Do You Guys Believe in Reincarnation and Past Lives?

[1] After seeing the results of a study by some researcher, I’m convinced that (reincarnation/past lives) are a real phenomenon. What do you all think?

• [6] I believe.
• [8] I want to believe.
• [9] Which university? What researcher? Who were the subjects, and how long did the study last?

[11] >>9 Hold on, I’m about to explain.

[10] Here are some reasons people point to for dismissing past lives and reincarnation as fake:

・Fabrication Theory: The idea that the child and their family are lying. The motive is supposedly fame or money.
→ However, many of the families studied tried to keep the past life talk quiet and disliked becoming famous.

・Self-Deception Theory: The idea that the child strongly convinces themselves they have a past life, thus deceiving themselves.
→ However, in such cases, the children often claim to be famous historical figures, and their ‘memories’ are full of errors, making it easy to see they’re fake.

• [14] I don’t believe in it, but the thought of it not existing makes death scarier… I’d like to hear the rest of the story, if possible.
• [15] Rather than reincarnation, I think it might be something like the ‘Paths’ in ‘Attack on Titan’ – like memories from someone who isn’t yourself.
• [16] When people want to believe, they tend to unconditionally accept convenient facts and find reasons to deny inconvenient ones.

[18] >>16 That’s not scientific. Scientists draw conclusions based solely on objective facts, so that doesn’t apply. After examining all the information and eliminating the unnecessary, whatever remains, no matter how unnatural it seems, is the truth.

[17] ・Coincidence Theory: Dismissing everything as mere coincidence.
→ Statistically, it’s difficult to explain solely by coincidence.

・Cryptomnesia Theory: The idea that the child might have encountered information about the past life person through TV, magazines, etc., forgot about it, and later embellished it, recalling it as a past life memory.
→ However, some areas investigated by researchers lacked widespread radio or television, meaning there was no way for them to have encountered information about past events.

・Memory Distortion Theory: The idea that parents or other witnesses inaccurately remembered fragmented things the child said and constructed the ‘reincarnation’ testimony.
→ In reality, children’s testimonies about ‘past lives’ are often ignored or interpreted negatively by parents. Generally speaking, parents are less likely to ‘exaggerate’ a child’s claims and more likely to ‘downplay’ them. Therefore, this theory doesn’t hold up either.

• [19] So, how much of what you’ve written comes from which scientist’s research, and how much is your own opinion?

[22] >>19 So far, everything I’ve explained is just about the scientists’ research.

[20] ・Genetic Memory Theory: In cases where the ‘past life person’ is said to have been reborn into the same family, it might seem plausible that the child inherited some kind of memory through genetics.
→ However, the details of the children’s ‘past life’ memories far exceed what could be attributed to genetic memory, making this theory unconvincing.

・ESP Hypothesis (Extrasensory Perception Theory): The idea that the child knows things they normally shouldn’t due to ‘psychic powers,’ and information gained through such abilities was pieced together as ‘past life information’.
→ But this theory also has problems. There was no evidence the children studied possessed psychic abilities. They showed no signs of PSI (parapsychological phenomena) other than talking about ‘past lives.’ Also, even if a child gained knowledge about distant people through ESP, it doesn’t explain why they would develop similar traits (personality, behavior, physical characteristics). Mimicking such a person could cause conflict with their family, giving them no motive to do so. Furthermore, ESP is known to occur more easily when there’s a strong emotional bond like love or trust between the sender and receiver, but there’s no such psychological connection between the child and the ‘previous personality’ in reincarnation cases. And the ESP hypothesis cannot explain xenoglossy (speaking a language never learned) or birthmarks/defects corresponding to past life injuries (congenital correspondences). Therefore, the ‘ESP Hypothesis’ lacks sufficient explanatory power.
→ By the way, the existence of psychic abilities like clairvoyance has been studied by several organizations. For example, you can find some declassified documents about past related projects on the CIA’s website gallery if you search for them. Some documents about aliens and UFOs have also been released.

[24] And, after considering all the above hypotheses, the conclusion reached, apparently, was that the ‘reincarnation theory’ is the most plausible interpretation, as nothing else can explain the facts.

• [21] I think it (reincarnation) exists.
• [23] You can’t definitively say that something that happened once in this universe will never happen again. Especially when we’re thinking on such a tiny human scale.

[26] For example, there’s a phenomenon called xenoglossy. Although extremely rare, some individuals who speak of past lives possess the ability to speak the language supposedly spoken in that past life (xenoglossy). Among the approximately 2000 cases collected by researchers, only 3 fit this description. In such cases, under hypnosis, the past personality might emerge and communicate in writing in languages like Swedish or German, or sing songs in the past life language.
Then there’s the phenomenon of congenital correspondences. These are cases where birthmarks (nevi) or congenital defects appear on the child’s body in locations matching their ‘past life memories.’ Injuries sustained when the ‘previous personality’ died, or birthmarks, scars, moles, or surgical scars from the previous personality, reappear in the same location on the current personality. There are even cases where a child was born with missing parts, corresponding to hands or fingers being cut off when the previous personality was murdered. Researchers have collected about 112 such cases. In some instances, they were even able to obtain medical records documented by doctors about the state of the ‘previous personality’ at the time of death.

[30] For those who still don’t believe after hearing this, do you have any convincing reasons or evidence? Saying you don’t believe because you study early Buddhism doesn’t make sense as a reason either.

• [32] You don’t really see kids talking about past lives much these days, do you?

[41] >>32 There was one on Twitter, just the other day. A Japanese kid. About 7 years old, talking about a past life, and the parent was asking on Twitter if anyone knew anything (about the past life). Apparently, they died in an accident as a high schooler. They were from the Famicom generation, so they’d be around 40 now if they were still alive.

The ‘Famicom’ is the common Japanese abbreviation for the ‘Family Computer,’ a home video game console released by Nintendo in 1983. It is known as the ‘Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)’ in North America and Europe.

• [34] Scientifically, I think it’s impossible, but when you ask if all the cases reported so far are lies, that’s hard to believe too. It’s obvious, but we have no idea how memories could possibly be transmitted, right? The idea that organ transplants can transfer the donor’s tastes and preferences to the recipient seems relatively more believable. For example, maybe future progress in research like quantum teleportation could explain it?

[38] Having scars in multiple places identical to a past life person, or having a body part missing in the same location, is medically rare.

• [39] Samsara (reincarnation cycle) wasn’t started by Shakyamuni (the Buddha); it was an idea already present in India. Shakyamuni, having attained Nirvana, simply used the existing concept of Moksha (liberation from Samsara) as an expedient means (upāya) to teach and guide people. After his enlightenment, Shakyamuni’s teachings primarily focused on abandoning desires and attachments, so it’s more a matter of Buddhism having aspects related to past lives rather than him actively preaching about them. This isn’t a scientific discussion.

[45] >>39 Ah, right. Was it the Upanishads (ancient Indian philosophical texts)? But didn’t Shakyamuni teach about concepts like heaven? Maybe ‘Sukhavati’ (Pure Land) is the Buddhist term. Anyway, if past lives were just an expedient means (and not central to his teaching), wouldn’t that cast doubt on Shakyamuni’s teachings themselves?

• [42] I’ve heard stories about kids with past life memories and stuff, so I believe it!

[46] Speaking of which, that research (by Ian Stevenson) was apparently done in India too. How do you explain xenoglossy? No matter how smart a child is, there’s no way they can speak a foreign language without learning it.

• [47] The idea that good or bad deeds affect the next life is hard to believe. If that were true, my past life must have been someone as evil as Adolf Hitler.

[53] Besides, what the Buddha (Shakyamuni) is said to have taught was compiled by his disciples in councils after his death, so we don’t even know if he really said those things. It could be fabricated by the disciples, or embellished later like the Bible.

• [50] Where do memories go when you die?
• [51] What specific phenomena led to the conclusion that ‘only the reincarnation theory can explain it’? You haven’t explained the actual details at all…

[59] >>51 Children talking about past life memories, xenoglossy, congenital correspondences (matching physical traits), etc.

• [71] >>59 It seems like the explanation hasn’t happened yet. If I wait, will it start?

[75] >>71 Ian Stevenson, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia in the US, researched this in India. His research was published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease and featured in a special issue. In response, Stevenson received about 1000 letters from scientists worldwide requesting reprints (copies) of the paper.
Ian Stevenson (October 31, 1918 – February 8, 2007) was a researcher of the ‘reincarnation phenomenon.’ In the 1960s, he became the chair professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia. There, learning about children around the world who claimed to have past life memories, Stevenson decided the ‘reincarnation’ phenomenon was worth researching. After investigating in India, he quickly found over twenty cases. In 1987, he published his first book, Children Who Remember Previous Lives, which garnered significant attention. To date, Stevenson and his research group have collected approximately 2300 cases of children claiming past life memories, mainly in Southeast Asia.
Reference: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/イアン・スティーヴンソン

• [62] Even if it (reincarnation) exists, can it actually be proven?
• [65] >>62 If phenomena that are hard to explain by chance keep happening repeatedly, you could say the probability (likelihood) is high. And if you can generalize from that to explain many phenomena, then deductively, it shouldn’t be a problem to consider it a fact, right?

[66] >>62 With current science, you could probably only prove it by elimination. You can’t express it with equations or visualize the phenomenon. So, isn’t proof impossible?

• [69] Isn’t it possible that we just don’t know something yet that could explain it? Remember with totoBig (Japanese sports lottery), people who didn’t understand pseudo-random numbers or seed values (how random numbers are generated) just assumed it was rigged, solely based on claims like ‘the odds are as low as the Big Bang happening’?

‘totoBig’ is a type of high-prize sports promotion lottery sold in Japan where numbers are randomly selected by a computer.

• [72] >>69 Occam’s Razor (the principle that explanations requiring fewer assumptions are better), right?

[74] >>69 Of course, that’s a possibility. At the very least, it’s certainly something beyond current science.

• [64] The idea that being devoutly religious means you’ll be reborn as a good creature, or that you can achieve liberation, makes no sense.

[68] >>64 By the way, reincarnation cases have been reported from outside specific religious regions where reincarnation is believed in.

• [87] >>68 But isn’t it more common for there not to be reports?

[89] >>87 In the West, Christianity is widespread, and common Christian doctrine holds that the dead sleep as the dead until the Day of Judgment, so past lives are essentially a pagan concept. If a child started talking about a past life, they’d likely be told to keep quiet about it. The child might sense this and stop remembering.

• [91] >>89 There aren’t that many Christians who are that strict nowadays.

[73] (In Stevenson’s research) there were no reports of past lives as animals. When the gender differs between the current life and the past life, the child in the current life often shows tendencies towards gender identity disorder.

[79] At least this is based on scientific investigation, unlike the talk from people going on about the astral plane (a spiritual dimension discussed in occultism and mysticism) and whatnot, right?

• [80] I believe in Samsara. I’m a Buddhist. But aren’t reincarnation cases other than Ian Stevenson’s research questionable?

[82] Accurately stating over 20 proper nouns related to a distant place – can that be explained by anything other than past life memory?

• [83] Even if past lives or reincarnation exist, it has absolutely nothing to do with us living now, does it? Some religions focus on reincarnation, but the chances of being reborn as a human again are practically nil on a cosmic scale, so it’s pointless to think about. Of course, some might wish to become something other than human, but conveniently being reborn exactly as you imagine is impossible.
• [88] The issue is proving that the phenomenon isn’t dependent on local culture or values, so even one counterexample would be enough (to disprove universality). (Meaning, you need to prove it’s a universal phenomenon independent of culture).

[90] By the way, there’s a rare example from Japan around the end of the Edo period of a child with past life memories, where numerous officials and feudal lords conducted on-site investigations and verifications. The Kokugaku scholar Hirata Atsutane compiled the findings into a book. That report was presented not only to the Shogunate but even to the Emperor.
Hirata Atsutane (1776 – 1843) was a Kokugaku scholar, Shintoist, philosopher, and physician of the late Edo period. […] The death of his beloved wife spurred his interest in spirits of the deceased and the afterlife, leading him to serious research into the spirit world.
Reference: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/平田篤胤

The ‘Edo period’ is a division of Japanese history from 1603 to 1867 when the Tokugawa shogunate ruled. ‘Officials’ (yakunin) were government employees, ‘daimyo’ were regional feudal lords of the Edo period, ‘Kokugaku scholars’ studied Japanese classics and ancient thought, the ‘Shogunate’ (bakufu) was the military government centered around the shogun, and the ‘Emperor’ (Tennō) is the hereditary monarch of Japan.

• [96] I wondered as a child if such things could be possible, but now, having felt so much suffocation in life, I think there’s just no way to know what happens with things like past or future lives.
• [98] It feels like a universally observed delusion, common throughout history and across cultures.
• [100] Human life isn’t a straight line from birth to death. All life is a circle. When you die, you’re born again as your original self, live the exact same life, die the same way, are reborn, live the same way, die… repeating this for eternity. That’s the essence of life and time. We are merely phenomena. (Similar to Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence).
• [101] I feel like there might be something like a soul that we just can’t perceive yet, but that’s in the realm of magic, unreachable by modern technology, and therefore it’s ‘proving a negative’ (probatio diabolica – the difficulty of proving something doesn’t exist), right?
• [113] I believe because I have past life memories. My past life was a friend of one of Oda Nobunaga’s vassals.

Oda Nobunaga was a powerful warlord (military leader) during Japan’s Sengoku period (late 15th to late 16th century) who aimed to unify the country. ‘Vassals’ (kashin) refer to samurai and others who served a lord.

• [114] >>113 Is that so.
• [118] I kind of believe in eternal recurrence (the idea of repeating the same life forever).
• [28] (As a joke) My replacement smartphone had data from my old (supposedly broken) one, so I believe (in reincarnation).