Do reincarnations occur?

The idea of reincarnation is gaining a new boost. The Washington post article (see this) describes quite a recent example of a child who remembered experiences of a person who might have been a victim of Holocaust. Since the 1960s, more than 2200 children all round the world have described what looks like memories from a previous life.

What makes this interesting from the point of view of TGD inspired consciousness predicts the possibility of re-incarnation.

1. In TGD, space-time is replaced with a 4-surface in M^4xCP_2. 4-surface can be regarded as an orbit of a 3-surface identifiable as a 4-D generalization of a point-like particle. General Coordinate Invariance for holography. 4-surfaces are analogous Bohr orbits of these 3-surfaces- rather than 3-surfaces, and quantum states are wave-functions in the space of these 4-D Bohr orbits. Quantum TGD is a kind of wave mechanics in the space of Bohr orbits.
2. The revolutionary idea is that basic physical entities are almost deterministic time 4-D time-evolutions of 3-D particles rather than particles. At quantum level wave functions as quantum states are replaced by the superpositions of these 4-D Bohr orbits. This forces us to replace the standard ontology of quantum theory with "Zero energy ontology" (ZEO). The outcome is a solution to the measurement problem of quantum theory and one gets rid of myriads of "interpretations".
3. Number theoretic vision of TGD predicts the possibility of quantum coherence in arbitrarily long scales. This would be due to a hierarchy of phases of ordinary matter with non-standard value of effective Planck constant. These phases would reside at field bodies/magnetic bodies. This matter behaves like dark matter. Field bodies replace the Maxwellian view of electromagnetic fields and the analog of dark matter resides at field bodies assignable to systems consisting of ordinary matter. This dark matter would be the "boss" that would control ordinary biomatter.
4. The new quantum measurement theory predicts that in the TGD counterparts of ordinary state function reductions (SFRs) ("big" SFRs or BSFRs) the arrow of time changes. On the other hand, the sequences of repeated measurements of the same observables, which in ordinary quantum measurement theory do not affect the state at all, do change it, and the sequence of these "small" SFRs (SSFRs) gives rise to a conscious entity, self. Subjective time flow corresponds to the sequences of SSFRs and must be distinguished from the geometric time.

   Self dies/falls asleep in BSFR and reincarnates with an opposite arrow of time and lives in the opposite direction of time. One might speak of time travel to the geometric past. Eventually also this self dies and reincarnates with the original arrow of time: this would be a re-incarnation in the "ordinary" sense. A rough estimate based on a concrete view of what happens in BSFRs and SSFRs suggests that this happens roughly a typical lifetime later than the death of the previous re-incarnate. The claimed reincarnation described in the article is consistent with this.

But is it possible to remember anything about the previous life? One must distinguish between two situations since previous life could correspond to the same or opposite arrow of time as the recent. Since BSFR and SSFR and the notion of self are universal and not restricted to living matter only, it is better to speak of system S although it might sound rather formal and bring in mind the spherical cows of physicists.

1. If the arrow of the geometric time is the same, the signals from the previous life of S in geometric past can reach the later reincarnate of S and the memory recall is possible. This could explain the memories of previous lives. Especially so if they are related to a very intense experience since in these kinds of situations the classical signals are expected to be very intense.
2. What about the situation in which the arrows of geometric time are opposite? Also falling asleep as "death" and waking-up as a "reincarnation" corresponds to a pair of BSFRs. That we remember practically nothing from the period of deep sleep could be understood: the classical signals from the period of sleep travel to our geometric past so that we never receive them.

   One could however consider a loophole to this. The reincarnate RS of the S or its subsystem could live a short period with a reversed arrow of time and send signals received by the S, which wakes up next morning. Dreams could correspond to these kinds of short periods when a part of the brain is awake and gives information of the dream period. If this smaller part of the brain corresponds to a lower level in the self hierarchy and the temporary period with opposite arrow of time is short, one could understand the decomposition of dreams to short logical periods and surreal character. That the memories from the period of sleep are soon forgotten could be due to the fact that the classical signal is a finite pulse and does not spend a long time in the required part of the brain. It could however arrive again it if rotates around a close monopole flux tuber loop as one might expect.

   Temporary short lasting changes of the arrow of time leading from S to RS are indeed predicted to occur routinely. For instance, homeostasis and the biological self-organization in general, would rely in an essential manner on this. Also learning by trial and error mechanism would involve a pair of BSFRs. In fact, our stream of consciousness is not continuous. We continually fall asleep for short periods of time. Living systems would be dying all the subjective time (to be distinguished from the geometric time) and this might make it possible to have memories of previous lifes with an opposite arrow of time!

See the article Does Consciousness Survive Bodily Death? or the chapter with the same title.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.