Scientific Alternatives to Reincarnation
-Eowyn
It`s evident that in this forum almost 100% of our members believe in reincarnation. But if we would be asked for strong proof that we have lived before, very few of us could provide them. So, let´s leave for a moment our personal experiences aside and let´s think: if reincarnation does not exist, what happens to us? What are the explanations that scientists give to the research of Ian Stevenson or the testimonies of hundreds of people that say to have past life memories?
Well, to start, there are people who say that not even our physical bodies exist, that they are only a sensorial illusion created by our brain. According to quantum physics, our “reality”, the universe that surrounds us is only energy and information. I even find this hard to comprehend. But it would be saying that a body is just an electromagnetic field that vibrates, nothing more and nothing less.This would allow us to forget the concept of spirit, soul or whatever that abstract thing that is so difficult for scientists to understand may be, and suppose that we are all made of “energy”.
According to many studies performed over near death experiences, it wouldn´t be weird to think that that “energy” has some time of conscience, conscience that could traslate from one place to another. There are studies published about it, like that one of a Dutch cardiologist called Pim Van Lommel. He concluded that the body is a receptacle of consciousness, and according to him, certain proceses like memory would reside outside of the body. But seems like that for the moment nobody has gone further.
Therefore, alternatives to reincarnation should be considered. Many of those refuted by Ian Stevenson himself. For example:
1. Extra-sensory perception (ESP): or to say the same, telepathy or thought transmission. This alternative would be very hard to accept for skeptics that deny reincarnation, considering that they also deny ESP. However, this would mean that all the children that remember past lives have ESP. If this was the case, they should have it in all aspects of their life, not only in the one involving past lives. And anyways, the information they have access to, would come not from only one person, but from several different ones, surpassing even the cases of studied ESP. It wouldn´t explain either personality or behavioral changes that these children experience, and neither would explain birthmarks.
2. Fraud: It’ s very easy to accuse of fraud the parents of children like James Leininger without taking into consideration all the implied emotions in each case, very difficult to take by a child or by entire families in the cases studied by Stevenson in India. I have no doubt of the professionality of many scientists that approach the subject of reincarnation with an objective attitude and without prejudices.
3. Criptoamnesia: I love this word. Too complicated for what it actually means though. That our memories are nothing more that things we have learnt in this life but we have forgotten: it could be that we have read them, that we have seen them in a movie, that somebody told us about it when we were little… As always, it doesn’ t explain the cases of very little children that show to have knowledge over certain topics even greater than their parents’ .
4. Collective unconscious: Term created by Jung, as many of you know, and that it would say that what the kid remembres aren’t his own memories, but memories of his ancestros. The problem would be to explain how those memories could be transmitted. If it was through genes, there should be blood relation between the child and the person whose life he remembers, and that isn’ t always like that, even sometimes that person lives in another continent. Also, as Stevenson said, if that was the case, the memories transmitted would only cover until the moment of the conception of the child, for this reason, the child wouldn´t be able to remember the moment of death.
5. Possession: a disencarnated spirits takes control of the child and the information that the kid has comes from this spirit. Of course, I imagine the face of the parents from a boy with past life memories when you tell them that he is possessed. Even then, we can consider it. According to Stevenson, possessions are extremely rare in children below two years old, and it´s important to point out that the child makes commentaries in a totally spontaneous and natural way, without being under trance, like it happens with mediums. Possession wouldn’ t explain either birthmarks or the surprise reactions in many children to find out that was supposedly was their past life house has been modified, or that their past life relative is now old. It’ s possible that I have forgot some. If that is the case, we can also discuss it.
But with this, I think we can make some conclusions: I don’ t know you, but I don`t have any telepathic powers, I’ m neither lying to you, and I never wanted anything to do with the Second World War, and less about slave trading. I find the collective unconscious even more abstract. And I’ m not possessed...I think. So I will keep believing in reincarnation.