff have spirits too, what do you think?
I think I’d like to believe that, I don’t know if I actually deep down do but I think that if you think that way it makes you a better person because then you try to be good in this life so that you come back.

Which is Karma basically.
So yeah. Lets see if I can elaborate...

But that makes sense, because Karma believes that everything you do in your life now you need to do it well so that you’re not reincarnated into a lesser life form.
Yeah, I mean.. That’s.. I don’t know if it’s actually fact that people come back as other things but I like to think that way. It’s kind of nice.

So, continuing on that a bit, if you were to be any animal lets say in your past life, what do you think that would have been?
I love this question. Uhmm, in my past life?

Yeah.
To make me come out as a stupid human? I was probably a terrible animal! Is the next question what animal I want to be? I’ll answer that one! Haha. In my past life, I was probably… I would say a dog.

Why do you say a dog?
I don’t know, but like a wild dog. Not like a dog that’s domesticated. Like a dog that lives in the wild.

Like a wolf type dog?
Yeah! I like that! Like a wolf, exactly!

Were you ever obsessed with wolves at any point in your life?
Yes. Currently. I actually just bought a national geographic magazine because I had a five hour wait at the airport and I read it cover to cover and it was about wolves. It was really interesting. There’s like a battle going on between like, I can’t remember where, somewhere in the states… they basically killed off the entire wolf population at one point because they were killing all their livestock, like farmers and stuff, but now there’s sort of like a.. what’s the word.. like all of a sudden there’s a lot of wolves that are back.

Haha. The wolves are back.
The wolves are back. They’ve been uh, having sex with each other haha. What’s with me today? Procreating?

Reproducing?
Fornecating. They’ve been creating more wolves and now there’s lots of wolves and the locals are pissed and they’ve been killing them off again and they’ve just made wolf hunting legal again. Cause it was illegal for a time since they were sort of endangered in that area but now there’s like a yearly quota of wolves that you’re aloud to hunt.

Wow.
But yeah, I love wolves.

Okay. When you were a kid and stuff was there any animal you were like obsessed with?
Uhm… dogs. Wolves. I like penguins. Actually as a kid I was like obsessed with animals. They used to take us to the library and let us read whatever books we wanted, I went straight to this shelf with just books of pictures of animals, and I would just look at those. I loved animals. I still do. I go to the biodome, just on my own, and just walk around. When I’m in New York and my girlfriend has school I go to the Bronx Zoo, just by myself.

What animal do you linger at?
Oh my god. I spend hours watching the gorillas, cause they’re so fascinating. They’re like humans! I literally spend over an hour just watching gorillas. But I only go to the zoo alone because when I go with other people they tend to want to hurry along and I like to just linger and watch animals for hours and hours and hours. The polar bears are also cool, the penguins.

Those are always cool. So, according to paganism and other similar belief systems, an animal that you’re kind of obsessed with or that you tend to be really attracted to is you “totem spirit animal” and this animal is supposed to be your spirit guide and pass a message on to you. Also, when an animal crosses your path during the day, it’s there to pass you a message to tell you something. Have you seen any animals today?
Today, I think you’re the only animal I’ve seen so far. But I usually don’t (I’m super superstitious), like if a black cat crosses a street I usually pull over and wait till another car passes first.
Really?!
Yeah. My dad taught me that. He’s been doing that ever since I was a kid, so I sort of picked up on that.

Okay, so you think you may have been a wild dog but if you were to be reincarnated into an animal in a future life, what would that be?
That’s the question I wanted. I want to say a bird, because then you could like fly, and just soar over the world and be really free. But birds aren’t really that smart. So then I was thinking that maybe I’d like to be a dolphin, because you know they look happy, they’re always smiling… but then you get cut up and eaten by people in dolphin soup. So, I think I’ll stick with a bird. A well respected bird.

Like an eagle or something?
Yeah, not like a pigeon, like a bald eagle. Or a hawk.

Well that’s pretty much it I guess.
Yeah? Are you sure there’s nothing else I could answer? I’d be happy to answer anything even if it’s not related.

Hmm let me think… Oh well I’ll tell you something interesting, and you could tell me what you think about it.
Okay.

When I asked you what animal you could have been in a past life, it’s because there’s this theory that for an animal to reincarnate into a human it takes a really long process of over thousands of years. This is because their spirit isn’t as developed as a human spirit and sometimes they join with other animals to be able to slowly evolve and become a human.
Okay.

And when an animal is on the brink of turning into a human, they’re called “super animals” and they’re these animals that are really intelligent like circus animals or animals in movies. And when they finally become human, they turn into a kind of animalistic human, maybe like a criminal or really like, an animalistic type person.
Really?

Yeah. So I thought that was cool, what do you think about that?
So then… how do animals become good people?

Well their spirit continues to evolve as they reincarnate and as humans we are a certain evolution of our spirits and we will continue to evolve into better humans.
Yeah, you think so?

I think it’s a cool concept.
Do you think (I’m interviewing you now), do you think like, we’ll eventually lose stuff that’s like not important to being a human?

What do you mean?
Like, earlobes? Or nipples on men?

Oh. Maybe. Well that’s evolution.
Exactly. Like, what do we need that for? And do you think like, we’ll grow extra fingers eventually?

That’s possible, if your evolution continues. Maybe not soon but like in thousands of years because it took this long for us to be how we are now.
It’s true, that makes sense. Wait, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, animals evolving into criminals.

But spirit wise.
Yeah spirit, obviously.

Have you ever met a really smart animal? Or a really animalistic human?
Well, I met apes and they’re really fuckin smart. Apes can read papers and stuff. But it’s true, even when I was watching the apes I would be standing right at the ape enclosure… gorillas, sorry, not apes. They don’t like that. And I would be like looking at him, and we would make eye contact and it was like looking at a human. And then he would all of a sudden just run at the glass and smash on it. And he would look really pissed off that me.

That’s terrifying.
Maybe, maybe it’s true.

He was on the brink of becoming a human.
Maybe, maybe his spirit will pass off into a criminal. So no animals can become good people? Or do they all start off as bad people?

Well, there not necessarily bad, but they’re not as developed as a human spirit that’s been around for a long time.
Ok fair enough, I’ll believe you.

So, any last words?
Uhm… what’s your project on?

Animals and reincarnation, basically. I’m going to draw you as an animal.
Sweeeet. Yeah I think I sort of do believe in reincarnation, that if people lead good lives they’ll come back as something good and if they don’t lead good lives then they’ll come back as like, a maggot.

That’s kind of like a Karma view of things. It’s kind of like heaven and hell but on earth.
Kind of.

Ok. Thank you!
Is that cool? Okay.