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But what you really want to know, is probably how you can find out. There are a few ways, but the most straightforward way to find evidence of it that anyone can do, in principle, is with the technique of hypnotic regression, which might work if you know someone (maybe yourself) who’s hypnotizable and likely has lived more than one life. (To maximize the chances, choose someone who seems especially wise, as it’s likely their wisdom comes from having lived multiple lives. But I suspect you’ll find that the majority of people alive have lived more than once, anyway.) Then, through hypnosis, gradually try to make your subject remember their past, eventually going beyond the time they were born and conceived. They will then usually remember the “light” and bliss of the afterlife (or, more appropriately, the “in between”), and when you ask them to remember what happened before that, they may then remember a past life. Now, although most people won’t typically lie under hypnosis, you should keep in mind that human memory is never 100% reliable (the way it works, memories can get distorted in certain ways; essentially, the brain usually doesn’t record every little detail the way a camera would, and thus may later need to reconstruct details based on what it does remember, and sometimes gets it wrong — and, obviously, this problem may be magnified when asked to remember things that your current body never experienced). Be careful not to suggest things to the subject that may influence how they remember details, so that you don’t accidentally distort their memories. And it’s always a good idea to try to gather concrete details which can be used as evidence, such as names, places, dates, notable objects, and so on. Things that would still be possible to investigate today. Even if you do get results, this kind of thing might never be enough to convince a diehard skeptic, they’re experts at finding ways to discredit any particular story (sometimes themselves using flawed logic, ironically). They tend to demand a level of proof that not even science demands for most scientific discoveries; thousands or millions of pieces of evidence from all over the world mean nothing to them. But, the thing about truth, is that it’s true regardless of whether anyone believes it or not, and this method is at least one relatively straightforward way for you to investigate for yourself whether reincarnation might be real or not. (Or, if that’s too much work, you could also just look for books with such stories or something, if you like. But I suspect that’s always going to be less convincing than having seen it for yourself.) And I suspect your inference is incorrect. For the sake of argument, let’s first assume there’s no afterlife. In that case, what would death be, on a fundamental level? I think it’d be the destruction of the “you”, right? Meaning the thing that thinks, has an identity, autonomously controls your body, looks out of your eyes, and has its own free will. When you die, that free will, that mind, would be gone. This thing has been given various names through the ages, usually some version of “soul”, “essence”, or “ego”. This “soul” thing is important, clearly it can exist even if mind is all that exists. But if there’s only one mind, then it follows that your own mind isn’t a mind, meaning your soul is not autonomous and you have no free will, and this “karma” thing is pointless because you don’t control your own actions anyway. That seems absurd, so I think there can’t just be one mind. Of course, you could instead argue that we are minds that are, or were, somehow part of a greater mind, we just happen to be a little detached from it for whatever reason. This is the more common way to look at it, as it makes a lot more sense. But in this case there’s a lot of minds, not just one, even though there’s this greater mind that’s made up of all us smaller minds, and we’re all part of that greater mind in some sense. More importantly, in this case each of these smaller minds can cease to exist. Even if its component parts (e.g. knowledge, experience) don’t cease to exist, but are just reintegrated into the greater mind, its autonomy and free will would still be gone when reintegrated. In that sense, it would be dead. Now, as far as I can tell, there actually seems to be reincarnation (which is what you’d expect from a world where mind is all that exists), so your physical death does not necessarily imply the immediate death of your soul. But in principle, it’s still possible for your soul to be destroyed after death, and perhaps it might happen to particularly insufferable souls. Also, in hinduism and buddhism, the death of the soul is even considered desirable, because life is suffering. In their view, you’re supposed to live a certain way so that your soul is finally allowed to die, and be reintegrated with the universe. You can agree or disagree with such views (we might know more about enjoying life nowadays), but it’s clear that in many ways, death isn’t necessarily as bad as we typically make it out to be here in the West. Perhaps we shouldn’t be as afraid of it as we are. But the idea that we could never die… well, it depends on how you define “die”, but by the definition I think most would use, I would probably not consider it true. The first way is the materialistic way, where I could explain that there’s no particular limit to what you could compute with zeros and ones. If a machine is Turing-complete, then it can compute anything that’s possible to compute, it might just take some time. The things we believe to be uncomputable involve things like infinities and paradoxes, not things like feelings. Feelings are reactions to inputs. You’re scared when you notice something potentially harmful, in pain when you’re damaged in any way, and angry when something violates your perception of what’s fair. In artificial intelligence, preferred outcomes are encoded as “utility functions”. An advanced AI might attach some kind of “feelings” to their utility function: they attach good feelings to high values, and bad feelings to low values of their utility function. This way, all feelings can be expressed as computations. (Note that in living beings, many feelings also have a chemical basis, as hormones and such, which can affect the brain’s computational processes in strange ways. Would still be possible to represent this as computations, though, just very complicated ones.) The other way is the spiritual way, of course. Even if feelings can be computed, there might still be something that transcends the brain. Something that’s conscious, that has a sense of identity, “I am me”, and which is more than the body it’s in. No scientist has yet been able to pinpoint what causes this. They tend to assume, without proof, that it must be an emergent property of the extremely complicated system that’s the physical brain. It’s not an unreasonable assumption, I’d be inclined to agree with it myself. But from what I’ve seen, I’m not so sure it can really be reduced to that, as there are a number of phenoma that appear to falsify it. So, even if feelings might just exist in the physical brain, it seems your core consciousness (including some of your memories) could be rooted in a connection to something else in the universe. If the universe itself is alive, then our consciousnesses might be linked to its life force. (Although we still need our brains in order to exist physically.) Similarly, I think whether you want to be nice to a roadsign, or a tree, or whatever, should be up to you. But even if you don’t consider the roadsign part of you, your behaviour towards it certainly is. How nice you are to things, that’s you. Choosing whether to be nice will always affect who you are. And indeed, whether or not you can feel the universe inside or outside yourself, you’re still part of it and your actions will affect it, in some way. Always. [Edit] Another reason I want to mention is that the multiverse hypothesis is unfalsifiable (i.e. doesn’t qualify as science). So its main purpose seems to be to allow physicists to avoid certain difficult questions about how the universe works and how it came about. At the moment, it’s not really useful for much else.
I read your answer to Allis Mind, where you say; <<Now, as far as I can tell, there actually seems to be reincarnation>> Can I ask you to elaborate a bit on this topic? I personally feel that this is true, but its just a feeling. How do you reason your way to this conclusion (or at least tilt in the direction that reincarnation is true)?
Cheers
Have you heard about Bernando Kastrup? Many videos on you tube. He's an idealist. Mind is all that exists. That would imply that we are all one mind., also we would never die.
Should we be «nice» to for example the roadsign by the road, because it is energy, and that energy is in fact the universe, and therefore ourself?
Are we all connected? What are we?
Cheers Magnus
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