princeofdoom (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
princeofdoom) wrote2019-06-01 08:31 am
princeofdoom) wrote2019-06-01 08:31 am
Entry tags:
Reincarnation
Late, but better than never.
I'm not going to make assumptions about the whys of reincarnation, should it exist. But to get an idea about my thoughts on reincarnation, you need to follow the following assumptions (some of which are more than assumptions and can be shown as facts). Very long so under a cut.
Assumption 1: Humans (and possibly other entities) have souls.
For talking about reincarnation, I'm going to say that a soul is defined as some part of an entity that lives on after the physical body dies. Anything else that is required for this to be true depending on different philosophies or religious beliefs can be argued later or put aside completely.
Assumption 2, and probably the most easily shown as a fact: Even the most peaceful death is traumatic.
I'm not talking about for the family and friends left behind (although it is also traumatic in many cases for them as well), but for the body (and mind/soul) of the person dying. In a long slow death, there is loss of function over time; either learning to accept or trying to fight the tug of inertia on the body's processes; infections hurt major organs, strokes kill off parts of the brain, heart attacks weaken the heart, which in turn also weakens the other organs. All of these cause trauma.
Which brings us to assumption 3: the brain is the seat of consciousness. This is again easy to show and most wouldn't argue it. So, I'm going to extend it to assumption 3.5: The brain is the conduit for the soul to interact with the body, and the world at large.
By a conduit, I mean something like a receiver or transmitter. What about the brain or brain like structures that would allow them to act as conduits between the soul and other physical things is only something I could guess at. But considering the functions of the brain, if souls exist, then that is what they would go through to interact with the world.
Now, there isn't any "standard" brain setup. There are strong tendencies within species, especially if two individuals are similar in other ways. But no two brains are the same, and genetics, diet, what one experiences and many other factors contribute to this. When you look outside the same species, the differences only grow. Sometimes, two unrelated species have different structures with similar functions, but go about doing these functions in different ways. Other times, one species will have parts of their brain that carry out functions that are completely missing from another species' brain.
So what does all of this mean? Well I think the fact that death is a traumatic event no matter how you look at it, and that no two brains are exactly alike combine to mean that memories from one life might be very difficult to recover in the next. It may be easier if, say, a human reincarnated as another human, or a cat as another cat, etc. It may even work well for species that are very similar, like the great apes to human, or fox to wolf. But in humans there might be an added barrier between the memories of one life and the next:
When humans are born, their brains are not fully developed and actually still need to set up a lot of things that most other species are born with. The human brain is still growing the network of cells that keep the neurons insulated and will be growing lots of connections, many of which will get "pruned back" around the ages of 2-4.
I think that the trauma of death and the differences in the new brain both limit how much a reincarnated person would be able to recall of their previous life/lives in the first place. The growing and pruning of connections might be a second filter to accessing those memories as well. At the same time, the reincarnated person is gaining new experiences. Some of these experiences may overlap old ones, some are completely new. Of the memories that overlap, only some might be of note to the individual themselves, and so many of the old memories will be overwritten in the new brain. They still exist in the soul, but the soul can only transmit some of these and some get blocked off from conscious access.
If these are all fair assumptions for how reincarnation works, then it would be understandable that most people wouldn't remember their past lives, and the memories they did have would be waved off as daydreams from when they were little. The strongest past life memories would be a human reincarnating immediately as a human, with memories from other mammalian species being more common than those of birds or reptiles, which would be more common than other vertebrates, which would be more common than invertebrates with brains or similar structures, which finally would be more common than memories from other kinds of life.
On the other side of the coin, humans make up a small number of individuals on Earth, so it is unlikely that any given soul will reincarnate from human to human directly. A quarter of the multicellular species on Earth are beetles, and most life is single celled or very simple. Going from human body to human body, or even mammal to mammal, would be less common than some would hope. So most humans might have reincarnated from previous lives where memories were never formed or where the memories are almost inaccessible. Maybe, due to the lack of anything "brain-like" souls cannot properly attach to things that are too simple, and so no memories from those lives are formed and those lives themselves are blank spots.
And from what I can tell from reports of people who supposedly are reincarnated, the strongest memories (most vivid and complete, most easily retrieved, most easily verified) ARE from people who were human and reincarnated as a human directly. But these are rarer than those people who report being non-human mammals previously. The memories are often more vague and there are fewer of them than with human-to-human reincarnation, but they are still there.
So what about people who claim that they reincarnated from beings that are mythical in nature? What about people who claim to be incarnated spirits like demons or angels?
I've said above that I'm not looking to argue religion or philosophy beyond my specific assumptions, but the only assumption we need to add to account for these is that we live in a multiverse. So maybe there are universes where elves and and dragons and various other folklore or mythical beings exist; they just don't exist here and now, at least not physically, but do have souls that can incarnate here. Maybe there are alternate universes that are like heaven or hell where beings like angels or demons reside, and these universes are close enough to ours that there is some level of interaction between them. And sometimes inhabitants of one of these realms comes to ours in a human body.
This is all to say that I believe that if reincarnation exists, both the lack of clear memories for most people as well as the existence of people like Otherkin, including those with species that don't exist on Earth here and now, make complete sense.
I'm not going to make assumptions about the whys of reincarnation, should it exist. But to get an idea about my thoughts on reincarnation, you need to follow the following assumptions (some of which are more than assumptions and can be shown as facts). Very long so under a cut.
Assumption 1: Humans (and possibly other entities) have souls.
For talking about reincarnation, I'm going to say that a soul is defined as some part of an entity that lives on after the physical body dies. Anything else that is required for this to be true depending on different philosophies or religious beliefs can be argued later or put aside completely.
Assumption 2, and probably the most easily shown as a fact: Even the most peaceful death is traumatic.
I'm not talking about for the family and friends left behind (although it is also traumatic in many cases for them as well), but for the body (and mind/soul) of the person dying. In a long slow death, there is loss of function over time; either learning to accept or trying to fight the tug of inertia on the body's processes; infections hurt major organs, strokes kill off parts of the brain, heart attacks weaken the heart, which in turn also weakens the other organs. All of these cause trauma.
Which brings us to assumption 3: the brain is the seat of consciousness. This is again easy to show and most wouldn't argue it. So, I'm going to extend it to assumption 3.5: The brain is the conduit for the soul to interact with the body, and the world at large.
By a conduit, I mean something like a receiver or transmitter. What about the brain or brain like structures that would allow them to act as conduits between the soul and other physical things is only something I could guess at. But considering the functions of the brain, if souls exist, then that is what they would go through to interact with the world.
Now, there isn't any "standard" brain setup. There are strong tendencies within species, especially if two individuals are similar in other ways. But no two brains are the same, and genetics, diet, what one experiences and many other factors contribute to this. When you look outside the same species, the differences only grow. Sometimes, two unrelated species have different structures with similar functions, but go about doing these functions in different ways. Other times, one species will have parts of their brain that carry out functions that are completely missing from another species' brain.
So what does all of this mean? Well I think the fact that death is a traumatic event no matter how you look at it, and that no two brains are exactly alike combine to mean that memories from one life might be very difficult to recover in the next. It may be easier if, say, a human reincarnated as another human, or a cat as another cat, etc. It may even work well for species that are very similar, like the great apes to human, or fox to wolf. But in humans there might be an added barrier between the memories of one life and the next:
When humans are born, their brains are not fully developed and actually still need to set up a lot of things that most other species are born with. The human brain is still growing the network of cells that keep the neurons insulated and will be growing lots of connections, many of which will get "pruned back" around the ages of 2-4.
I think that the trauma of death and the differences in the new brain both limit how much a reincarnated person would be able to recall of their previous life/lives in the first place. The growing and pruning of connections might be a second filter to accessing those memories as well. At the same time, the reincarnated person is gaining new experiences. Some of these experiences may overlap old ones, some are completely new. Of the memories that overlap, only some might be of note to the individual themselves, and so many of the old memories will be overwritten in the new brain. They still exist in the soul, but the soul can only transmit some of these and some get blocked off from conscious access.
If these are all fair assumptions for how reincarnation works, then it would be understandable that most people wouldn't remember their past lives, and the memories they did have would be waved off as daydreams from when they were little. The strongest past life memories would be a human reincarnating immediately as a human, with memories from other mammalian species being more common than those of birds or reptiles, which would be more common than other vertebrates, which would be more common than invertebrates with brains or similar structures, which finally would be more common than memories from other kinds of life.
On the other side of the coin, humans make up a small number of individuals on Earth, so it is unlikely that any given soul will reincarnate from human to human directly. A quarter of the multicellular species on Earth are beetles, and most life is single celled or very simple. Going from human body to human body, or even mammal to mammal, would be less common than some would hope. So most humans might have reincarnated from previous lives where memories were never formed or where the memories are almost inaccessible. Maybe, due to the lack of anything "brain-like" souls cannot properly attach to things that are too simple, and so no memories from those lives are formed and those lives themselves are blank spots.
And from what I can tell from reports of people who supposedly are reincarnated, the strongest memories (most vivid and complete, most easily retrieved, most easily verified) ARE from people who were human and reincarnated as a human directly. But these are rarer than those people who report being non-human mammals previously. The memories are often more vague and there are fewer of them than with human-to-human reincarnation, but they are still there.
So what about people who claim that they reincarnated from beings that are mythical in nature? What about people who claim to be incarnated spirits like demons or angels?
I've said above that I'm not looking to argue religion or philosophy beyond my specific assumptions, but the only assumption we need to add to account for these is that we live in a multiverse. So maybe there are universes where elves and and dragons and various other folklore or mythical beings exist; they just don't exist here and now, at least not physically, but do have souls that can incarnate here. Maybe there are alternate universes that are like heaven or hell where beings like angels or demons reside, and these universes are close enough to ours that there is some level of interaction between them. And sometimes inhabitants of one of these realms comes to ours in a human body.
This is all to say that I believe that if reincarnation exists, both the lack of clear memories for most people as well as the existence of people like Otherkin, including those with species that don't exist on Earth here and now, make complete sense.