Reincarnation

30 April 2015

This we're thinking about Reincarnation – past lives, and future selves. Maybe you don’t believe in reincarnation. But a lot of people have and still do. Schopenhauer said, "we find the doctrine [of reincarnation] springing from the earliest and noblest ages of the human race, always spread abroad on the earth as the belief of the great majority of mankind." Most Buddhists believe in reincarnation. And I’m told one out of four Americans today believe in it. It deserves to be taken seriously.

But first we should get clear on exactly what we mean when we talk about reincarnation. Here’s a definition from the Dalia Lama --- he believes himself to be the reincarnation of previous Dalai Lamas, and as he gets old is starting to think about the next one, and has been writing about it. He says, quite succinctly, "In order to accept reincarnation . . .we need to accept the existence of past and future lives. Sentient beings come to this present life from their previous lives and take rebirth again after death."

Now I have utmost respect for the Dalai Lama, but I’m not sure I get his meaning. So while we're quoting famous guys, here's Leibniz: "What use…would it be to you to become King of China on condition that you forgot what you had been? Would it not come to the same thing as if God, at the time as he destroyed you, created a King in China…” To take two examples: David Hume died in 1776, the boxer James J. Corbett died in 1933. So I'm eligible to be the reincarnation of either of them --- or countless others. But what would make it the case that I am Hume, or Corbett, or anyone else?

我承认莱布尼茨的问题必须得到解答。但达赖喇嘛明确暗示有一个答案。是什么让40年前发生的事情成为你生活的一部分?这些事件和你现在发生的事情有一定的联系。无论它是什么,你都与你过去生活中的事件有联系——你转世的那个人的生活。但我显然不是任何人的转世,因为我和过去的人没有同样的肉体。这就是我和过去事件的关系。

And yet serious philosophers --- people like John Locke and Sydney Shoemaker --- have argued that personal identity consists in having the same consciousness, not the same body. We’ve done programs on that. So in order to get clear about reincarnation, and understand the beliefs of millions of serious and thoughtful people, including the Dalai Lama, let's assume that Locke and Shoemkaer are on the right track.

他们所说的“相同的意识”基本上是指记忆的联系。但我不记得大卫·休谟或其他在我出生之前去世的人做了什么,我的意思是,我记得休谟写了《政府论》,但我不记得写了《政府论》。我记得科比特打昏了约翰。l·沙利文在第21轮。但我不记得把沙利文打晕了。所以我不是休谟。我也不是绅士吉姆·科比特。事实上,我并不是像我这样的人的转世。我就是我,我得补充一句,这让我很忙。

But on many views of recincarnation there is a difference. Although most of us don’t remember past lives, there is evidence that some of us do, and perhaps all of us are capable of it. So you don’t forget everything, at least not beyond the possibility of remembering.

当然,还有卡玛。记忆是我们过去的意识影响我们现在意识的一种形式。但我们过去的行为和思想还有很多其他的方式影响着我们——使我们变得不同。因果报应也是同样的影响;你是什么样的人,一部分是因为你转世的人是什么样的人,以及他们做了什么。

So let's suppose I am the reincarnation of David Hume. He died in 1776. In Edinburgh. I was born in the 1940s. In Nebraska. As a naturalist, scientific kind of guy, I don’t see how what he did could have affected me in any special way. Do I have to believe in immaterial souls to understand reincarnation?

Maybe not. If you're an up-to-date scientific naturalist, you should be aware of how strange the universe is turning out to be. There are all sorts of influences, actions at a distance, that we don’t understand. Quantum events zillions of miles apart can be “entangled”, so that the properties of the two events correlate and complement each other in strange ways. And nobody really understands consciousness. Maybe it involves these deep physical connections we don’t understand. So maybe I can't just dismiss out of hand that reincarnation may be onto something, just because I fance myself Mr. Science.

Does that sound like I believe in reincarnation? Well, I did once. I wouldn’t mind being re-convinced.

Comments(19)


Gary M Washburn's picture

Gary M Washburn

Friday, May 1, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the bowl of Petunias says: "Oh, no! Not Again!"

renemcguire's picture

renemcguire

Saturday, May 2, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

I'm sorry but aren't the

I'm sorry but aren't the listeners interested in hearing what Robert Thurman has to say? I think he commands a higher level of respect than he is being afforded on this show. In my humble opinion, it's not very pleasant listening to him being interrupted, He's a great guest and thankfully his responses do not fit into a simplified 'sound bite'.

billmaggs's picture

billmaggs

Saturday, May 2, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

I'm sorry, but as enchanted

I'm sorry, but as enchanted as I was by the show today, I was appalled at how you both treated Bob Thurman. It is one thing to remind him about the obvious need to limit rambling answers in a radio philosophy show (I had Bob as a teacher in college, so I know quite a bit about his verbal style, which involves a lot of words), but the rude way you interrupted him and treated his points with what certainly seemed like undisguised condescension was somewhat shocking and unlike the tone in other episodes of your generally enjoyable show.
你似乎并不是在讨论轮回转世的问题,而是在讨论除了西方标准之外的任何科学或哲学思想都是荒谬的。如果你当时停下来听,你可能会像我一样被瑟曼的类比所打动和激励,并找到一些真正值得思考和学习的东西。他确实是一位杰出的教育家和作家,尽管他的修辞很华丽。

Gary M Washburn's picture

Gary M Washburn

Sunday, May 3, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

Having not heard the show I

因为没有听过这个节目,我仍然可以对这种方法有缺陷的指责作出回应。也许瑟曼先生受到了不好的对待,我不知道(这个节目在我所在的地区播出的时间不合适),但这种所谓的东西方区别每次出现都被夸大了。在这种情况下,西方无非是一种坚持,即主张的作者有责任对关键的问题和观察做出回应。当一个演讲者用意在推卸责任的语言表达自己的主张时,阻止他前进并不是粗鲁的行为。我们不是老师膝上的跟班。关键是,既没有证据也没有合理的证据支持轮回。一厢情愿不是哲学。

billmaggs's picture

billmaggs

Sunday, May 3, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

Really good point, and I

说得好,我当然同意,东方和西方的思想没有真正的区别,只是在你处理问题的工具上有区别。你真该听听这个节目,因为我觉得主持人和瑟曼都有责任为这场哲学式的食物大战负责。在许多其他的节目中,我从这些世界杯赛程2022赛程表欧洲区瑟曼有点消极地称之为“物质主义者”的人那里听到,讨论基本上会因为一些抽象的想法而陷入停顿,有些嘉宾觉得需要从典型的美国生活中提供一个实际的例子来吸引听众。很多这样的例子并不是基于观察和证据,而是基于你对伦理、道德等的直觉。我认为瑟曼的主要观点是,对亚洲几十亿人来说,转世的想法就像“别人如何对待你,你就如何对待别人”和其他西方观念一样实用。科学就是科学,对我来说,量子力学本质上和瑟曼用的抽象而美丽的类比没有区别,瑟曼用这些类比来表明思想和自我,这是西方和东方最难以捉摸的概念,我们试图把它简化成一组方程。

Gary M Washburn's picture

Gary M Washburn

Sunday, May 3, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

My media access is more

我接触媒体的机会比大多数人都要有限。

类比不是你想的那样。柏拉图在他的世界杯赛程2022赛程表欧洲区《高尔吉亚书》中展示了这一点。是差异,而不是相似,才是最具启发意义和最具生产力的。相似,相同,是一种自负,认为时间是永恒的东西。我们在心理上致力于生存,但我们在生理上致力于死亡。你体内的细胞在受精卵第一次分裂时开始分化。正是这种差异造就了我们是什么,我们是谁,而不是复制。正是这种分化意味着不能再回到干细胞复制体。只会复制的生命根本算不上生命,它们是细菌或真菌。千篇一律从来就不是真正存在的。 But, equally, what becomes what it is differentiated in every part can hardly replicate itself in another life. The absurdity is patent.

David C's picture

David C

Sunday, May 3, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

In order to focus on

In order to focus on reincarnation, and not be burdened by the whole question of personal survival, a temporary suspension of physicalist convictions would be helpful. If it is true that our existence begins sometime at or during fetal development and ends when our bodies are pronounced dead, then there is nothing left to reincarnate. End of discussion. So, for the sake of argument, one should provisionally adopt a spiritualist perspective for the discussion to go forward.
Though I bear a family resemblance with my 6 year old self, and share the same DNA, everything else about me is different. I have a whole other body and have been getting new ones about every seven years or so. Not a single cell of the 6 year old boy I once was remains. I have a few vague notions corresponding to the child?s vivid boyhood memories, but were it not for family stories and photos of that ?past life? I could just as well be that boy?s identical twin. Yet, despite the fact that I do not have the same body as my six year old self, or his memories, it?s reasonable to assume that I am the same person. Failure to recall a past life is no more extraordinary than the amnesiac fog that envelops memories of childhood.
As provisional spiritualists, we can appreciate the wisdom of the waters of Lethe. The movie ?Birth? with Nicole Kidman, explores the difficulties arising when your dead husband returns as a ten year old boy. It?s not pretty.
Presumably, our enduring selves have good reason to pay an occasional visit to our little sphere. Perhaps it is curiosity, a desire for a change of scenery, a ritual hazing, or to earn a merit badge. Who knows? Considering the limitations of a single life; one?s sex, nationality, race, etc., and the particular era that we live in, reincarnation makes a good deal of sense, if one?s desire is to explore the fullness of what it means to be human.
Putting your physicalist cap back on, if you usually wear one, the peculiar phenomenon of children who recall past lives is troubling. In a world where self and personal memories vanish into oblivion upon bodily death, this phenomenon should not happen. And yet it does.

Gary M Washburn's picture

Gary M Washburn

Sunday, May 3, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

Let's leave suspension of

Let's leave suspension of disbelief to the theatre of the absurd. Your cells are not born, they are divided from the original blastocyst. Many cells die in your life, but those still living are not 'newborn', but simply sister cells to those that are no more. The complexity of medicine and neurology can't be understood without recognizing this. The body does not take orders from the DNA, any more than a town meeting takes orders from its moderator. It's a book of which every copy changes its language with the reading of every term. This explains the astounding complexity that emerges. The question is, how does the body as a whole respond in recognition of the changes of it each cell is? This is how consciousness arises, and does so from adumbrating stages of it (humans do not have a complete monopoly on it). But it needs the material existing body to be that consciousness.
Person is a characterology of changing conceit that emerges from the very rigor of sustaining it. By conceit I do not mean egotism, but a state of mind or conviction that suffers change through the effects of inadequacy or incompleteness in it. Before we learn or come to change our mind, there are moods and instabilities in our convictions intimating the coming of it. The dynamic and special rigor of that change is what person is. But there is nothing constant person is, as there is nothing constancy time is. The rest is void. You wish the void. I suppose you have that right. It seems timeless and assuages our, quite reasonable, fear of death. But you also have responsibility to explain why you do not respond to the rather glaring fact that the only constancy in life is change. It is the character of that change that is the special quality of each of us. That is why death is the most completed loss, and must be. Only such completed loss as death is can be articulated the worth of that character of changing time each of us is of it. The notion of reincarnation voids that worth. And make no mistake! That does not make dying any easier! It is an ideology designed to excuse the cruelty we endure from others. It's purport is very much here and now. It's a real gyp!

MJA's picture

MJA

Tuesday, May 5, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

Reincarnation to me is

对我来说,转世就是来,去,只是存在,一个地方,一个过去,一个未来,一个现在,一个宇宙,我们都是“一”的转世,只是“一”,就是“一”。
United we stand,
Just me =

Guest's picture

Guest

Friday, May 8, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

That Joke at the beginning of

节目开始时的那个笑话很滑稽。在不久的将来,我将会捐款。

Bryan Van Norden's picture

Bryan Van Norden

Friday, May 15, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

Fascinating show with a

Fascinating show with a lively discussion!
I'm not a materialist myself, and I actually believe in reincarnation in a certain sense. However, I found Prof. Thurman's arguments problematic. I think Ken should not have conceded that the mind is a form of energy. However, let's concede for the sake of the argument that the mind is energy. Thurman would still need a further premise: that mind energy (which is conscious) cannot be converted into other forms of energy that we agree are not conscious (like heat energy or electromagnetic energy).
Think about it this way. Suppose the mind is energy. Okay, the body is matter, and the total amount of matter is conserved, but the body still rots. Why can't the energy that is the mind decay into some non-conscious form of energy, while still preserving the total amount of energy in the universe?
Thurman also appealed to the broader philosophical principle (going back to Parmenides in the West) that "nothing comes from nothing." But there certainly are emergent properties that violate this principle. There are fifty states currently in the US. Where did they come from? Is California a reincarnation of a previous state? If we can't think of any states of which California is a reincarnation, perhaps it is a reincarnation of a state on another planet? It seems easier to believe that mental states are emergent properties of lower-level physical entities, analogously to the way that political states are emergent properties of lower-level political entities.

Trevons's picture

Trevons

Tuesday, May 19, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

However, there are heaps of

However, there are heaps of different courses in which our past activities and musings impact us. write my essay by essayleaks

Gary M Washburn's picture

Gary M Washburn

Monday, May 25, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

What the hell is "energy"?

What the hell is "energy"? Energy, in fact, is not an emergent property of matter. It's the other way 'round. Energy is the 'lower level'. A better way to think of it is macro and micro. Energy is the micro state of the macro matter is of it. Is mind the 'micro' to the 'macro' the body is of it? Ponder this for a lifetime, as I have, and you might just come to realize something 'big'.

Gary M Washburn's picture

Gary M Washburn

Monday, May 25, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

In the midst of life we are

In the midst of life we are in...., debt.

Parallax Way's picture

Parallax Way

Thursday, June 4, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

When we are born and when we

When we are born and when we die -- the only thing that enters or leaves our bodies is the small amount of energy that we call 'the life force'. (called soul by most religions) The reason people cannot remember where they were before they were born is because they never learned to contact their own real life force but instead believe in all the things they were taught since birth -- and they think that all the foolishness that they 'know' about life is really them, and true - no matter how many others disagree. You see that is the problem -- ALL BELIEFS are just imagination -- truth and facts are what everyone always agrees on with no argument -- like "ice is cold!" I can explain everything about life and the whole cosmos using nothing but facts that all can agree on. NO BELIEFS -- and -- NO BIG BANGS either! Just facts we can all see and prove. Why is it you are all afraid to hear that?

Harold G. Neuman's picture

Harold G. Neuman

Tuesday, October 6, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

Years ago, I read some works

Years ago, I read some works by Brian Weiss regarding his research on reincarnation. During those efforts, I became aware of a book that sounded interesting but was unable to find a copy of it. Exploring Reincarnation by Hans Ten Dam is apparently out of print. Does anyone know where I might find a copy?
Neuman.

Johan's picture

Johan

Saturday, April 6, 2019 -- 4:15 AM

Are we recreating the ego, or

Are we recreating the ego, or some form of it? I certainly like to entertain what we call the or my mind, this co-creation... could be spit out of the endless circle. But to escape the circle all together, with our without the ego, I believe that is what they mean by Samsara. Maybe to do this you have to be "One of those Rangers from the North!" Sometimes it gives me pleasure to believe it, but logic says, it's probably just the absurd.

brrfparsons's picture

brrfparsons

Tuesday, October 12, 2021 -- 5:14 PM

When one realizes that only

当一个人意识到只有形体在“死亡”时死亡,而不是操作形体的形体,转世就满足了有意识的心灵。

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Harold G. Neuman's picture

Harold G. Neuman

Monday, January 17, 2022 -- 1:41 PM

I come back to this old topic

I come back to this old topic, only because i think ( not believe) there is some evidence reincarnation is true. Right now I have no more than anecdotal evidence. And one exciting and disturbing experience.

I've read and agree to abide by the Community Guidelines