Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1exp 11/4/83; site hlexa.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!harpo!eagle!mhuxl!mhuxj!mhuxi!mhuxh!hlhop!hlexa!hsf From: hsf@hlexa.UUCP (Henry Friedman) Newsgroups: net.books,net.philosophy Subject: Time and Immortality (part 12) Message-ID: <870@hlexa.UUCP> Date: Thu, 22-Dec-83 13:12:11 EST Article-I.D.: hlexa.870 Posted: Thu Dec 22 13:12:11 1983 Date-Received: Fri, 23-Dec-83 04:43:24 EST Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Short Hills, NJ Lines: 96 (c) Copyright 1983 by Henry Friedman (Copying for personal use by users of net is authorized.) -- There You Are Again! Many books and articles about reincarnation have related accounts of persons who have supposedly remembered or dreamed about past lives, or have supposedly been "regressed" to past lives under hypnosis. The sudden acquisition of special knowledge or skills, such as a foreign language, by such persons is often cited as proof of reincarnation. Investigation sometimes reveals that the knowledge believed to have been remembered from a former life can actually be explained by the fact that the uncons- cious mind can retain memories of fleeting experiences that the conscious mind has long forgotten. However, in other instances the evidence seems compelling that the subject could not have acquired the special knowledge -- or details of the life of a person who died long ago -- from any encounter during his or her own lifetime. (It is not within the scope of this series to attempt to examine or evaluate individual instances of such apparent regression. However, admittedly, if investigation revealed that *all* such reported occurrences could be explained without recourse to the paranormal, then the validity of the hypothesis to be developed here would be doubtful. It is also not within the scope of this series to attempt *proofs*, but rather to suggest reasonable hypotheses that merit further investigation. Of the many "reincarnation books" that have been written (some of which are pure trash), John Gribbin ("Timewarps") recommends the book "More Lives Than One?" by Arnall Bloxham. Gribbin cites an exam- ple from this book that involved research to verify the details of an apparent former life, details that couldn't have been known by the subject, since they were literally unearthed by a subsequent archaeological discovery.) In "Timewarps," John Gribbin suggests that in such instances the person is somehow *sensing* or *viewing* events in the life of *another* person in the past, rather than remember- ing his or her own former life. According to this explana- tion, during dream and hypnotic states, the unconscious mind has a latent capability for transcending the limitations of ordinary three-dimensional reality. In fact, suggests Gribbin, subjects under hypnosis could probably just as easily been "progressed" into the future, to view events from the lives of persons who have not yet been born. If we accept Gribbin's explanation for such "reincarnation" experiences, however, a puzzling question still remains. If a person who seems to have remembered a past life is actu- ally *sensing* scenes from the past, why does such an experience center upon awareness of a particular individual who lived in the past? Why would there be an affinity to another person in the past that was so strong that the sub- ject actually believed that other person was himself, in a former life? Gribbin proposes one possible explanation. Investigation has apparently revealed that persons who have died violently are more likely to be the objects of such supposed reincarnation experiences in future generations. Gribbin suggests that a violent death might make that person's life more salient to a future "mental time traveler." However, this explanation does not seem adequate to account for such a strong affinity between two separate lives. It seems that Gribbin was so intent on stating the differ- ences between his hypothesis of mental time travel and rein- carnation that he overlooked a possible similarity. Assume the validity of Gribbin's belief that it is, at times, somehow possible for us to view the past in four-dimensional spacetime, and that this ability explains some instances of apparent remembering of past lives. But I propose the addi- tional possibility that the person in the present and the person in the past, who share such a bond of sympathy across time, might be two very like personalities and two very like minds. Furthermore, just as reincarnation is supposed to involve many lifetimes, the variation I'm suggesting here could involve many different persons across the generations linked together by a bond of "psychic resonance." The name I have given to such presumed groupings of persons is "time twins." Am I suggesting, you might ask, that the person from the past "lives on" in the person of another in the present who feels attuned to him -- in the person of a time twin, who is a type of spiritual successor? How would that be a valid conclusion when I have already admitted that the two persons are totally separate -- and that there was no mind or soul, independent of the brain, that could have transferred from one to the other? (Chapter to be continued in part 13.)