Your Many Bodies

I’m going to discuss the possibility of reincarnation, but first let’s consider randomness in the universe. At first thought, the two ideas might seem unrelated.  I don’t believe they are.

There appear to be events, mostly on a subatomic scale, whose outcomes cannot be predicted with precision. Instead, one can only predict an outcome as a probability. One explanation of this apparent breakdown in the otherwise unassailable concept of causality is that all possible outcomes happen, but in separate universes. If you toss a coin, there is at least universe where it lands heads up, and one where it lands heads down. Although it seems like wild science fiction (and is far from universally accepted by scientists), the idea of multiple universes has a very firm grounding in physical fact. Some scientist in fact champion the idea of multiple universes as the most naturalistic explanation for randomness, because it doesn’t require the existence of any unknown and undetectable forces.

The remaining concepts I will bring up are far more controversial than the possibility of multiple universes.

What is the primal cause of being? For some, it is sufficient to posit the existence of a personal divine Creator that pre-dates the Universe, and leave it at that. The incompleteness of such a position is revealed by the simply asking “who created the Creator?”. If the Creator was not itself created by anything, then something can exist without a Creator. In that case, it is no more absurd to believe that the Universe created itself, or always existed. Even if we can accept the existence of a personal Creator, we solve nothing. We would still be unable to explain why the Creator makes certain choices and not others. The primary evidence of a Creator’s existence is the testimony offered by various scriptures, none of which agree with in each other. If there is a Creator it must not have any consistent qualities, otherwise such would be self-evident to all cultures. A Universe that is the product of a Creator must ultimately be the product of personal whim, which would be functionally indistinguishable from the operations of chance. In that case, simply ascribing the Universe to chance would allow us to deal with it in a perfectly functional and practical way. Either way, we would ultimately understand nothing.

One alternative to the concept of a single personal being who creates the Universe by whim is to simply allow that all possibilities happen. A Universe come into being naturally from such a proposition. In fact, all possible Universes must then occur. The apparent randomness of the universe is simply our perception of the point at which Universes, which had to that moment been identical with each other, diverge into separate futures.

We have neatly done away with the requirement for the existence of any non-material entities. Why them would we bring back such an idea as the “soul”, especially the possibility that such a thing may manifest in successive bodies? Because such a hypothesis could explain the persistent testimony of those who are accurately able to describe the lives of dead people they have never met.

Why would the “soul” incarnate in certain places and not others? The “soul”, or spiritual essence, might enter into history at every point in every universe that allows for expression of its nature. If a child will possess the correct combination of genetics and environment that allows for the manifestation of the soul’s potential, then an incarnation will come into being. Those incarnations would then develop in every way possible to them, experiencing all possible things in every Universe where they exist. All of those incarnations would share a single “soul”, since each simply represents a particular development of a potential. The potential itself is nothing in particular without its expression; it is only a tendency that ripens when it contacts a Universe. Alternately, the “soul’ is a vast set of possibilities which becomes broken and fragmented into separate lives when it encounters the Universes, with their limited histories imposed by time.

“You” might be one particular fragment of a being whose existence encompasses not only versions of your current self in parallel universes, but also uncountable persons spread throughout the pasts and futures of those other universes. Your true self would not be the person you immediately perceive yourself to be, nor any single one of those other people that share your “soul”. Instead, your most real self would be the spiritual essence, the potential that stands behind all of your selves.

The “soul” itself might exist outside of time. While time is the limiting and defining factor in each separate Universe, from the perspective of the “soul” all possible events might occur in a single eternal moment. Its exploration of possibilities looks like separate lives when perceived from our point of view within the tyranny of time.

If all possibilities are followed, there would not be anything like retributive karma. There would be no overall morality to the system of incarnations. All the catastrophes that befall us in our various incarnations would be the simple result of all possibilities being followed by necessity. The good or evil actions of one incarnated fragment would not necessarily affect the others, because such influences would occur in time, whereas the incarnating essence is a thing outside of time. From its point of view, all its incarnations happen simultaneously. Bad things happen to good people not because of the whims of a Creator, or as lessons to be learned, but as the simple accidents necessary for the continued existence of a particular Universe. All possibilities must be followed.

There must be some kind of transfer of information possible across incarnations. After all, the evidence for multiple incarnations consists primarily of people who possess inexplicable information regarding dead people who they could not have known. If the true self is the potential existing outside of time, then such information transfer becomes possible, although not necessary. Obviously, most people do not have memories of other incarnations, although some do.

The term “reincarnation” would actually be inadequate for the possibility I’ve outlined, since the word implies serial incarnation through linear time. “Transmigration” doesn’t work, because I am not proposing the “soul” as discreet entity which travels anywhere through time. Some other term may be needed, although I am suspect of a coinage like “multi-incarnation”.

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