slug.com slug.com

0 1

RECURRENT REINCARNATION: Imagine you’ve just come home from work. You sit down and relax, not in any elated or distressed state of mind. The state of awareness you are in—the emotional state you return to and have returned to all your life—can exist in a future life. That calm state is who you are from a point of view of awareness. I refer to this as baseline awareness.

Don’t confuse awareness with an object. If I throw a basketball into a volcano it’s gone for good. I can make one just like it but I won’t have the same one ever again. This is the way it is with objects, but processes are different. I can play the same song again and again on the radio, because a song is a process. Baseline awareness is also a patterned process in the brain. But it is probably not unique. Anger is the same kind of experience for everyone because it produces a universal response. Indeed, our ability to empathize with others indicates universality, even though the particulars may differ. Your baseline awareness—the awareness you return to after a heated moment—is probably something that is common to many other people. Who’s to say it can’t exist again?

If karma does not exist (and I have no reason to think it does), I could be a reincarnation of anyone in the past, who lived before I was born. Consider this: If someone hits me over the head I will see stars (as opposed to some other geometric form). But so would
anyone else. It doesn't matter which human brain you have, everyone sees stars, because the process of getting hit over the head and the brain's way of processing that

Page 2
event is the same for everyone (more or less). No one reports seeing squares or circles instead of stars. If a bee stings me on the back of the hand then stings you on the back
of the hand the only difference in perception would be in degree, not kind. The reaction to the bee sting is universal in kind but maybe not in degree. The point is that our underlying awareness is common, not unique. Humans are genetically very similar.

Since awareness is a process it can cease to exist then exist again. I can play a song ten times on ten different radios. The confusion comes in when people think of living
beings as objects. But minds are patterned processes, not objects. The two things have different ontologies.

I am a continuation of what I was a year ago. Likewise, I would not necessarily expect to have an absolutely identical baseline awareness as the person I was in a previous life. All that would be needed is for certain key features to be the same. If I project a square of light onto a wall it could slowly turn into a circle. But the circle would be a coherent continuation of the square.

In this sense there may be two selves: baseline awareness and sensory awareness. But since everyone sees stars and since everyone feels sharp pain from a bee sting the sensory awareness would reincarnate as well. A newborn baby cannot do arithmetic,
cannot speak and has only instincts to guide him, but he does experience baseline awareness and basic sensory awareness. Everything that follows early infancy is a
Page 3
continuation of early infancy. It may be that qualia has more to do with the way a stimulus is processed than with brain structure. It may be that some experiences have more to do with brain function than with brain structure. Incidentally, a scientific study of unique brain processes versus universal processes might yield interesting and useful results.

So, if a baby born today has baseline awareness that is a recurrence of a baby from 1,000 years ago the baby born today is a reincarnation of the baby from 1,000 years ago. No matter how much a person changes he can only become himself.

About baseline awareness, there are three and only three possibilities: 1.) it is unique to each person 2.) It is possessed by different groups (meaning each group possesses it’s own baseline awareness ). 3.) It is common to everyone. The reason I strongly doubt
the first option is that different emotions (anger, sadness, etc.) are the same types of experiences for everyone. Anger is one pattern of awareness, sadness another, etc. Also, people act like me when they are relaxing. This simply means that you can tell when someone is relaxing or tense. This could be analogous to a stare. Each time I lapse into a stare it is the same state of awareness that I have experienced before. Also, since I am only a recurrence of what I was in a previous life, I do not need to have identical baseline awareness that that person had. So, since even option 1 could
produce reincarnation, reincarnation very well may occur, because baseline awareness is the part of me that feels emotion, and the higher faculties have their base in this
Page 4
awareness and follow from it. If options 2 or 3 hold I am even more likely to reincarnate because there would be a stronger correlation between the baseline awareness of this life and the previous life.

A possible counter to this argument is that the influence of genes on the human population would cause each individual to have unique and unreproducible baseline awareness. However, the gene pool for humans is very small, and certain traits, like brown eyes, are almost universal.

Richard Dawkins’ observations in The Extended Phenotype might actually help me here. While it is true that each beaver dam is unique, the method of building beaver dams is universal. It stands to reason that there is only one type of consciousness that produces beaver dams. It has minuscule variations, but that consciousness is one process with many possible forms.

If I slip into a coma and wake with a different personality I am still the same person because I am a continuation of what I was before the coma. Likewise, I could just as easily be the same person I was in a previous life even if I have a different personality. My thinking is that baseline awareness is one coherent type of awareness since it serves a definite purpose, which is to sense the world is a broad way, to be receptive to changes both internally and externally so that any impulse which needs to arise can.

Page 5
But by far the best objective evidence for baseline awareness comes from evolution. A hunter-gatherer would have to return to the same relatively flat emotional state so he could make tools, stalk prey and gather fruit. If he were distracted by his emotions constantly he would not be able to focus. Focus is only possible when one is undistracted. In this way, baseline awareness would not be like a snowflake, created by chance winds. It has been carefully molded by natural selection to be consistent in each person.

In this age we need a real reason to care about the world. It may be said that Hindus and Buddhists don’t really care about the world more than non-Hindus and non-Buddhists, but there is a great uncrossable gulf between believing in reincarnation without reason and having a rational reason for believing. While many
Hindus claim to have experiential knowledge of some of their tenets, it would be helpful if we understood how reincarnation would be possible.

Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia has recorded thousands of cases of stories of children who he believes have reincarnated. He has back checked these, matching some of these stories with people who have died. It may be the case that some of
these are genuine. The continuation of memory could not be explained by the mechanism I am proposing, but most people have no such memories. If memories are genuinely preserved, this may indicate that the phenomenon is much deeper than what

Page 6
I am proposing here, but at least what I am proposing means that materialism does not rule out reincarnation.

It may be that some aspect of the universe or the person can replicate and even preserve certain characteristics of individuals from one life to the next. I have heard compelling cases of this before. But so far there is no scientific mechanism for this that can be nailed down. So far no one knows how a mechanism for that would work. Instead of trying to see something we cannot see we should, at least for the time being, look at what we can see.

I realize current science cannot verify whether someone has actually reincarnated, but with this mechanism in mind there may be a way of exploring the issue more deeply.
This argument is simply one from possibility. Much more work would need to be done. Of all the billions of people who have lived before it is possible that someone who died before I was born had a baseline awareness and sensory awareness that were close enough to mine to be a match. I can say nothing with certainty though.

Page 8
Another way of looking at the problem is through the lens of what I call “most basic awareness.” Most basic awareness is the awareness to which all thoughts and sensations occur. If I say, “It occurs to me it’s Sunday” I mean the thought that it is Sunday occurs to my most basic awareness. Likewise, if I burn my finger that pain occurs to my most basic awareness. I am not my thoughts and sensations anymore than I am the hair on my head.

This most basic awareness recurs in each generation after the time of my death. I am this most basic awareness. It is the seed from which all my awareness arises. Therefore, since it will recur, I will recur. Therefore, reincarnation.

Joel_Fry 6 July 26
Share

Be part of the movement!

Welcome to the community for those who value free speech, evidence and civil discourse.

Create your free account
You can include a link to this post in your posts and comments by including the text q:116301