Philosophy Discussion Forums

[Evidence that suggest the reality of reincarnation]
[Article in Spanish]
Ernesto Bonilla
PMID: 26299061
Abstract
Worldwide, children can be found who reported that they have memories of a previous life. More than 2,500 cases have been studied and their specifications have been published and preserved in the archives of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia (United States). Many of those children come from countries where the majority of the inhabitants believe in reincarnation, but others come from countries with different cultures and religions that reject it. In many cases, the revelations of the children have been verified and have corresponded to a particular individual, already dead. A good number of these children have marks and birth defects corresponding to wounds on the body of his previous personality. Many have behaviors related to their claims to their former life: phobias, philias, and attachments. Others seem to recognize people and places of his supposed previous life, and some of their assertions have been made under controlled conditions. The hypothesis of reincarnation is controversial. We can never say that it does not occur, or will obtain conclusive evidence that it happens. The cases that have been described so far, isolated or combined, do not provide irrefutable proof of reincarnation, but they supply evidence that suggest its reality.

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UniversalAlien wrote: ↑May 3rd, 2022, 5:37 am So far so good - Still the living soul of Max Planck has not spoken directly to us.

Until then let us continue With AlienView's Hypothesis, supposedly at least loosely based on some of Planck's assertions.

Just found this from the well known data base for articles on medicine PubMed.gov:

[Evidence that suggest the reality of reincarnation]
[Article in Spanish]
Ernesto Bonilla
PMID: 26299061
Abstract
Worldwide, children can be found who reported that they have memories of a previous life. More than 2,500 cases have been studied and their specifications have been published and preserved in the archives of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia (United States). Many of those children come from countries where the majority of the inhabitants believe in reincarnation, but others come from countries with different cultures and religions that reject it. In many cases, the revelations of the children have been verified and have corresponded to a particular individual, already dead. A good number of these children have marks and birth defects corresponding to wounds on the body of his previous personality. Many have behaviors related to their claims to their former life: phobias, philias, and attachments. Others seem to recognize people and places of his supposed previous life, and some of their assertions have been made under controlled conditions. The hypothesis of reincarnation is controversial. We can never say that it does not occur, or will obtain conclusive evidence that it happens. The cases that have been described so far, isolated or combined, do not provide irrefutable proof of reincarnation, but they supply evidence that suggest its reality.

Similar articles
The explanatory value of the idea of reincarnation.
Stevenson I.
J Nerv Ment Dis. 1977 May;164(5):305-26. doi: 10.1097/00005053-197705000-00002.
PMID: 864444
Children's reports of past-life memories: a review.
Tucker JB.
Explore (NY). 2008 Jul-Aug;4(4):244-8. doi: 10.1016/j.explore.2008.04.001.
PMID: 18602617 Review.
The Case of James Leininger: An American Case of the Reincarnation Type.
Tucker JB.
Explore (NY). 2016 May-Jun;12(3):200-7. doi: 10.1016/j.explore.2016.02.003. Epub 2016 Mar 2.
PMID: 27079216
Personality and abilities of children claiming previous-life memories.
Haraldsson E.
J Nerv Ment Dis. 1995 Jul;183(7):445-51. doi: 10.1097/00005053-199507000-00004.
PMID: 7623016
Transplants, cellular memory, and reincarnation.
Dossey L.
Explore (NY). 2008 Sep-Oct;4(5):285-93. doi: 10.1016/j.explore.2008.07.001.
PMID: 18775395 Review. No abstract available.
See all similar articles

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26299061/


The validity and proof of reincarnation would indicate that death is not always {if ever} final - And that the consciousness of some people can return {If someone's past life can be recalled in a new physical body, is this not a transcendence of death } - Or would you rather accept a 'conscious field', part of Planck's be all implications on the nature of consciousness as a
fundamental prime - Is it possible that death is only an illusion and that life is in fact forever

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑May 2nd, 2022, 5:06 am Again 'consciousness is fundamental' - No beginning, no end, but rather a fundamental state of conscious existence that is
the be all of all that exists - The past, present, and future is backed by an ever existing state of consciousness

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑May 2nd, 2022, 5:06 am Now assuming, just for the sake of argument, that Planck is correct - Is death even possible

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑May 2nd, 2022, 5:06 am How can any form of life actually die, discounting the actual physical body which we know will eventually pass on
- But the ever existent conscious state that the physical body came from will always exist and the conscious essence that the
body came from is ever present.

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑May 2nd, 2022, 5:06 am So we Humans, or any life form for that matter, can not die completely - It simply returns to the primal and forever state of
consciousness

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑May 2nd, 2022, 5:06 am That said - Can we postulate the existence of a real afterlife where our ego specific conscious mind can maintain itself
and voluntarily choose to return and be reborn

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑May 2nd, 2022, 5:06 am And finally do you know of anyone, including yourself, who believes, and even better still has evidence of living before

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑May 2nd, 2022, 7:17 am

Good_Egg wrote: ↑May 2nd, 2022, 6:21 am Software needs hardware. The idea that the software mysteriously goes somewhere else when the hardware it's running on is dismantled seems like a misunderstanding of the nature of software.

OK, and by this logic one can also clearly see the possibility that software can migrate (or be migrated) to another platform if its original one disappears.

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑May 2nd, 2022, 5:08 pm

LuckyR wrote: ↑May 2nd, 2022, 3:53 pm

GE Morton wrote: ↑May 2nd, 2022, 12:41 pm

stevie wrote: ↑May 2nd, 2022, 10:06 am

Shame on Max Planck!

The OP is quoting Planck out of context, and thus misinterpreting his statement above.

So what's the correct context/meaning?

Maybe another quote by Max Planck will help to clarify what he means to say:



Pinterest
matrix of the mind - max planck | Max planck quotes, Science quotes, Physics

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑May 3rd, 2022, 5:37 am So far so good - Still the living soul of Max Planck has not spoken directly to us.

Until then let us continue With AlienView's Hypothesis, supposedly at least loosely based on some of Planck's assertions.

Just found this from the well known data base for articles on medicine PubMed.gov:

[Evidence that suggest the reality of reincarnation]
[Article in Spanish]
Ernesto Bonilla
PMID: 26299061

…The cases that have been described so far, isolated or combined, do not provide irrefutable proof of reincarnation, but they supply evidence that suggest its reality.

The validity and proof of reincarnation would indicate that death is not always {if ever} final - And that the consciousness of some people can return {If someone's past life can be recalled in a new physical body, is this not a transcendence of death } - Or would you rather accept a 'conscious field', part of Planck's be all implications on the nature of consciousness as a
fundamental prime - Is it possible that death is only an illusion and that life is in fact forever

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑May 3rd, 2022, 5:37 am So far so good - Still the living soul of Max Planck has not spoken directly to us.

Until then let us continue With AlienView's Hypothesis, supposedly at least loosely based on some of Planck's assertions.

Just found this from the well known data base for articles on medicine PubMed.gov:

[Evidence that suggest the reality of reincarnation]
[Article in Spanish]
Ernesto Bonilla
PMID: 26299061
Abstract
Worldwide, children can be found who reported that they have memories of a previous life. More than 2,500 cases have been studied and their specifications have been published and preserved in the archives of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia (United States). Many of those children come from countries where the majority of the inhabitants believe in reincarnation, but others come from countries with different cultures and religions that reject it.

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑May 3rd, 2022, 5:37 am Is it possible that death is only an illusion and that life is in fact forever

Which is more fundamental, mind or matter? You would think, in our ultra-materialistic era, that debate would be settled. But a surprising number of philosophers and scientists still resist the idea that mind is a mere afterthought of matter. One is Bernardo Kastrup, a computer engineer and author of several books, including Why Materialism Is Baloney.

In “Should Quantum Anomalies Make Us Rethink Reality?”, recently posted by Scientific American, Kastrup contends that quantum mechanics—as well as cognitive science, which suggests that minds construct rather than passively mirroring reality--undermines the assumption that the physical world exists independently of our observations. He calls for a new paradigm that makes mind “the essence—cognitively but also physically—of what we perceive when we look at the world around ourselves.”

On Twitter, physicist Sean Carroll slammed Kastrup’s “bad article on quantum mechanics,” and science journalist Michael Moyer called it “voodoo.” That’s a bit harsh. Kastrup’s interpretation of quantum mechanics reminds me of that of the great physicist John Wheeler. Decades ago, Wheeler pointed out deep resonances between quantum mechanics and information theory. An electron behaves like a particle or a wave depending on how we interrogate it. Information theory, similarly, posits that all messages can be reduced to “binary units,” or bits, which are answers to yes or no questions.

Wheeler proposed that physics be recast in terms of information theory, an idea that he encapsulated in the phrase “it from bit.” He postulated in 1989 that “every it--every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself--derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely--even if in some contexts indirectly--from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits.” We live in a “participatory universe,” Wheeler suggested, which emerges from the interplay of consciousness and physical reality, the subjective and objective realms.

Scientists and philosophers have proposed lots of other hypotheses that challenge strict materialism. They include “orchestrated objective reduction,” a quantum theory of consciousness invented by physicist Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff; integrated information theory, which implies that consciousness suffuses the cosmos and is touted by neuroscientist Christof Koch; the reality-as-simulation hypothesis, entertained by Neil deGrasse Tyson; and the anthropic principle, which Sean Carroll espouses.......

But I have thought of a way in which consciousness might be eternal, sort of, even if materialism is true. The idea came to me in the fall of 2015 when I was attending a workshop on integrated information theory at New York University. Toward the end of the meeting, I noticed that philosopher David Chalmers, an organizer, was nodding off.The man who called consciousness “the hard problem” was having a hard time remaining conscious! [See Response from Chalmers below.]........

Response from Chalmers: After I emailed this column to David Chalmers, he replied: “As it happens, Kelvin McQueen and I recently developed a theory of quantum consciousness that we had to reject on the grounds that the theory made it impossible to wake up from a nap! The idea was that states of consciousness can never enter quantum superpositions. It's as if they are constantly being measured, so they always collapse onto definite states. But now the Quantum Zeno Effect tells us any state that is constantly being measured can never change. If one starts in a state of unconsciousness, then the moment any glimmer of consciousness might be about to emerge, the system will collapse back to a state of unconsciousness. So after a nap, one can never regain consciousness!”

AverageBozo wrote: ↑May 3rd, 2022, 5:08 pm But I don’t think software is a good analogy for consciousness. Software is code. Code is a set of instructions represented by characters in a computer language. These characters are physical once they are translated into circuits that are either on or off, open or closed.

Stevenson, who died in 2007, was a psychiatrist by training—and a prominent one at that. In 1957, at the still academically tender age of 38, he’d been named Chair of psychiatry at the University of Virginia. After arriving in Charlottesville, however, his hobbyhorse in the paranormal began turning into a full-grown steed. As you can imagine, investigating apparitions and reincarnation is not something the college administrators were expecting of the head of their mental health program. But in 1968, Chester Carlson, the wealthy inventor of the Xerox copying process who’d been introduced to Stevenson’s interests in reincarnation by his spiritualist wife, dropped dead of a heart attack in a Manhattan movie theatre, leaving a million dollars to UVA on the condition it be used to fund Stevenson’s paranormal investigations. That money enabled Stevenson to devote himself full-time to studying the minds of the dead, and over the next four decades, Stevenson’s discoveries as a parapsychologist served to sway more than a few skeptics and to lead his blushing acolytes to compare him to the likes of Darwin and Galileo.

Stevenson’s magnum opus, published in 1997, was a 2,268-page, two-volume work called Reincarnation and Biology. Many of his subjects had unusual birthmarks and birth defects, such as finger deformities, underdeveloped ears, or being born without a lower leg. There were scar-like, hypopigmented birthmarks and port-wine stains, and some awfully strange-looking moles in areas where you almost never find moles, like on the soles of the feet. Reincarnation and Biology contained 225 case reports of children who remembered previous lives and who also had physical anomalies that matched those previous lives, details that could in some cases be confirmed by the dead person’s autopsy record and photos.

Interestingly, and contrary to most religious notions of reincarnation, there was zero evidence of karma. On the whole, it appeared to be a fairly mechanical soul-rebirthing process, not a moralistic one. What those mechanisms involve, exactly, is anyone’s guess—even Stevenson’s. But he didn’t see grandiose theorizing as part of his job. His job, rather, was simply to gather all the anomalous data, investigate them carefully, and rule out, using every possible method available to him, the rational explanations. And to many, he was successful at doing just that. Towards the end of her own storied life, the physicist Doris Kuhlmann-Wilsdorf—whose groundbreaking theories on surface physics earned her the prestigious Heyn Medal from the German Society for Material Sciences, surmised that Stevenson’s work had established that “the statistical probability that reincarnation does in fact occur is so overwhelming … that cumulatively the evidence is not inferior to that for most if not all branches of science.” Stevenson himself was convinced that, once the precise mechanisms underlying his observations were known, it would bring about “a conceptual revolution that will make the Copernican revolution seem trivial in comparison.” It’s hard to argue with that, assuming it ever does happen.

“The mind is what the brain does,” I wrote in The Belief Instinct. “It’s more a verb than it is a noun. Why do we wonder where our mind goes when the body is dead? Shouldn’t it be obvious that the mind is dead too?” Perhaps it’s not so obvious at all...........

Akashic record, in occultism, a compendium of pictorial records, or “memories,” of all events, actions, thoughts, and feelings that have occurred since the beginning of time.

CIN wrote: ↑May 5th, 2022, 6:11 am ...consciousness is created by the brain, so that when the brain dies, consciousness must cease.

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑May 5th, 2022, 7:18 am

CIN wrote: ↑May 5th, 2022, 6:11 am ...consciousness is created by the brain, so that when the brain dies, consciousness must cease.

Consciousness, of the sort that uses a biological brain to support it, must surely cease. But perhaps that point is that things can change? A caterpillar turning into a butterfly is an unexpected thing, but it happens. It might be that consciousness can continue, albeit changed, after its bio-platform collapses?

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑May 4th, 2022, 6:18 am What do I know Let me allow someone more used to current philosophical thinking take the stage:

"A Super-Simple, Non-Quantum Theory of Eternal Consciousness"

A sleepy philosopher inspires thoughts on how consciousness could endure forever
By John Horgan on May 1, 2018

Which is more fundamental, mind or matter? You would think, in our ultra-materialistic era, that debate would be settled. But a surprising number of philosophers and scientists still resist the idea that mind is a mere afterthought of matter. One is Bernardo Kastrup, a computer engineer and author of several books, including Why Materialism Is Baloney.

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑May 4th, 2022, 6:18 am

In “Should Quantum Anomalies Make Us Rethink Reality?”, recently posted by Scientific American, Kastrup contends that quantum mechanics—as well as cognitive science, which suggests that minds construct rather than passively mirroring reality--undermines the assumption that the physical world exists independently of our observations. He calls for a new paradigm that makes mind “the essence—cognitively but also physically—of what we perceive when we look at the world around ourselves.”

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑May 4th, 2022, 6:18 am

On Twitter, physicist Sean Carroll slammed Kastrup’s “bad article on quantum mechanics,” and science journalist Michael Moyer called it “voodoo.” That’s a bit harsh. Kastrup’s interpretation of quantum mechanics reminds me of that of the great physicist John Wheeler. Decades ago, Wheeler pointed out deep resonances between quantum mechanics and information theory. An electron behaves like a particle or a wave depending on how we interrogate it. Information theory, similarly, posits that all messages can be reduced to “binary units,” or bits, which are answers to yes or no questions.

Wheeler proposed that physics be recast in terms of information theory, an idea that he encapsulated in the phrase “it from bit.” He postulated in 1989 that “every it--every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself--derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely--even if in some contexts indirectly--from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits.” We live in a “participatory universe,” Wheeler suggested, which emerges from the interplay of consciousness and physical reality, the subjective and objective realms.

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑May 4th, 2022, 6:18 am

Scientists and philosophers have proposed lots of other hypotheses that challenge strict materialism. They include “orchestrated objective reduction,” a quantum theory of consciousness invented by physicist Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff; integrated information theory, which implies that consciousness suffuses the cosmos and is touted by neuroscientist Christof Koch; the reality-as-simulation hypothesis, entertained by Neil deGrasse Tyson; and the anthropic principle, which Sean Carroll espouses.......

But I have thought of a way in which consciousness might be eternal, sort of, even if materialism is true. The idea came to me in the fall of 2015 when I was attending a workshop on integrated information theory at New York University. Toward the end of the meeting, I noticed that philosopher David Chalmers, an organizer, was nodding off.The man who called consciousness “the hard problem” was having a hard time remaining conscious! [See Response from Chalmers below.]........

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑May 4th, 2022, 6:18 am

Response from Chalmers: After I emailed this column to David Chalmers, he replied: “As it happens, Kelvin McQueen and I recently developed a theory of quantum consciousness that we had to reject on the grounds that the theory made it impossible to wake up from a nap! The idea was that states of consciousness can never enter quantum superpositions. It's as if they are constantly being measured, so they always collapse onto definite states. But now the Quantum Zeno Effect tells us any state that is constantly being measured can never change. If one starts in a state of unconsciousness, then the moment any glimmer of consciousness might be about to emerge, the system will collapse back to a state of unconsciousness. So after a nap, one can never regain consciousness!”

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cr ... ciousness/

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑May 4th, 2022, 6:18 am Again we see how to cook-up theories in philosophy 'Philosophy salad supreme' - Try to make explanations of consciousness and
existence as complicated as possible and pretend this will give them more validity - Why not just say consciousness is both prime and infinite

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑May 4th, 2022, 6:18 am Why - Because you are Human and humans, especially of today, tend to resist simple answers.

And I ask you if the existent state of existence did not always exist - Where did it come from

And to say this existent state was unconsciousness and then somewhere along the way became conscious is ridiculous