Do you believe in reincarnation?
Do you believe in reincarnation?
I did get messed up by some anxiety and have these thoughts rolling through my head so I'll leave it at cosmic horror warning.
125 comments
-
-
If there is reincarnation and you don't remember a single thing from before, why bother it doesn't matter.
If there would be reincarnation where you remembered your previous life, surely someone would have spilled the beans on this by now. I surely would contact any sort of family friends that i had previously.
Since both could be possible but 2. hasnt happened and 1 doesnt matter i would give this a no.
-
That's my view too. even if reincarnation existed, it wouldn't matter. If each life has no memory of the others, then each life is effectively a different person altogether, so from the POV of any one of those people, there is effectively no such thing as reincarnation.
Now suppose there's some kind of 'soul' who the lives 'belong to' and will one day remember the lives, again -- so what? They're just memories. Those lives were each a separate person who no longer exists, and never knew the others or the soul.
-
I get that. Have you read The Egg by Andy Weir? If not, there's a Kurzgesagt video that's just that story with animation. I'd suggest it. It touches on this concept and kinda paints a more optimistic picture.
-
-
-
The fact that your particular molecules will reconstruct into something else is 100% certain
Will you keep your particular consciousness in this process - unlikely
However if you drop off the definition of You as your current limited body and mind, then reincarnation is exactly what happens.
-
This is hard to articulate, but like molecules thar make up a person constantly come in and leave the body and when their in the body they "change states". Technically while you're alive you changing into other things constantly. Person you were a second ago could be considered dead since that was a specific combination of atoms that are lost.
It just ads to the mystery of consciousness
-
Eh I not sure if those atoms are you.
Every atom in your body isn't the same atom you had when you were a kid, or even 7 years ago.
-
-
No.
Do you remember before being born? It's the same after.
-
Can you prove that memory is a reliable way to determine reality without referencing memory?
-
We know memory is unreliable.
-
-
So reincarnation is not a thing but what's to stop "you" from coming back as a new individual? After all, it happened at least once.
-
That's where we get into technicalities and states of dying.
Ao while I was medically dead it wasn't so dead that it was unrecoverable. Akin to a reset. Which, depending on the state you were in and the measures taken, could also have side effects and damages.
Anyhow biologically 'you' are still there. And leaving the body is it after a bit of decay. Like a complex system falling apart unrecoverably.
-
-
What about people who claim past life memories?
As is common amongst Buddhists
Related video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_4BFX_qhhyk
-
I am aware. I personally think it's a load of religious bull, but don't directly want to offend anyone wanting to believe it.
I also know repatriation (I hope that's the correctly translated term) which is proven to be planted suggested memories through that very process scientifically as far as I am aware at the current state of science.
I do love reading (eg the game is life) playing with these theories, though!
-
-
Yeah I can forgot random days of my life so I don't remember those days. I get the perspective I'm just illustrating a point
-
If you want to play with that thought in a horrible way you might want to have a look at the episode white Christmas from black mirror.
-
-
Why would you think that being born is the same as dying?
(hint: it isn't the same at all)
-
-
I believe in reincarnation just as much as I believe any other theory of an afterlife - that is to say, I don't.
We don't know. Nobody knows what happens when we die. That's ok, and I don't feel the need to make up a story to explain away the uncertainty.
I think it's likely that something happens when we die, but it could just as easily be nothingness, the end of existence. I only think it's likely because I definitely believe that there is SO much that we don't understand about the universe that it's more probable than not that SOMETHING happens that we can't currently fathom, perceive, or understand.
But, right now there's no real evidence. So I don't care, and I don't worry about it.
To our best understanding, everything that lives will die. I don't know what happens, it might be some form of heaven, it might be reincarnation, it might be transcendence, etc. However, I take comfort in the fact that it's a shared experience, whatever it is. It's natural. It's part of the process.
The universe doesn't owe us an explanation. Maybe we'll figure it out, but we haven't yet, and I'm fine with that.
-
Yeeeeah, all due respect to believers, but we're squishy wet computers riding squishy wet stilts and when we get turned off we just sort of fizzle out.
There's some poetry to only having one go at it, but I'm not gonna stand here and say a sense of humanism makes your hardcoded fear of death subside. I get why humans come up with coping mechanisms where they get to live forever in some form that isn't having their atoms repurposed as fertilizer and space dust.
-
No.
Enjoy the ride.
-
Suppose reincarnation was real. But no one has any memory or awareness of a past life. So then what connection does said past life even have to you? How can any supposed past 'you's really be considered the same you?
-
But no one has any memory or awareness of a past life.
Yes, that's how the religion of reincarnation (sorry, I forgot which religion it is) has been taught in school to us westerners.
But with that condition the whole thing is not provable and not deniable, and makes no sense in general, because it remains purely a theory far away from all normal life.
-
In my scenario it would be "consciousness" whatever that is. I could imagine myself with different set of memories or alternate timeline where a different set of events happened. I don't have any evidence that those scenarios exist, but it would paint a picture that I could be a different person or even a different living continue being.
But yeah if I did have a past life it's totally lost to me.
-
But if this other consciousness has no continuity or connection to the consciousness that is currently 'you', how can it be said to be you?
-
This may be a problem created by the vagueness of language. We don't yet know how consciousness works out what it even is, so we can't assume that it functions independently of your perceptions, memories, and thoughts. It's a bit like that chestnut about Star Trek transporters, does it kill you and recreate you somewhere else?
Is consciousness merely a map of reality in a constant process of adjusting itself, or is there something there that exists separate from everything that makes us ourselves?
I spend some time thinking about it. I've always been by turns impressed with consciousness and very annoyed with its limitations.
-
-
-
It doesn’t make sense biologically
-
If it was a choice why would I ever wanna come back to this hell hole ?
-
I think this universe sucks, not to ignore human history. Lots of it is empty space apparently cosmic events can wipe you out with next to no warning, your made up of atoms and cells that can die and degrade, and we are stuck to this solar system because space isn't empty it's full of shit thats going to kill you
-
Which is why my headcanon for this universe is that we're basically running rogue playthrough in this life. After you die, you'll regain all your "soul" memories and will be given a choice to "replay" with another life and losing your memories "again" until you've reached a certain level of enlightenment and then you'll "graduate" from our current level of existence.
Call me crazy but it helps me sleep at night, so ¯(ツ)/¯
-
-
-
Not in the traditional sense, but I have a pet theory about the continuation of consciousness.
You can only experience being, not not-being, so even if your consciousness went dark for a million years before being “reincarnated,” there would be no gap from the perspective of your subjective experience. You can only go from having one experience to having another. Nothingness can’t be experienced.
-
Makes me think about going into a coma from a car accident. Your consciousness could be out for however long, then you make a weird fantasy and regain consciousness and start a journey to fill recovery. It would be good to have a healthy attitude/mindset imprinted onto yourself in that scenario.
-
-
To be honest, the only answer i have to say is: "we'll see". Wheter it's nothing or not, the second option would imply that there is effectively something beyond what we know about the universe.
What even is the soul? YOU from now think very different than YOU from ten years ago. Can we say that those two people are the same? Not really. Yet you share common memories with this early you, who doesn't exist anynore. Is it technically correct in this point of view to say that you are the reincarnation of you from ten years ago?
If someone in the far future were to think like you, to remember exact memories from yours, would act the same way you would act in the same situation, it would not we wrong to say they are your reincarnation, no?
Again i'm just supposing.
-
I do believe in reincarnation, in that we are all physical manifestations of what you could call "God". That means that everyone you meet, every dog you pet, every ant you accidentally squish, is synonymous with the divine. We are all constantly reincarnating throughout the universe, and this should be looked at no more acutely than the cells in your body constantly dying and being reborn.
I guess you could call it pantheism, though I tend to follow philosophies like Zen Buddhism and the Tao and it still seems to work.
Looking at existence in this way can form a new understanding, nay, a new reverence towards your life and the universe. Then you will understand who you really are and why you're here. The real power of God is in manifesting everywhere, all the time, all at once. After all...
And that is, of course, why the images of the Hindu gods are shown with many arms or many faces: because it is saying that all arms are the arms of the divinity, all faces are its masks.
-Alan Watts, Out Of Your Mind
-
Well, no, consciousness is not independent on brain. It's not magic or stored anywhere. Pretty simple proof: people with brain damage very often have a huge personality shift.
Anyway, even if you forget stuff, the pathways between neurons have already been made. And sometimes you remember things randomly after many, many years.
-
Anyone who says they know what happens when you die is trying to grift you. No one knows and we all find out one day, no point in dwelling on it.
-
No, that's silly and easily disproven. I merely believe I'm a facet of a benevolent fierce deity that supervenes on behalf of humanity
-
Nope. I have never seen any evidence of reincarnation, so have no reason to believe in it.
-
The amount of effort people put into saying “Maaaybe. We really don’t know,” is just crazy to me. No, because it’s nonsense.
-
I hope not.
-
I felt that way too, but then I watched re zero and that changed my mentally. I watch the anime last year
-
Is it good? Haven’t watched it yet
-
-
-
it seems reinicarnation, is an obsession amongst western countries co-opted from india/buddhism, and incorporated into many medias.
-
No but I wonder if hell is being made an insect over and over.
-
I don't think insects have a notion of being happy or sad so it wouldn't be too bad
-
I doubt insects are conscious because of how simple they are, but I do like that rich and Morty scene where the teacher was happy to be turn into a fly, but that's because he was in therapy for eating poop
-
Hell is being made a human over and over
-
-
I hope reincarnation is true. I want to be reborn. But than again, I fear being reborn in some dystopian future.
-
No. I believe in a relative afterlife (and people who feel confident that no afterlife is some sort of overwhelmingly logical conclusion should probably look closer at trending science and technology).
So I believe that what any given person sees after death may be relative to them. For those that hope for reincarnation, I sure hope they get it. It's not my jam but they aren't me.
That said, I definitely don't believe that it's occurring locally or that people are remembering actual past lives, etc.
-
No
-
I like the idea in Buddhism, that you are precious/valuable from the moment you are born. You already achieved plenty in your past life, which is why you were born as a human. Therefore, there is no need for self-hatred or for pressure to perform.
-
Not very knowledgeable about Buddhism but is the cycle over once you 'reach' humanity or can you just be an awful human being in this incarnation and come back as E. coli the next time?
-
IIRC, you can still come back as a "lesser" creature next time. Monks and ascetics exist because they're trying to go up to whatever is above human. I've forgotten the details. Nirvana or some kind of god-like state of existence, or reunification with some higher power. This might vary depending on the specific religion.
Of course, there are people who believe that assuming humans are a higher form of life is an arrogant assumption in the first place, which would render all of that null.
-
-
-
It's hard to say exactly. I wouldn't put it past the dev(s) to have potentially put something like "The Egg" in, so potentially yes, though we'd have no way of testing for it.
Story by Andy Weir here: https://youtu.be/h6fcK_fRYaI
-
Yeah I watched that video when it was new and had it rattling around in my head. It probably why I starting thinking memories and intelligence aren't part of consciousness. I do think emotions are connected to consciousness because they seem to override decision making.
-
-
I'm going to make a guess that majority of people looking at this question have grown up in countries with Christian cultural background. Meaning even if they aren't religious, their more or less subconscious believes about the nature of reality may involve some vague ideas about souls, absolute good and evil and so on. Separate entities in a hierarchical world. From that perspective, reincarnation is never going to sound anything but magical.
But if you drop your belief in you as a separate entity, literally everything is a "reincarnation" of you, if you want to use that word. But it's not the "you" that you think you are. Reality is prior to your thought about it, as thoughts are just imperfect reflections of reality.
You get a disconnect when you try to take a concept like reincarnation from a thought-framework such as Buddhism, without being REALLY FUCKING INTIMATELY STEEPED IN IT, and then try to fit it into whatever dualistic worldview you're likely holding in this largely Chisto-capitalistic world that is hell bent on making sure you always feel separate, alone and not enough.
It really is like taking a power plug from the EU and then being surprised it doesn't fit in the socket in the USA. And then going off about what a stupid design EU has while not ever even considering if the socket is even meant to receive that kind of a plug (because in YOUR opinion, your socket must be perfect in every way and could never ever be questioned).
Get Waking Up by Sam Harris... Or read Adyashanti, Rupert Spira, Loch Kelly, Jayasara, Kiran Trace, Christopher Wallis, Bernardo Kastrup, many more. It's all available out there but unfortunately a lot gets dismissed because "nooo muh materialistic worldview that is required for the current capitalistic hellscape that's slowly destroying our world can't possibly be wrong". So many people are pushing the collective cart towards doom, complain about the doom and the cart but never question what they so deeply believe that they won't just stop pushing.
-
Eh... No, but its nice to think about it.
As stated by many others, evidence is required to prove something. However, the stories we tell ourselves are comforting, so I wont fault anyone who does. Up until the point where people start going "My sky-dad could totally beat up your sky-dad", that can Belgium right off...
-
The character I created in my worldbuilding can totally beat up your character.
-
-
Nope. When I die, there is no longer a me of any sort; just any media and memory that captures some moment of when I still was until those too fade.
-
Sort of, not in a religious way.
Like I don't think there will be anything special that you get to keep with you, the "soul" is just a vessel to experience things, nothing special about it. As in: There aren't any hero stories, no "dragon reborn"s, no Karma. Just randomness. This moment, you are a human, when you die, your next moments could be a bug crawling next to you when you died, or newborn kitten to a pregnant cat in your backyard, or a cockroach about to get stepped on. Then some time again, you will be another human. Or perhaps proximity doesn't matter and you could be born on some alien planet far away. There is no concious god, its just pure randomness.
As if you are an immortal camera and your body is the microSD card adaptor, your memories are the microSD card, your experiences are just what the camera sees.
Sorry if my beliefs are silly, but I think there is some part of living beings that current level of technology cant quite measure yet. I think it has something to do with mass energy equivalence, maybe when we die, we become some energy that just bounces around until we become something else.
Its like people used to think the Earth orbited the sun. People used to not be able to see germs, or atoms, then we went from seeing atoms, to protons, electrons, then we say those even smaller parts.
Perhaps there is something that can't be measured yet. Perhaps it may never be able to be measured.
The way I see it:
It's either:
[1] Nonexistence --> I exist --> Nonexistence (and never exist again)
Or
[2] Nonexistence --> I exist --> Nonexistence --> I exist again (repeat for a long time, possibly forever)
Option one breaks my brain, so I just choose to go with option 2 to keep my sanity.
Maybe is just my monkey brain being silly, idk, but our minds have to invent these little stories to keep ourself sane. We as non-omniscient beings cannot objectively observe the universe, is all just biased subjective interpretations that are unique to us.
But regardless, this is the only chance I get to experience "this" life, "next" time I might be the bug the gets crushed by a neighbor that "this" life used to live with. So um... yea, thanks for coming to my ted talk
Take it sleezy 🤷♂️
🌌 (Your next life will be on a planet in a solar system with 3 suns, good luck with the chaotic eras lol)
(I must sound so stupid right? Given that this is Lemmy and eveyone here is an Atheist. Its fine, just leave my monkey brain believe its weird theories 😅)
-
Regarding consciousness/the human experience, I think the best way I've seen it explained is: a soul (whether you add the religious meaning or not) watching a brain watching a body.
Personally, since I believe I'll be judged by the Creator, I do believe in life (consciousness) after death. Not reincarnation, but it's a continuation. Monotheists around the world believe in it also, for whatever that's worth. 😅
-
Well it is part of my religion, but how it's interpreted varies :3
I personally don't worry over death too much either way
-
I like the quote "fill your life with love and let death take care of itself"
-
Not like we can do much about it, right? And life is a gift so every day is already more than what we 'deserved'.
-
I mean.. im not gonna say the whole gift and "more than what we deserve" stuff, but yeah.. what happens when you die doesn't really matter much, and no one can know what happens, so you should really focus on doing stuff now, and not planning for some eventuality that you can never predict
-
-
-
Want there to be evidence reincarnation exists . Want there to be research teams dedicated to finding it
-
Only if there's a way to test reincarnation. It would be neat to look at potential test. The closest thing I think of is anesthesia because that shuts your brain off
-
-
This will sound crazy if you aren't spiritual whatsoever. It's based on my personal experience with meditation and psychedelics, countless chats with other metaphysically versed people, video essays and I also studied philosophy. Before all that I used to be strictly atheist. Also if something I write doesn't resonate just let it fly, everyone has to walk their own path.
I think the whole universe is basically god experiencing himself. The division between maker and creation causes the tension that facilitates time and space. It's like we as humans are all part of God's mirror image. That means our soul is, the ego isn't divine. It's not neccessarily bad either, it's just that it's a tool distinctly different from the true self. This true self can be found, unearthed if you will. The first step is acknowledging that you are more than your thoughts. The rest tends to fall into place when the time is right.
From what you wrote I feel like you are half way there already. So as you start being present in the moment you may start feeling your soul living inside your body and you may also start identifying with this energy rather than the body that houses it or the thoughts it experiences. This is something you need to experience for yourself though, it can't sufficiently be put into words. True faith is evidence based, with the evidence being inside of you.
But anyway as that starts to happen you will naturally get a feel for eternal life and what it may or may not be like. I've realized that the soul can't be fractured like the mind can (mainly because since discovering mine I no longer suffer from depression and social anxiety) so if it is always whole there is reason enough to believe that it won't just vanish once you stop breathing.
-
You say forgetting memories is proof or indicative that memory depends on the physical body. But isn't that true for conscious as well?
Our conscious is inherently bound to our physical being. We see, we feel, we taste, we identify with our body. Our brain allows us to think, and experience, to conceptualize our body, our being, us as an entity.
We cut off fingernails and discard them as no longer part of ourselves. We drive a car and internalize movement as if it were us moving, while not seeing the vehicle as part of ourselves.
Without experiencing and without a body to conceptualize, what would our consciousness be? Without a body and mind where consciousness can arise from experience and thoughts, how could consciousness arise?
-
Yeah theirs an idea that universal can recreate particles and mass from energy that exists and eventually I guess the universe can recreate the the universe similar to how we know it after some amount of time or make a big bang. I don't understand that physics but interesting concept.
I would be curious if the was consciousness without matter, maybe a pure energy based being could exist
-
I don't see any possibility of that based on the physics I know of and my understanding.
-
-
-
I don’t believe in reincarnation, but one thing that isn’t mentioned enough is that there aren’t enough “souls” for everyone to have a reincarnation. If you rewind the clock back, once the original (for the sake of this exercise) 100 people died, the next generation would have 200-300 people already alive due to multiple children, which means they would halve mostly new souls. Fast forward to today, I’d imagine a lot of people would have baby souls.
-
That argument only works on the specific belief that souls constantly exist on earth though. In various mythologies and religions, there are various other realms where countless numbers of souls exist without inhabiting a human body on earth.
-
That would also be true! Which means we are all aliens inside.
-
-
Yeah I'm no gonna subscribe to the religious concept of reincarnation. I do agree it wouldn't make sense that there's a fixed number of souls that were doing it for eternity, or that there's this coherent cycle reincarnating as different animals all the way back to begining of life.
It is cool think about "soul" being cleansed like some day we can become redeemable through some process. I don't believe that's happening
-
-
We live in an infinite universe. As such, it seems hubristic to me to believe that we have, more or less, nature figured out.
I don't feel compelled to believe in the soul as some strange sort of object that is continuously reincarnated towards a great purpose. But if we consider consciousness as an energy of its own kind, then it should hold true that it cannot be created or destroyed, only change form. This could mean that the consciousness that resides in the body could move between different life forms like a fluid, freely mixing and melding with others, filling a new vessel as necessary.
-
I don't know if I can believe in a great purpose, is there an end that's meant to be reached or is it like we find the next step.
Maybe we dream, and works towards it if we achieve it; we dream again. We can enjoy it, be absolutely ambivalent, or even suffer. Maybe I can get back to appreciating the universe unfolding in front of me.
-
You’ll maintain a healthy diet with this much salad.
-
You doing okay there buddy?
-
-
-
I want to believe
-
I see it (or at least some form of it) as a realistic possibility. Let's say that consciousness is a completely physical thing, a certain set of chemicals, cells and molecules in my brain that define what is "me". That would mean that given infinite time, something that possesses "my" consciousness would eventually appear again.
-
There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1, but none of them are 2. Infinite time does not mean that everything (including your scenario) is going to happen.
-
There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1, but none of them are 2.
That is by definition though. 2 is impossible to appear between 0 and 1. I know already that it's possible for my consciousness to exist and I don't see a reason to assume it's impossible to exist in the future. So, it becomes more like the Infinite Monkey Theorem. Technically, it's possible for my consciousness to not appear again, but almost surely it will.
-
Why not?
-
-
Yeah and it should theoretically be instant from your perspective. The whole memories thing would be weird like you don't have your memories or you have a different set. My scenario is I'm reincarnated as a space squid and life w normal space squid existence
-
That would make sense if entropy didn't exist.
-
-
I say that consciousness is independent of memory because we forget, clearly dependent on our physical body
Some parts remain even after you forget. That is the outcome of your own free decisions, that has formed part of your personality. For example, you like cornflowers because you have decided to like it. So when you forget how cornflowers look, you will still like them when you see them, even without really remembering them. A good part of your personality is formed in that way: you have decided to be that way.
I believe that (most of ?) our personality remains when the current body goes to compost and we enter the next world, either up or down :)
125 comments
If it was real and you could retain memories of past lives, I'm confident we'd have some evidence/proof.
If it exists without memory retention and its just some sort of "soul" concept then it really doesn't matter since you won't remember anything for it to be worth worrying about.
The fact that brain injuries can erase memories shows that memory isn't going to continue when the brain no longer functions.
I was thinking you'd be "reincarnated" or reconstituted via Boltzmann's brain scenario and you'd get your memories back after some crazy amount of time, but I get that could happen at an earlier stage in life. Sounds like the "universe was created 5 minutes ago along with all our memories" BS
It's interesting having someone tell me to not worry about it.
Ever hear of Dr. Ian Stevenson?
Edit: Not sure why I'm being downvoted, dude looked into reincarnation and had hundreds of documented cases, Carl Sagan wanted people to look more into it
If even the guy who had done the most research on it doesn't believe in it, why should anyone else?
I have this little pet theory:
What if the memory is simply overwritten? A toddler, having not much experienced much in life may remember some stuff but as soon as new memories are formed the "old" memories are overwritten...
I mean, it at least would explain why my 2 year old has recently run an eerily convincing musket drill and bayonett charge with a stick while i am pretty sure he never has seen something like that on TV...