Jad Abumrad

That's Philip Clayton.

He's a philosopher from the Claremont School of Theology.

And he says, from the beginning, people thought about and wrote about metamorphosis as a kind of spiritual ascent.

It says somewhere in the New Testament, behold, the old has passed away, the new has surely come.

Basically, people saw the caterpillar as a symbol of our lowly, earthbound, lazy bodies, right?

And then the butterfly was sort of casting away all of that, and it represented our soul up in heaven, sort of in its most perfect form.

Never mind that butterflies actually like to eat.

Feces and urine and other unappetizing substances.

According to Andre.

Sounds tasty.

Never mind that.

The metaphor is like inspiring at some level, right?

Because you think, oh, I've got all, I'm going to just become more, a more perfect version of myself, right?

But then the converse side of that is you cut open a chrysalis and it looks like a whole bunch of goo and you think...

That is a hell of a lot of change.

So the thing is, is that this transformation, either of the butterfly or of my soul, seems so dramatic, so miraculous, that it made some people think, like, geez, if you're going to go to heaven and in the process transform that much, is it even you up there?

It still has to be you that makes it to heaven.

You can't change too much.

Otherwise, like someone else will be up there enjoying your afterlife.

So certain memories and elements of your identity have to continue, just not all the elements.