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| Source: clcker.com |
Many culture have believed in
reincarnation. In the East India, China: probably under Indian
Influence and Tibet. In the West some Ancient Greeks embraced the
idea, The Celts tended to believe in reincarnation with examples in
some of their myths, as did the Vikings who believed one would be
reincarnated in the same family. I read that early Christianity
included a belief in reincarnation, and a verse in the Gospel of
John can be read as supporting the reincarnation hypothesis. The
value of this evidence can be put into perspective by looking at the
medieval belief the world was flat, and the Satanic Ritual Abuse
Panic of the late 1980s which recycled anti Jewish myths and
atrocity tales originally directed against Christians.
There is some evidence suggestive of
reincarnation, mostly from India (assessed by Stevenson) where belief
is strongest and evidence most likely to be corrupted by wishful
thinking. Evidence from hypnotic regression must be treated with
extreme caution, especially when dealing with a reincarnated
Cleopatra: it seems unlikely any regression will ever turn up Hitler,
Stalin or Pol Pot but such a case would be at first glance merit
investigation
I recall reading that group of
researchers into the spirit world asked a guiding spirit about this
and were told reincarnation happens but is uncommon.
And as always I want to know why? If
even one person is reincarnated even once that is a paradigm shaking
event. The reason why could be a second.
Why Reincarnate?
There are two main schools of thought
about the purpose of reincarnation. One school says it is to let us
learn and the other says it is to repay “Karmic Debts”.
Imagine your child fail their school
exams one year. So you send them back to do the year again. But
first you block their memories of that year. But just before you
block the memories you say
“I want you to do better this time,
if not you will keep going back till you succeed” . Imagine what
any child care official or Director of Education would say if you
proposed that as a way to educate your child. You would be in prison
faster than you can say “care order”. Believers note that
spirits tell them remembering past lives would hinder progress in
this one. Believe that as you will.
Imagine someone commits a crime. You
send them to prison and say “ If you do it again you go back to
jail: then block their memories of the crime. Not an effective way of
giving feedback. In any case most if not all injustices can be
settled with an apology and a drink in the Afterlife
“Sorry I had you castrated and sent
to the mines, let me buy you a double whiskey”
“OK, I can laugh about it now, make
it a treble”
Of course the education hypothesis may
be true, in which case reincarnated souls may be smarter, not
necessarily academically: A successful gangster is never stupid, even
though they cannot tell you the cube root of 79 ( not even to four
and bit), and politicians are very clever, at least at looking after
themselves, in a world devoid even of the ethics a gangster needs to
survive (skimming the take on a protection racket or sleeping with
another gangster's woman tends to result in death: in politics,
skilfully done it can result in promotion). If you doubt this note
that they tend to retire on full salary.
The Education Hypothesis is thus
basically flawed, which means either no one is reincarnated or
everyone is or some people are reincarnated. But the reason why
remains unclear. Perhaps we are just here to amuse a bored god or set
of gods. In which case the least we can do is be amusing no solemn.
Who Reincarnates?
Either nobody is reincarnated, some
people are reincarnated, or everyone is reincarnated. The first ,
given the increase in human population since prehistoric times,
suggests a continuous creation of souls to inhabit bodies or that the
body is an incubator in which souls develop. For most of human
history the time spent in a body was short: up to the 19th
century few lived more than 12 months and if nobody is reincarnated
there would be lot of undeveloped souls in the afterlife.
The last possibility suggests our
consciousness (spirit) needs a body, possibly to be able to
experience more keenly, possibly because it cannot survive long
without a body: how long can a bodiless spirit survive and why does
it need a body. It also indicates that somewhere is a reincarnated
Buddha and a reincarnated Jesus (Now who else can I offend?).
In
The Journal of the
Society for Scientific Exploration Vol.
14, No. 3, pp. 411–420, 2000,
Bishai contrasts the linear model in which no soul reincarnates with
a cyclic model in which each soul spends some time in an afterlife
and then reincarnates and shows that the time in the afterlife
shortens, as the population grows, from 57,000 years in 50,000 BC to
about 106 years in 2000AD assuming a total stock of 10 Billion
souls, and from 571,400 years to 712 years for a stock of 100
Billion souls. This may explain why infant mortality was high for
so long: new bodies were needed for short term tenancies and had to
be vacated because resources like food were scarce, Every infant
that died could spend time in the after life and be sure of a body in
time to survive.
If
as some cultures think, one can be reincarnated as an animal, the
pressure would be reduced further. It is of course unclear in this
model whether the human state was regarded as superior or inferior,
though population growth might suggest the former.
The
middle hypothesis, that some people reincarnate, is the most
intriguing of all. Why would people reincarnate given a choice? One
British academic said he hoped reincarnation was false since having
drawn an eel from a barrel of snakes he was unwilling to put his hand
in the barrel again. Perhaps those who reincarnate have a mission
to fulfil, or are just masochistic.
The
Wrap
No
one knows for sure if Reincarnation occurs. If it does no one knows
why. If it occurs no one knows how it is decided who reincarnates and
as what. That is a whole load of ignorance to investigate. And if it
turns out reincarnation is impossible the question of what produced
the evidence we have becomes important in the study of mass
deception.
Right
now I favour the idea that life on earth is a tourist trip with a lot
of dodgy operators who put you up in a resort with half finished
hotels and salmonella ridden food, with some offering misery trips,
like a survival holiday or the theme camp in Eastern Europe that
recreated the experience of a concentration camp. Add in a few secret
agents on a mission, some independent travellers and a few misfits in
the after life and the world begins to look like fun instead of all
the grimly serious puritanism the religions of the book ( and others)
try to foist on us.
I
remain convinced however that all the theories above may be partly or
wholly wrong. The world is never that simple.
Luckily!!
