Evidence for rebirth

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
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purple planet
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Re: Evidence for rebirth

Post by purple planet »

I remember reading buddha past life stories where hes an animal so that might be a good explanation
chownah
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Re: Evidence for rebirth

Post by chownah »

JamesNewell wrote:For Aloka:

There are two memory systems. Brain memory is lost with death of the body. Consciousness memory is not. The existence of consciousness memory is shown by the ability to decode nerve impulse patterns, which requires memory spanning lifetimes. Without the brain memory, it would be harder to recall events in past lives, but things like habits and meanings would be easier to recall. There is a meditation in the Visuddhimagga for recalling past lifetimes, but it is very advanced and very difficult. A Tibetan teacher might be able to do that medication, but I would be surprised if a Tibetan Buddhist student could do it.
JamesNewell,
This thread is called "evidence for rebirth". Here it seems that you are assuming rebirth as a means to justify your concept of consciousness memory.......you are assuming what you are trying to give evidence for. Without assuming multiple lifetimes can you give something to justify your concept of consciousness memory. Also, I would like to point out that generally the process of decoding does not require memory at all except perhaps for small amounts of buffer memory to hold the results of partial calculations for use later.
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JamesNewell
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Re: Evidence for rebirth

Post by JamesNewell »

chownah::: "This thread is called "evidence for rebirth". Here it seems that you are assuming rebirth as a means to justify your concept of consciousness memory.......you are assuming what you are trying to give evid'ence for."

Jim::: Sort of. I am mainly answering a further question from another member, involving why we usually don't remember past lifetimes. And note, the answer is no doubt only part of what is going on. There are likely to be other factors. Since I have already given evidence for reincarnation, I am of course assuming it. The reason is that the complexity of the information processing is too great to have been learned in a few months in the womb. Then, the memory function follows as a detail of the information processing. In a general sense, I would say that all knowledge is somewhat circular in some way. However, I don't think that means that no knowledge is possible. I follow Popper in thinking that any theory is an approximation to truth.

chownah::: "Without assuming multiple lifetimes can you give something to justify your concept of consciousness memory."

Jim: Not in what I've discovered so far. It is possible that one might say that a digital information system can't accurately work with qualitative subjective percepts, metaphors, etc. And therefore, if one remembers any of those within a lifetime, that means a memory in consciousness. However, there is the possibility that the brain activity could have repeated itself, and that is the way the repetition in consciousness occurred. So that approach wouldn't be solid without some other discoveries of some kind.

chownah::: "Also, I would like to point out that generally the process of decoding does not require memory at all except perhaps for small amounts of buffer memory to hold the results of partial calculations for use later."

Jim::: You didn't understand the kind of decoding involved. In our awareness, we are not decoding from a digital form to another digital form. We are decoding from digital processing to quality processing. We are decoding, for example, from a pattern of nerve impulses to a perception of redness, or blueness, or middle-C-ness, or rose-odorness, etc. We are not decoding to an arbitrary formula for the subjective properties, which wouldn't be accurate but would only be another code. We are rather decoding into the qualities themselves. The kind of information processing which uses qualities, which we have neither invented a mathematics nor a machine for, is much more difficult than digital information processing, and is different in kind from digital information processing.

There is a problem, by the way, that our search engines and most powerful computers don't work with meanings themselves very well. We have to search for key words, not for meanings. If a supercomputer is searching images for something like flowers, it comes up with some false positives and some false negatives that humans don't come up with.

Now consciousness is going to need more than a tiny buffer to decode something like hundreds of thousands of nerve impulses which code by location in a pattern for a complex landscape, or other complex percept.

Or again, for a metaphor. Any word can be turned into any of many thousands of metaphors or analogies, depending on meaning, both gross and subtle. So just being able to pick out the right metaphor or analogy out of a group of potential ones is going to require more memory than a simple buffer. And of course, something more than a digital memory.

Jim
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Aloka
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Re: Evidence for rebirth

Post by Aloka »

Jim::: Sort of. I am mainly answering a further question from another member
Hi James,

I'm not sure if you are refering to me - but I wasn't asking you (or anyone else) a question in my last post. I was responding to something that was said by AJungianIdeal.

Kind regards,

Aloka
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Ceisiwr
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Re: Evidence for rebirth

Post by Ceisiwr »

I think it's better to look at how we approach and use the concept of rebirth, and less about trying to prove a doctrine to be "true".
“Knowing that this body is just like foam,
understanding it has the nature of a mirage,
cutting off Māra’s flower-tipped arrows,
one should go beyond the King of Death’s sight.”
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Ceisiwr
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Re: Evidence for rebirth

Post by Ceisiwr »

In response to the request on the other thread, I will briefly summarize evidence for rebirth/reincarnation, though scientists don't seem to like it because they are afraid that it would strengthen religion.

I get suspicious of this kind of reasoning, that scientists deny supernatural claims because of ideology. If it can be proven via the scientific method, beyond all reasonable doubt, then science accepts it. What you suggest just sounds like a conspiracy theory, which is usually a non-theory.


The Big Bang theory was seen to support the abrahamic religions (I think the pope at the time thought about making it a church dogma) yet it was accepted within science, over the steady state theory (which was a model that leant less support to certain religions).
Last edited by Ceisiwr on Mon Feb 24, 2014 11:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
“Knowing that this body is just like foam,
understanding it has the nature of a mirage,
cutting off Māra’s flower-tipped arrows,
one should go beyond the King of Death’s sight.”
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Ceisiwr
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Re: Evidence for rebirth

Post by Ceisiwr »

. In that way, ancient Buddhists were much closer to modern thought than ancient Greeks and Romans. So that means that many of the past lives the Buddha remembered were on other planets.

The Ancient Greek materialist philosopher Democritus proposed that there were other planets, and that some of them had life. He also put forward the atomic theory.
“Knowing that this body is just like foam,
understanding it has the nature of a mirage,
cutting off Māra’s flower-tipped arrows,
one should go beyond the King of Death’s sight.”
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Ceisiwr
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Re: Evidence for rebirth

Post by Ceisiwr »

The key point is the tremendous skill of consciousness in doing this. A landscape might be encoded in the relative positions of hundreds of thousands of nerve impulses, and in less than a second, consciousness decodes all that and creates a subjective image of the landscape. That means that the unconscious mind part of consciousness has skills equal to or better than our most powerful supercomputers.

That extremely high level of skill couldn't have been learned by a baby during a couple of months in the womb. So where did the skill come from?
Why?
“Knowing that this body is just like foam,
understanding it has the nature of a mirage,
cutting off Māra’s flower-tipped arrows,
one should go beyond the King of Death’s sight.”
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Ceisiwr
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Re: Evidence for rebirth

Post by Ceisiwr »

The above isn't enough for a formal proof, but it is suggestive. There is also a small amount of evidence for interplanetary rebirth/reincarnation. There have been times when a researcher has come up with a theory that turned out to be true, which was a quite large leap ahead of past knowledge, and which wasn't arrived at in a step by step way.


Do you have an example?

That implies that the scientific discovery may have been knowledge the scientist remembered from past lifetimes on another planet.
No it doesn't, that's just a huge leap in logic.
Again, all that isn't enough for a formal proof that there is interplanetary reincarnation, but it is enough to hold the existence of interplanetary rebirth as a hypothesis with some support for it.
It's weak and flimsy at best
“Knowing that this body is just like foam,
understanding it has the nature of a mirage,
cutting off Māra’s flower-tipped arrows,
one should go beyond the King of Death’s sight.”
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Evidence for rebirth

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The work on some children's natural memories still continues at U. of Virginia. By "natural" is meant not hypnotically induced, which are not reliable.

Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Re: Evidence for rebirth

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Nicholas Weeks wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 4:55 pm The work on some children's natural memories still continues at U. of Virginia. By "natural" is meant not hypnotically induced, which are not reliable.

https://www.youtube.com/....
"natural memories"? ... what are "unnatural memories"? Say people were talking that I may have been gautama in one of my previous lives and have been talking about gautama's life in my presence, too. Then spontaneously I have memories of my previous life as gautama ... are these memories then "natural" or "unnatural"? :shrug:
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Evidence for rebirth

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SteRo wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 5:26 pm
Nicholas Weeks wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 4:55 pm The work on some children's natural memories still continues at U. of Virginia. By "natural" is meant not hypnotically induced, which are not reliable.

https://www.youtube.com/....
"natural memories"? ... what are "unnatural memories"? Say people were talking that I may have been gautama in one of my previous lives and have been talking about gautama's life in my presence, too. Then spontaneously I have memories of my previous life as gautama ... are these memories then "natural" or "unnatural"? :shrug:
Your example is "unnatural". The U. of V. strictures on what are spontaneous utterances from the kids, & were not influences from anywhere or anyone else are good. Watch the video.
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Re: Evidence for rebirth

Post by SteRo »

Nicholas Weeks wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 5:42 pm
SteRo wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 5:26 pm
Nicholas Weeks wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 4:55 pm The work on some children's natural memories still continues at U. of Virginia. By "natural" is meant not hypnotically induced, which are not reliable.

https://www.youtube.com/....
"natural memories"? ... what are "unnatural memories"? Say people were talking that I may have been gautama in one of my previous lives and have been talking about gautama's life in my presence, too. Then spontaneously I have memories of my previous life as gautama ... are these memories then "natural" or "unnatural"? :shrug:
Your example is "unnatural". The U. of V. strictures on what are spontaneous utterances from the kids, & were not influences from anywhere or anyone else are good. Watch the video.
I won't watch the video because I am not a believer. If you can provide scientific evidence then this evidence is welcome.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Evidence for rebirth

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

SteRo wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 6:05 pm
I won't watch the video because I am not a believer. If you can provide scientific evidence then this evidence is welcome.
The video provides evidence. Have no idea what you do or do not believe, nor do I care.
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Re: Evidence for rebirth

Post by SteRo »

Nicholas Weeks wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 6:14 pm ... nor do I care.
Fine, we've found a commonality. :sage:

Verbal expressions of mental fabrications may be a good source for a video but these do not come under "scientific evidence".
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