Reincarnation

April 28, 2008 3:26 PM

REINCARNATION. Is there any compelling evidence that wouldn't be immediately dismissed by a skeptic?

I am a lifelong skeptic. I was raised as a born-again Christian, but when that belief collapsed, it was like a chain of dominoes. Now I need your help. I am 47 years old and I have recently met "the One," regardless of not believing in "the One" (I raised my daughters to scorn the idea that there was a Mr. Right).

If I live to be 500, I will not have spent enough time with her. I suddenly, desperately want to believe that I can start my life anew and have met her 20 years ago. I want to spend multiple lifetimes with her. This sounds pathetic, I know, but please humor me. Is there any evidence of reincarnation or karma that wouldn't be immediately dismissed by a skeptic, that skeptic being me?

posted by Chasuk to religion & philosophy (47 comments total)

Any time spent pondering this will be time you can't spend adoring her. There is no more compelling evidence for reincarnation than there is for any life-after-death scenario, which is to say there is none, in this sceptic's opinion.
posted by chudmonkey at 3:32 PM on April 28 [4 favorites]

Its all chemicals in your brain man
posted by norabarnacl3 at 3:33 PM on April 28 [8 favorites]

No.

There's no more evidence of reincarnation then there is of God existing.

Your atoms will live on, born from stars and eventually swallowed by stars, in a beauitful, destructive dance of supernovae. There's your real reincarnation.

But as for your mental state, or whatever you define as your soul, sorry, faith is all you can have.
posted by Static Vagabond at 3:37 PM on April 28 [9 favorites]

Well, in one respect, absense of evidence is not evidence for absense. Just because there is no compelling evidence for an afterlife, or reincarnation, or whatever, doesn't mean that it's not there - it just means that there's some communication barrier that prevents information leakage.

(Note: I don't really believe that this is a strong arguement, but maybe it's strong enough for you).
posted by muddgirl at 3:38 PM on April 28

I am fairly open-minded but also very skeptical about reincarnation, but if you want evidence, try reading Journey of Souls and also looking at Bridey Murphy, and finally, Ian Stevenson.

My husband and I have the same birthday: 11/11, and we are exactly 11 years apart. Freaky, huh? He says it must be karma, but I don't know if we met in a former life because I don't know if I believe in that stuff. I certainly enjoy being with him now, tho'.

Also good wishes to you in your newfound love, MeMail me if you want to talk about relationships in midlife.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 3:40 PM on April 28

This skeptic thinks you should enjoy this life with your wonderful wife and not worry about some life after death, but FWIW Carl Sagan has said that more research into reincarnation needs to be done.
posted by rancidchickn at 3:40 PM on April 28

I would suggest not looking for evidence. As a skeptic, you know how flimsy most of this Shirley McClaine "evidence" is; exposing yourself to it on a quest to convince yourself to believe seems like it could backfire.

Instead, willfully convince yourself to believe. It might take years, but it's possible. I saw my father undergo a similar transition when he remarried: over the course of a decade, he went from atheist physicist to devout minister's husband. Sometimes it's better to be happy than to be right.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 3:43 PM on April 28

If there was evidence, it would be science and not religion. Focus on making the most of what time you have.
posted by sophist at 3:44 PM on April 28

Considering the scientific world is a deterministic system in which occam's razor has the final say then youre just not going to find proof for supernatural things. But you may be interested in Ian Stevenson's books.
posted by damn dirty ape at 3:48 PM on April 28

Think about this: what evidence could there be? If you wanted to test the reincarnation hypothesis, what kind of test would you devise? What would count as evidence?

Supposing that we're talking about reincarnation where you come back as someone else but remember something of your past life... "Memories of past lives" could easily be fake, delusional. What if the memory matches up to events that really happened? Certain events re-occur frequently enough (villages getting sacked etc) that having a past-life memory of such an event isn't specific or rare enough to nail down a definite past-life identity. What if the memory matches up to a really specific thing that couldn't be faked? One possibility is coincidence (given the, say, hundreds of thousands of people -- or more -- who have claimed to have past-life memories, it would be more surprising if cases of accidental correctness never happened). Another possibility is that the person claiming the memory is lying and somehow knew about the really specific thing ahead of time ("there's going to be a key in that box, I put it there in my past life" but really I just knew by normal research/planted the key in the present day).

Supposing that we are thinking about reincarnation where you don't retain any memories of the past life -- where what's reincarnated is a featureless soul or energy that is somehow the core of "you" but which doesn't have memories -- would this really satisfy what you are after?

Supposing that we are thinking about life after death in a supernatural realm (rather than returning to earth to live again), how could there be evidence for or against that? Near-death experiences, or death-and-reviving experiences, aren't really telling because there are neurological explanations of things like seeing a white light with a feeling of peace etc.

BUT -- whatever's going to happen when we die, the best thing we can do in this life is the same: be good to the people we love, enjoy their company, do our best in whatever we do, do our best for others, and generally enjoy the wonder and oddity of this life. Knowing what's coming next doesn't change that.
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:54 PM on April 28 [3 favorites]

Yeah, I know the feeling. I'm a strong agnostic and was so hit with the lightning bolt at the start of one relationship about 7 years ago that it really, truly had me rethinking the whole god thing, too.*

Intense chemistry can be a rare, mysterious, and glorious thing indeed. But you don't need supernatural explanations to enjoy it.

*The rain on your parade: he and I broke up after about three years, despite all our totally earnest declarations in those first 6 months or so that we had crossed oceans of time to meet and would never, ever be parted again. The silver lining to that cloud: I'm now happily partnered with the person I really do expect to be with permanently. So life's a funny thing, even if this is the only go-around any of us get.
posted by scody at 3:54 PM on April 28 [1 favorite]

Coventry wrote:

So you want to be convinced of something you find dubious because it'll make you feel good?

No. I am constitutionally incapable of believing something because it makes me feel good. I believe that I am a meat machine that will one day stop functioning and that "I" will cease to exist.

I am not generally unhappy with this belief, but I would like to proven wrong. I was vainly hoping for that proof here.

To everyone who replied, thanks. I guess I already knew the answer.
posted by Chasuk at 3:59 PM on April 28

Sometimes it's a good idea to stop being an empiricist.
posted by The World Famous at 4:00 PM on April 28 [1 favorite]

And here I was all pleased to remember enough of the title of Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation to find it, but that damn dirty ape beat me to it.

You'd have to see for yourself whether you'd dismiss the evidence; it's dismissed by most people who'd call themselves skeptics.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 4:01 PM on April 28

Here is how they discovered the current 14th incarnation of the Dalai Lama - note that you'll need personal knowledge of and material effects from the previous incarnation to do it their way.

I'm not saying this is evidence of reincarnation, merely a practical application of faith. But I did want to suggest you not despair all the harumphing hereabouts regarding logic, science, and rationality - none of those have much to do with love, either.
posted by krippledkonscious at 4:01 PM on April 28

We believe the things we need to be true.

Watch What Dreams May Come. If you've seen it before, watch it again.
posted by Ugh at 4:03 PM on April 28 [1 favorite]

Watch What Dreams May Come. If you've seen it before, watch it again.

I have to disagree with this, because it's a terrible movie.
posted by Astro Zombie at 4:08 PM on April 28 [5 favorites]

I have also heard good things about Ian Stevenson's books, though I haven't read them.

But you might also look into the Nietzschean idea of the Eternal Return; it's what I personally believe. Science has offered nothing that suggests this hypothesis to be wrong, unlike reincarnation. The idea is that your whole life will repeat an infinite number of times in exactly the same way (and has already happened an infinite number of times in exactly the same way). Isn't it more beautiful to think about yourself (not a frog, not Julius Caesar, but yourself as you are) meeting and knowing The One again and again, forever? After all, even if reincarnation is true, the chance of you ever encountering each other a second time is infinitely small.
posted by nasreddin at 4:11 PM on April 28

you might also find William James's idea of the "will to believe" interesting - and his book Varieties of Religious Experience
posted by LobsterMitten at 4:14 PM on April 28

I've had serious crushes about four times. I'm a father, and my love for my daughters is shiny and intense. I've been in love three times, including my wife of 27 years. I recount this just to emphasize that I'm familiar with love; that love has been good to me.

Despite my familiarity with love, I believe what norabarnacl3 wrote:

Its all chemicals in your brain man

I also agree with scody:

Intense chemistry can be a rare, mysterious, and glorious thing indeed. But you don't need supernatural explanations to enjoy it.

Still, I was looking for some supernatural succor. Truthfully, I'm not quite ready to give up the hunt yet, though I see my own foolishness.

Thanks again for the replies.
posted by Chasuk at 4:17 PM on April 28

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that reincarnation exists. Past Lives, Futures Lives is one of them.

It seems quite silly to me that it wouldn't exist, why in the world would we not recycle ourselves?
posted by healthyliving at 4:20 PM on April 28

btw, that was a book that i mentioned. and perhaps science isn't sophisticated enough to develop the tools to study the spirit.
posted by healthyliving at 4:22 PM on April 28

Author Sam Harris, the scourge of Christians and Muslims, claims that there is compelling evidence for reincarnation. He mysterious cases of toddlers speaking in tongues, which he calls "spooky."
posted by johngoren at 4:24 PM on April 28

There is no supernatural. So, no, there is no reincarnation, no god, no nothing, outside of the very active human imagination.

What Static Vagabond says about atoms, however, is true, and awesome.
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 4:25 PM on April 28

I've often travelled down this mental path as a way to deal with the fear of death. I hate that there will be marvels in the future I will not be around to witness. But I assert that through some dance of genes and environment, another person will come along who thinks the same way I do - the pattern of logic, the sequence of deductions, the final actions, and perhaps more importantly, will appreciate things the same way I will.

When you consider that most ideas of reincarnation include not remembering former lifetimes, isn't this about the same thing? How much does it matter if it's your 'soul'? What exactly is this 'soul,' anyway?

I don't know if it's comforting to you, but after this life is done, another person just like you will fall in love with another person just like her, and he will adore her the same way you would.

It's comforting to me, at least.
posted by reebear at 4:25 PM on April 28 [5 favorites]

If I met a young* child who possessed skills** that only a lifetime of practice could provide, that would compel to re-examine reincarnation in a more hopeful light.


* under ten years old
**I'm talking medical doctor, physicist, chemist, lawyer, quonsar, symphony conductor, etc...

posted by popechunk at 4:26 PM on April 28

If I live to be 500, I will not have spent enough time with her. I suddenly, desperately want to believe that I can start my life anew and have met her 20 years ago. I want to spend multiple lifetimes with her. This sounds pathetic, I know, but please humor me.

No it doesn't. I think it's really sweet and romantic, and I'm not one to get all ooey gooey feeling over just anything.

There have been some good answers here. A bit of evidence for. And mostly reasons why it doesn't really hold up to investigation. But I would add, even if reincarnation does exist, that unfortunately doesn't necessarily mean you'd meet your wife again in another life. It's a really sweet idea, and it would truly be pretty fantastic if that were the case. It would also be really fantastic if there were some indescribably perfect place called heaven, and all we had to do to go there was to accept Jesus. (Personally, I like your idea better, maybe just because it's more concrete and fathomable what it'd be like to live multiple lives with The One). Anyhow. Even if there is reincarnation. Maybe each life is profoundly different. You don't meet all the same people in each one, otherwise there would be some really really odd patterns throughout history. So you probably don't meet The One over and over. Given enough time, like infinite reincarnations, I guess that could happen. But humans have existed only a few hundred thousand years by scientific accounts. So that seems unlikely. If time is completely cyclical, and existence is continually created and destroyed, as many believers in reincarnation would indeed claim, as I understand, then I guess there could be infinite lives, and you'd get to live with your soul mate multiple times. But what if that's wrong?

Anyhow, I really enjoyed your question. It really is a nice thought. I'd love to be able to believe it too, but like you, just because it's a nice thought doesn't convince me any more.
posted by gauchodaspampas at 4:29 PM on April 28

Wikipedia's page on Reincarnation Research might be a place to start. Ian Stevenson again does claim to have a lot of evidence.

If you want to, just for fun, explore other than "skeptic" worldview, the one hole I see in it is the "how strange it is to be anything at all" question.

We might be able to explain the world in great detail back to planck time, but why/how the universe exists at all to begin with is an unanswerable question. It kind of makes me think that there are things about reality that the human mind cannot comprehend, the same way an ant could never understand quantum physics.

Not that it is necessarily comforting (and I don't think it points to "god"), but it does poke a hole in the idea that everything can be broken down to billiard balls rolling around and bumping into each other. Or that everything can even be "explained".

Finally, just for fun, read the Book of the Damned by Charles Fort
posted by mjewkes at 4:32 PM on April 28

If there were reincarnation, wouldn't the fact that you don't remember any past lives make it fundamentally the same as if there weren't reincarnation? Recycling a beer bottle doesn't mean you get another drink for free.
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:10 PM on April 28 [3 favorites]

in his very serious book about physics (name escapes me at the moment), Brian Green mentions time travel and reincarnation as two seemingly outlandish things that could be possible.

I'm not going to believe anyone who tells me they remember being Cleopatra, but the bottom line for me is this: when we die, the atoms that make up our body are still here. Some of those atoms undoubtedly end up in new people. Since science can't say what exactly consciousness is, I can't rule out the concept of consciousness or pieces of consciousness reoccurring in a new person.

At every time throughout history, people have believed they understood completely how the universe worked. They have always been wrong.
posted by drjimmy11 at 5:22 PM on April 28 [1 favorite]

I know a man who is considered to be the grandfather of past-life therapy. Countless times he had been approached by TV execs to do a show. The execs basically ask him what he does and he describes to them the process that he takes people through. It usually ends like this......

Exec - "So with what you do, you prove that there is such a thing as reincarnation?"

Morris - "What I do doesn't prove anything."

FWIW

Nothing I've experienced can be proven yet. And I've had them.
posted by goalyeehah at 5:31 PM on April 28

The only argument I can make in favor of reincarnation – and it's not a very strong one, I'll admit – is that we don't have a firm idea of what "consciousness" is at the present time. Given that vacuum of understanding, it's possible to envision as-yet-undiscovered ways that consciouness (or souls, or whatever you prefer) might have some sort of incorporeal existence. Maybe you could tie it into the problem of universal determinism: how do you reconcile the seeming deterministic nature of the observable universe with our (and other species) apparent free will?

If you put your mind to it, you could probably hammer out some system that didn't violate any known scientific observations and dovetails with current theories; enough SF authors have basically done that (it's kind of the premise of a trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton, although it's not exactly highbrow literature).

But I'm not really aware of much in the way of hard evidence that would necessarily suggest it, only gaps in current knowledge where you could fit it in, if you desired to.

My recommendation, if it's not out of place for me to offer it, is that rather than getting depressed by on the ephemerality of our existence, you instead try to use it as a motivator – not that you probably need any – to maximize the time the two of you have together. You don't need faith in anything supernatural to appreciate life and the time it offers to be with people you love. Best of luck to you both.
posted by Kadin2048 at 5:34 PM on April 28

reebear wrote:

I don't know if it's comforting to you, but after this life is done, another person just like you will fall in love with another person just like her, and he will adore her the same way you would.

That is comforting to me, thank you.

I didn't really expect this to ever happen to me. I'm entirely befuddled and overwhelmed. When we are together, life is happier. The sun is brighter, the sky more blue, and that's even on days when she is in a bad mood, or when our entire week, from any logical perspective, has sucked.

I felt ridiculous asking this question, but I'm glad that I did. I'll likely end up no less a skeptic (I'm still hopefully processing the data), but my spirits have been lifted, which is an excellent result.
posted by Chasuk at 5:44 PM on April 28

Leonard Cohen narrates this film about reincarnation
posted by hortense at 5:45 PM on April 28 [1 favorite]

Nope. But aspects of her personality will be scattered among all living things, for as long as there is life, and pieces of her being will exist as long as there is matter.

However, what she is now is a beautiful fleeting moment, like a flower's bloom, or that stage in kitten's life where they're at the cutest. If you could go back twenty years, there is no guarantee that she would suit you or you or that you would suit her. Perfect moments are when everything lines up just right.
posted by Phalene at 5:55 PM on April 28 [1 favorite]

My husband and I have the same birthday: 11/11, and we are exactly 11 years apart. Freaky, huh?

Uncommon? Yes.

Freaky? No.

In any group of 23 people, there's about a 50 percent chance two people in the group will share a birthday. As for being 11 years apart, that happens about 10 percent of the time. 11/11 and 11 years apart? I'm sure someone can do the math of the 1-in-365 chance complicated by that 10 percent chance, but it won't be ungodly astronomical in nature, given a sufficiently large amount of people.

I bring this up here because the OP asked for evidence ... and anecdotal evidence (because that's all there is) can sound great in theory. But once you start peeling away the skin, you often find it's par for the course on this rock rotating this sun in this corner of the universe.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 6:20 PM on April 28

There are tons and tons of stories that are anecdotal evidence of reincarnation. But the main gist of your question is about more than that. In order for you to spend multiple lifetimes with your beloved, you would both need to be reincarnated, both within a relatively similar period of time, and then circumstances beyond the reincarnation itself would have to lead you to find each other again. That's waaay more than just needing evidence of reincarnation.

That said, I do understand how you feel, and your wish is a wonderful notion. There are some people who do believe that once we find "the one" that we do end up spending multiple lifetimes finding them again.

Congratulations on feeling so happy and fulfilled in your new relationship. May you continue to enjoy each other in this lifetime, even if other lifetimes never come to pass.
posted by amyms at 6:40 PM on April 28

It seems quite silly to me that it wouldn't exist, why in the world would we not recycle ourselves?

The tricky bit is what "ourselves" consists of. Our bodies are obviously recycled - into dirt and air and plants and oil and whatever else they become. But our bodies are recycled while we're alive, too - every time we take food in, we're replacing and repairing bits. So what's the underlying "self" that is there throughout? For a while some argued it was the brain, that the brain was fundamentally different from the rest of the body, and didn't change - this was theoretically flawed from the start and has been given up now that proof of the regeneration of brain cells is common knowledge. Some say we simply are the physical, and we are just different people 10 years later than we were 10 years ago, because we have a whole new material basis, and we just have "inherited memories" that go along with the bodies, but no real identity or continual perspective. Some claim we are the organization of the physical, that somehow the way the matter is arranged is the source of consciousness. And others insert a mystical but unified immaterial entity at this point, although none can clearly explain what an "immaterial entity" would really be.

IN other words: this is not really as simple as we may assume it to be. One would have to understand how consciousness works before they could answer with certainty what happens to it in death.

On the other hand, regarding the question of love, I would have to imagine that the face, the touch, the individual traits of the person you love are part of what you love, and we certainly know what happens to individual people: ashes to ashes & all that. So if you love their universal transcendental perspective, that would really be a Platonic form of love... To love one person, The One, it seems as if you have to love that particular mortal human being that was born in 19xx and will die in 20xx... To think that the reincarnated form would retain the details of their personality, even if they're reincarnated as a shark or a ficus tree or a Texas oilman, seems like a real difficulty to me (but this gets into varying understandings of love, I suppose)

In any case: ENJOY what you have! You are lucky to feel this strongly and projecting anxiety over when it will end is the classic human method for diminishing your joy (though, anticipating what you'll get is our classic method for increasing joy...) You can share a wonderful life, now and possibly for years to come. But try to actually appreciate the time as it happens - that's the only part that is actually together - all the memories, and all the dreams of the future are in your head alone, without real interchange. Only the present can give you direct access to the other person.
posted by mdn at 7:54 PM on April 28

Forget about reincarnation. Hang your hopes on a future benevolent society with time travel technology whisking you away to the future and making you immortal (or the far-more-likely but much-less-exciting possibility that medical science will drastically extend your life expectancies).
posted by obiwanwasabi at 2:15 AM on April 29

Omega Point. Just as whacky as any other belief.... should the universe collapse, for a moment, everything that ever was and everything that will be will exist in a small place the size of an orange. All the thoughts of everybody who ever lived, all of that electromagnetic radiation that's now spreading out through the universe, everything *everything* will for at least a moment be together again.

Time is events, when the universe collapses, events happen fast enough to make eternity. Some day the entire universe will be the size of a pea and collapsing and everything that ever was will all be there, and it will last for ever. (insert other crank theories here...)
posted by zengargoyle at 3:11 AM on April 29

I think what you're looking for is not reincarnation but the idea of eternal return. I know this concept from Milan Kundera's novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, who quotes Nietzsche quite a bit. It is the idea that you will live this life again and again, experiencing the same pain and happiness and mundane moments. This makes your life both short and eternal.

I don't know that this is true, but it would solve all of the problems of the likelihood of meeting your partner again and falling in love with her again in a reincarnated life.
posted by heatherann at 9:04 AM on April 29

If the number of beings with souls is constant, then reincarnation makes perfect sense. However if the number changes over time in either direction, reincarnation has some explaining to do. Namely it has to explain exactly what every other religion has to explain, which is where those new souls come from or old souls go to.

Reincarnation is just a soul buffer. It doesn't provide any better answers than anything else.
posted by chairface at 10:40 AM on April 29

Asking for proof of reincarnation here is, for the most part, like asking Monsanto if you should eat organic. If you still want "proof" about anything that the committed empiricists have declared impossible, you'll have to look where they aren't looking. And you'll have to accept that you won't be believed by them when you discover anything there that they don't believe is possible, or that for them doesn't "make sense."

If you're already a committed empiricist, you've already answered your own question.

Still have the question anyway? You're going to need to extend your list of useful tools for exploration and reduce your list of "proven" things in order to proceed. For example: What does a person who claims to be able to have out-of-body experiences "know" that you don't? You can either rest assured that he's delusional, or choose to try it for yourself. If you manage it, all your empirical friends will simply consider you delusional, too. But what will YOU think?
posted by dpcoffin at 12:04 PM on April 29

There should be a distinction between reincarnation and rebirth. Reincarnation is what Hindus believe, and is the popular notion. (I'm not Hindu, please correct me if I'm off base.) Reincarnation implies that someone's soul leaves the body at death and enters another body, and the soul is more or less intact although the person doesn't automatically remember who they used to be.

The Buddhist (at least, Zen) version is rebirth, and the metaphor I prefer is that before one candle is snuffed out, another is lit from that candle's flame. Is it the same candle? No. Is it the same flame? Kinda. Another metaphor is that we are vessels of water that are dumped back into the ocean at death, and upon birth, a new bucket of water is obtained from the same ocean. Is it the same bucket? No. Is it the same water? No. Does it come from the same place? Yes. The implication is that an eternal soul is a mirage; you do not carry the same thing from body to body. So, in Buddhist thought, you will be reborn (until you escape the cycle through nirvana), but as what and as who depends on a chain of events you can't predict, and it's unlikely to be as someone your significant other will recognize on a conscious level. That said, since we're all the same stuff (cf the water metaphor), we can recognize ourselves in every person we meet, literally. You are literally my grandmother, father, brother, cousin, as is every animal that walks the earth or swims in the ocean. I guess I don't need any "evidence" of this as it's self-evident to me just as it's self-evident that sunsets are beautiful and that chocolate is awesome.

Tibetans have their own beliefs surrounding this, and I can't speak to them, but the Tibetan Book of the Dead is pretty thorough from what I hear.
posted by desjardins at 12:46 PM on April 29

I'm a skeptic like you. Would love to believe, but just can't.

That said, this episode of This American Life, called Conventions, has a story from a lifelong sane rationalist who says he found his soul mate and now believes in reincarnation. The way he tells it, it's pretty damn convincing. (Beware, great story with tragic twist)
posted by CunningLinguist at 3:38 PM on April 29 [1 favorite]

Best bet is to wait and see.
posted by brownbat at 7:13 PM on May 5

There are books written on the subject.
posted by sophist at 12:53 PM on May 6