Evidence of reincarnation? I think not.

[dybmh]

How about memories from your current past? Do you accept that these are all actual events from your current life? Science says you probably shouldn't.

Thank God! I've looking for someone like you!

Do you do couples counseling? Will you explain this to my spouse for me?

 

[Nakosis]

Thank God! I've looking for someone like you!

Do you do couples counseling? Will you explain this to my spouse for me?

Funny, yes my wife tells events of our shared past to other people which I'm pretty sure didn't happen that way.

 

[Quintessence]

Since both dreams happen in the thirties, they cannot possibly both be memories of past lives. it doesn't matter than in both cases it is extremely vivid, that I can even smell the humidity or the food, or feel the breeze on my face. It's simply impossible that these are past lives.

It can be, depending on how one understands reincarnation and connections to the ancestors and otherworlds. I don't see a compatibility issue because I don't put too much stock in linear time/space; I have too much experience as a mystical practitioner for that. When dealing with the aphysical/nonphysical, time and space are wibbly concepts at best; all times are now, all spaces are now, and yet not now. It's a sort of paradox I don't really know how to put to words well.

In any case, I don't tend to interpret experiences like this as past lives, per se, myself. They represent connections with something, but the nature of that connection is up to the individual to discover meaning in for themselves. What the connection "really is" tends to be less relevant than the meaning found and told, whether that impacts one's practices, etc. There was a time I believed certain things I experienced pointed at "past lives" but I'm just not attached to that narrative - it's enough to know there's a connection there that I can value.

 

[Heyo]

All it takes is a few good examples, to demonstrate the occurrence exists as an observable phenomena.

Repeatability is needed to show the mechanism of effect.

Exactly. And reincarnation is a claim of a mechanism. The phenomena are people claiming to "remember" things from a distant past of another person (which may or may not be a "prior life"). There have been other explanations proposed, DNA memory, some form of time-travelling telepathy, or implanted memories. There is not enough data to rule out or confirm one of these hypothesis or the null hypothesis.

 

[dybmh]

Funny, yes my wife tells events of our shared past to other people which I'm pretty sure didn't happen that way.

I'm just looking for good solid reasons to provide when asked why I forget stuff from the store. Or anniversaries...

Next time I hear: "why?" My answer will be: "science! naturally..." I won't tell her that I read it on the internet tho; that will ruin it.

 

[dybmh]

Exactly. And reincarnation is a claim of a mechanism.

I suppose that's, maybe, true. I simply attach the label to the phenomenon and call it good.

Reincarnation:

[Previous events for an individual} >>> [individual dies] >>> {__unknown mechanism__} >>> {new person born} >>> {identifies them self as the deceased and has their memories }

---

People use the word "soul" in regard to a reincarnation, but, it the word "soul" isn't actually needed. It carries too much baggage. Reincarnation is the phenomena above with some unknown mechanism in the middle.

Incarnation:

• talents
• flaws
• affinities
• aversions
• memories

If those qualities begin in one body, then find themself, after the prior body dies, in another body... That's reincarnation. I wouldn't expect it to be a perfect identical replica. But there are cases with startling correspondence of an "incarnation" landing, somehow, into a new body.

 

[Koldo]

I suppose that's, maybe, true. I simply attach the label to the phenomenon and call it good.

Reincarnation:

[Previous events for an individual} >>> [individual dies] >>> {__unknown mechanism__} >>> {new person born} >>> {identifies them self as the deceased and has their memories }

---

People use the word "soul" in regard to a reincarnation, but, it the word "soul" isn't actually needed. It carries too much baggage. Reincarnation is the phenomena above with some unknown mechanism in the middle.

Incarnation:

• talents
• flaws
• affinities
• aversions
• memories

If those qualities begin in one body, then find themself, after the prior body dies, in another body... That's reincarnation. I wouldn't expect it to be a perfect identical replica. But there are cases with startling correspondence of an "incarnation" landing, somehow, into a new body.

But what if only the memories match and everything else (flaws,talents,etc.) doesn't?

 

[dybmh]

Gilgul is a reincarnation concept in Kabalah, the mystical sect of Judaism.

Here is a far better resource for you. It avoids all the controversy and push-back one will inevitably encounter if the "K" word is brought into the conversation. It's just straight-up scriptural proof that reincarnation is included in Jewish theology. It was written as an argument theoretically opposing the Sadducees who denied reincarnation.

The title says resurrection, but, you'll find good scriptural proofs for reincarnation here as well.

On Resurrection of the Dead

On the Resurrection of the Dead is a 17th-century work by Menasseh ben Israel defending traditional rabbinic views of immortality of the soul, reincarnation, and resurrection, in light of challenges posed by skeptics. Ben Israel self-published the work using the printing press he established in...

www.sefaria.org

---

A GilGul, by the way, is a pile of souls. A prior soul, or souls, invests itself, to a degree, in the life ( and body ) of the individual. Not really reincarnation in the manner which I think you're proposing.

Gimmel-Lamed = Gal = Pile

---

If you're looking for reincarnation in kabalah: it's an ibbur. And, if you notice, this is much closer to the observed phenomena researchers have studied.

Ibbur - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[dybmh]

But what if only the memories match and everything else (flaws,talents,etc.) doesn't?

I don't know. Make up a word for it? I'll use it. ...if it's not too fancy. ...and I don't need to pay royalties.

 

[Koldo]

I don't know. Make up a word for it? I'll use it. ...if it's not too fancy. ...and I don't need to pay royalties.

I have no idea what you mean by that.
Do you mean you would still use the word 'reincarnation' or do you mean you would use something else?

 

[dybmh]

I have no idea what you mean by that.

You poor thing.

In the post you quoted I wrote: "I simply attach the label to the phenomenon and call it good."

Got that part? Phenomenon >>> Label. It's simple, Koldo. Don't over think it.

---

You asked:

"But what if only the memories match and everything else (flaws,talents,etc.) doesn't?"

OK... What if? That phenomenon would be:

[prior-events-for-an-individual} >>> {individual-dies} >>> { __unknown-Mechanism __} >>> {individual is born} >>> {retains memories of other person's life}

^^ that's the phenomenon you've described ^^

I don't think to much about it. Like I said, I label the phenomenon and move on.

But what if only the memories match and everything else (flaws,talents,etc.) doesn't?

I don't know. it's a phenomenon. You can label it what ever you want. That's "what if ..." ?

 

[dybmh]

Do you mean you would still use the word 'reincarnation' or do you mean you would use something else?

I would let you choose. You're the one who observed it, in theory.

 

[Heyo]

But there are cases with startling correspondence of an "incarnation" landing, somehow, into a new body.

Are there? The cases I've read about didn't even have more than fractions of memories.

 

[Redneck Mystic]

The is suggestion some experiences can influence subsequent generations. For example "mice trained to fear a specific smell passed on their trained aversion to their descendants, which were then extremely sensitive and fearful of the same smell, even though they had never encountered it, nor been trained to fear it.". Research has also concluded The researchers "the experiences of a parent, even before conceiving, markedly influence both structure and function in the nervous system of subsequent generations".

The dreams could be a "collective memory" of the trauma of that time, and not from a single chain of "souls" or past lives.



I agree, although "remembering" past lives could be evidence of past lives. Not necessarily of your own, and perhaps not of the person you are dreaming about either. Whilst I agree everyone can't be "remembering" they are Julius Ceaser, I do believe many are remembering those people who were around him, seeing Caeser first hand, and being directly involved in his life to help him accomplish what he set out to do.

Once upon a time, a woman friend of mine was on my massage table and she said she was getting an imagine of a woman, and asked her toa sk thye woman if she was an ally, and my friend said she heard the woman say, “Yet,” and I asked my friend if she wanted to ask the woman if she had anything she wanted to say, and m friend said she wasn’t sure, and I wait and she said, okay, and she asked the woman if she had anything to say, and my friend then started crying and shaking, and I asked her what that was about? She said the woman had told her, “You abandoned your children in 1863.”


That was in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

I moved to Boulder, Colorado, but sometimes drove back to Santa Fe to see friends there, including her. During one visit, she introduced me to a Hawiian man she had met and was dating. It got serious. Then, they were engaged, and he was back in on the Big Island, Hawaii, waiting on her to come be with him.

One day she called me in Boulder, all out of sorts. Her hair was falling out, she was losing wight, she had pimples on her face, and what seemed most distressing to her was she said she no longer could manifest what she wanted to happen. I asked her if she was trying to get out of marrying him. She admitted she was. I said, well, look at what that caused. She groaned. She called him and made a date to come join him. Her symptoms left.

Unrelated, if you believe in such, my lady at the time and I flew to the Big Island for a vacation, I called my friends boyfriend and we drove the rental car to where he worked and had a short visit, then we left. My wife flew back to Boulder nd I stayed behind for rew days. He He allied andnvited me to drive up for dinner, and I did that. While he was cooking dinner, his bride to be, my friend, called him and I could tell by how the conversation was going that she was trying to back out, and he was being very easy with her but not saying okay. Finally, I asked him to hand me the telephone, and when I did, I said, “Hi, Linda, it’s me.” And she said, “What are you doing there?” And I said, You are trying to get out of it again, and you forgot what happened when you did that before? Come on out here and marry him, and if doesn’t work out, you can get a divorce.” She said, “Okay,” and that’s what she did, and they got married, and eventually they had a child.

 

[Redneck Mystic]

I quite often hear from people who believe in reincarnation that they have "memories" of past lives, sometimes in dreams, or in vivid visions in their heads, or revealed through regressive hypnosis.

I take no stand on whether reincarnation actually exists. Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't.

But this I will say for certain: those evidences prove absolutely nothing. How do I know? Because I have those experiences, and they cannot possibly all be true, because the time periods overlap. Let me give just a couple of examples:

1. I once had a series of recurring dreams that I was a Jewish man in an upstairs room, wearing spectacles and reading. The first thing I heard was dogs barking. The sound of glass shattering. Boots, boots on the stairs. Pounding on my door. The door explodes inward with a deafening crash that I can still hear today. A lot of very painful things happened next that I prefer not to share. It is one of the most terrifying dreams I ever had. I would wake up, go back to sleep, and find myself back in the same dream. This went on for days. It was only years later that it clicked for me that this was a dream about Kristallnacht.

2. I also have had many dreams, both sleeping and awake, of being a thin man, an author, at a table outside a Paris cafe. The tweed suit, turtleneck sweater, and beret I'm wearing indicate the 1930's. I compulsively smoke cigarettes and drink gin or whisky. I think about the meaninglessness of my existence. My mentality is defined by disillusionment. I cannot tell you how disturbing this was when I would wake up, or how dark it felt. I'm quite certain these images were inspired by Sartre, whose novels I read as a young adult.

Since both dreams happen in the thirties, they cannot possibly both be memories of past lives. it doesn't matter than in both cases it is extremely vivid, that I can even smell the humidity or the food, or feel the breeze on my face. It's simply impossible that these are past lives.

Moving to my next point. Using hypnosis for regression, either into past events of this life or into so-called past lives, is absolutely notorious for creating false memories. The individual tends to see whatever they think the therapist wants to hear, and then they assume that these visions are actual memories.

We had a big Satanic scare in the 90s, where everyone thought Satanic covens were kidnapping children, molesting them, and sacrificing them. All sorts of people were saying they had seen these things. But when the FBI investigated extensively, they found there was no truth at all to it. Some had false memories either due to hypnosis or due to leading interrogations by police and others. Others were lying for attention or due to mental problems. A few were outright hallucinating. So we had 100s of eyewitnesses to something that never happened at all.

Next point. Stop and consider for a moment how many people "remember" they are Julius Caesar or Joan of Arc. They cannot all have been the same people in the past. And isn't it curious that these "memories" are always of very famous people in history. At least most of my dreams of the past are of insignificant people, like a black slave girl running through the field, or an ordinary woman in a Puritan village picking out cloth for a dress. I think my Sartre dream is the only one with a recognizable person from history.

So no. For all the above reasons, vividly "remembering" past lives is not evidence of reincarnation.

Discovery as Dalai Lama Birth to Exile | The 14th Dalai Lama

When Lhamo Thondup was two years old, a search party that had been sent out by the Tibetan government to find the new incarnation of the Dalai Lama arrived at Kumbum monastery. It had been led there by a number of signs. One of these concerned the embalmed body of his predecessor, Thupten Gyatso, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, who had died aged fifty-seven in 1933. During the mummification process, the head was discovered to have turned from facing south to the northeast. Shortly after that the Regent, himself a senior lama, had a vision. Looking into the waters of the sacred lake, Lhamoi Lhatso, in southern Tibet, he clearly saw the Tibetan letters Ah, Ka and Ma float into view. These were followed by the image of a three-storied monastery with a turquoise and gold roof and a path running from it to a hill. Finally, he saw a small house with strangely shaped guttering. He was sure that the letter Ah referred to Amdo, the northeastern province, so it was there that the search party was sent.

His His Holiness the Dalai Lama at the age of four at Kumbum Monastery in Amdo, Eastern Tibet.
By the time they reached Kumbum, the members of the search party felt that they were on the right track. It seemed likely that if the letter Ah referred to Amdo, then Ka must indicate the monastery at Kumbum, which was indeed three-storied and turquoise-roofed. They now only needed to locate a hill and a house with peculiar guttering. So they began to search the neighbouring villages. When they saw the gnarled branches of juniper wood on the roof of the His Holiness’s parent’s house, they were certain that the new Dalai Lama would not be far away. Nevertheless, rather than reveal the purpose of their visit, the group asked only to stay the night. The leader of the party, Kewtsang Rinpoche, then disguised himself as a servant and spent much of the evening observing and playing with the youngest child in the house.

The child recognized him and called out “Sera lama, Sera lama”. Sera was Kewtsang Rinpoche's monastery. The next day they left, only to return a few days later as a formal deputation. This time they brought with them a number of possessions that had belonged to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, together with several similar items that did not belong to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. In every case, the infant correctly identified those belonging to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama saying, “It's mine. It's mine”. This more or less convinced the search party that they had found the new incarnation. It was not long before the boy from Taktser was recognized to be the new Dalai Lama.

The boy, Lhamo Thondup, was first taken to Kumbum monastery. “There now began a somewhat unhappy period of my life”, His Holiness was to write later, reflecting on his separation from his parents and the unfamiliar surroundings. However, there were two consolations to life at the monastery. First, His Holiness’s immediate elder brother Lobsang Samden was already there. The second consolation was the fact that his teacher was a very kind old monk, who often seated his young disciple inside his gown.

Lhamo Thondup was eventually to be reunited with his parents and together they were to journey to Lhasa. This did not come about for some eighteen months, however, because Ma Bufeng, the local Chinese Muslim warlord, refused to let the boy-incarnate be taken to Lhasa without payment of a large ransom. It was not until the summer of 1939 that he left for the capital, Lhasa, in a large party consisting of his parents, his brother Lobsang Samden, members of the search party, and other pilgrims.

 

[Redneck Mystic]

I quite often hear from people who believe in reincarnation that they have "memories" of past lives, sometimes in dreams, or in vivid visions in their heads, or revealed through regressive hypnosis.

I take no stand on whether reincarnation actually exists. Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't.

But this I will say for certain: those evidences prove absolutely nothing. How do I know? Because I have those experiences, and they cannot possibly all be true, because the time periods overlap. Let me give just a couple of examples:

1. I once had a series of recurring dreams that I was a Jewish man in an upstairs room, wearing spectacles and reading. The first thing I heard was dogs barking. The sound of glass shattering. Boots, boots on the stairs. Pounding on my door. The door explodes inward with a deafening crash that I can still hear today. A lot of very painful things happened next that I prefer not to share. It is one of the most terrifying dreams I ever had. I would wake up, go back to sleep, and find myself back in the same dream. This went on for days. It was only years later that it clicked for me that this was a dream about Kristallnacht.

2. I also have had many dreams, both sleeping and awake, of being a thin man, an author, at a table outside a Paris cafe. The tweed suit, turtleneck sweater, and beret I'm wearing indicate the 1930's. I compulsively smoke cigarettes and drink gin or whisky. I think about the meaninglessness of my existence. My mentality is defined by disillusionment. I cannot tell you how disturbing this was when I would wake up, or how dark it felt. I'm quite certain these images were inspired by Sartre, whose novels I read as a young adult.

Since both dreams happen in the thirties, they cannot possibly both be memories of past lives. it doesn't matter than in both cases it is extremely vivid, that I can even smell the humidity or the food, or feel the breeze on my face. It's simply impossible that these are past lives.

Moving to my next point. Using hypnosis for regression, either into past events of this life or into so-called past lives, is absolutely notorious for creating false memories. The individual tends to see whatever they think the therapist wants to hear, and then they assume that these visions are actual memories.

We had a big Satanic scare in the 90s, where everyone thought Satanic covens were kidnapping children, molesting them, and sacrificing them. All sorts of people were saying they had seen these things. But when the FBI investigated extensively, they found there was no truth at all to it. Some had false memories either due to hypnosis or due to leading interrogations by police and others. Others were lying for attention or due to mental problems. A few were outright hallucinating. So we had 100s of eyewitnesses to something that never happened at all.

Next point. Stop and consider for a moment how many people "remember" they are Julius Caesar or Joan of Arc. They cannot all have been the same people in the past. And isn't it curious that these "memories" are always of very famous people in history. At least most of my dreams of the past are of insignificant people, like a black slave girl running through the field, or an ordinary woman in a Puritan village picking out cloth for a dress. I think my Sartre dream is the only one with a recognizable person from history.

So no. For all the above reasons, vividly "remembering" past lives is not evidence of reincarnation.

Or perhaps reincarnation doubters prefer Christianity’s view, you only get one chance when you die, you got to hevean or hell, and that’s it, forever, and if you arne’t a Christian, you don’t get heaven.

Consider this poem that fell out of me as fast as I could write in in the spring of 1994:

Earth-
the sacred prism
through which souls are refracted
into their elemental parts,
purified in Holy Fire,
then one-forged
and sent on their way
to not even God knows where,
simply because they are all
unique emanations of God,
Evolving…

 

[dybmh]

Are there? The cases I've read about didn't even have more than fractions of memories.

People recall stories according to their own expectations. Myself included. I'd need to review it to discuss it further.

 

[Koldo]

I would let you choose. You're the one who observed it, in theory.

I haven't observed it though... not even in theory.

 

[sayak83]

I quite often hear from people who believe in reincarnation that they have "memories" of past lives, sometimes in dreams, or in vivid visions in their heads, or revealed through regressive hypnosis.

I take no stand on whether reincarnation actually exists. Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't.

But this I will say for certain: those evidences prove absolutely nothing. How do I know? Because I have those experiences, and they cannot possibly all be true, because the time periods overlap. Let me give just a couple of examples:

1. I once had a series of recurring dreams that I was a Jewish man in an upstairs room, wearing spectacles and reading. The first thing I heard was dogs barking. The sound of glass shattering. Boots, boots on the stairs. Pounding on my door. The door explodes inward with a deafening crash that I can still hear today. A lot of very painful things happened next that I prefer not to share. It is one of the most terrifying dreams I ever had. I would wake up, go back to sleep, and find myself back in the same dream. This went on for days. It was only years later that it clicked for me that this was a dream about Kristallnacht.

2. I also have had many dreams, both sleeping and awake, of being a thin man, an author, at a table outside a Paris cafe. The tweed suit, turtleneck sweater, and beret I'm wearing indicate the 1930's. I compulsively smoke cigarettes and drink gin or whisky. I think about the meaninglessness of my existence. My mentality is defined by disillusionment. I cannot tell you how disturbing this was when I would wake up, or how dark it felt. I'm quite certain these images were inspired by Sartre, whose novels I read as a young adult.

Since both dreams happen in the thirties, they cannot possibly both be memories of past lives. it doesn't matter than in both cases it is extremely vivid, that I can even smell the humidity or the food, or feel the breeze on my face. It's simply impossible that these are past lives.

Moving to my next point. Using hypnosis for regression, either into past events of this life or into so-called past lives, is absolutely notorious for creating false memories. The individual tends to see whatever they think the therapist wants to hear, and then they assume that these visions are actual memories.

We had a big Satanic scare in the 90s, where everyone thought Satanic covens were kidnapping children, molesting them, and sacrificing them. All sorts of people were saying they had seen these things. But when the FBI investigated extensively, they found there was no truth at all to it. Some had false memories either due to hypnosis or due to leading interrogations by police and others. Others were lying for attention or due to mental problems. A few were outright hallucinating. So we had 100s of eyewitnesses to something that never happened at all.

Next point. Stop and consider for a moment how many people "remember" they are Julius Caesar or Joan of Arc. They cannot all have been the same people in the past. And isn't it curious that these "memories" are always of very famous people in history. At least most of my dreams of the past are of insignificant people, like a black slave girl running through the field, or an ordinary woman in a Puritan village picking out cloth for a dress. I think my Sartre dream is the only one with a recognizable person from history.

So no. For all the above reasons, vividly "remembering" past lives is not evidence of reincarnation.

Obviously simply "vivid memory like experiences" are not evidence of rebirth. We can imagine such stuff.

But the scientific research has shown thousands of excellent "past life" memory events in children that cannot be so easily dismissed.
Evaluating the Evidence for Reincarnation

Since Stevenson’s death, other researchers have followed his lead. Now around 2500 reports of children’s past-life memories have been studied (2). Research has shown that normally the children’s reported previous lives ended prematurely and unnaturally, often involving violence, suicide, or an accident. In almost three-quarters of cases, the “previous personality” (in the term coined by Stevenson) died relatively young. A quarter died before the age of 15. On average, the previous personalities died four-and-a-half years before the birth of the children with whom they were associated (3).
Modern researchers meticulously check the accuracy of children’s accounts, analyzing any possibility that they gained information through more mundane ways or were fantasizing, or that their parents may be embellishing their stories. Often, researchers give the children recognition tests—for example, showing them a set of photos and asking them to pick the one which relates to their previous personality. They might be shown pictures of houses and asked to pick the one their previous personality lived in. They might be shown pictures of women and asked to pick which was their previous personality’s wife (4).

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Research has shown that normally the children’s reported previous lives ended prematurely and unnaturally, often involving violence, suicide, or an accident. In almost three-quarters of cases, the “previous personality” (in the term coined by Stevenson) died relatively young. A quarter died before the age of 15. On average, the previous personalities died four-and-a-half years before the birth of the children with whom they were associated (3).

What the researchers have done is DESCRIBE the commonalities among the accounts given by children, my the same way as Kate Atkinson in Life After Life explores the commonalities among Near Death Experiences. These sort of commonalities do not necessarily mean that they are due to actual reincarnation or the soul surviving death. The researchers you are referring to do not conclude that reincarnation is real.

Modern researchers meticulously check the accuracy of children’s accounts, analyzing any possibility that they gained information through more mundane ways or were fantasizing, or that their parents may be embellishing their stories.

That they haven't pinned down a perfectly natural explanation for the phenomena doesn't mean that such a natural explanation doesn't exist. There is the saying, "Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence."