Reincarnation/Afterlife Possibilities

I'm currently halfway through Dr. Tucker's second book, Return To Life. The most interesting case so far is one where a boy callled Ryan seems to remember being a minor actor then agent called Marty Martyn who had met Marylin Monroe:

https://www.littlethings.com/ryan-reincarnation-hammons-today-marty-martyn
https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/boy-says-he-remembers-past-life-hollywood-agent-n327506



https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0554421/bio?ref_=nm_dyk_trv_sm#trivia

What those reports don't say is that Ryan also demonstrated a psychic ability to predict events in the near future, and Tucker wonders if the details he knew about Marty Martyn were gained through ESP rather than through remembering a past life.

The details that Ryan are recalling are quite remarkable.
I wonder why, if reincarnation is possible that not everyone is able to remember.

One of the details that impressed me the most was Ryan saying that he knew a man he didn't like called Senator Five, and they later saw a photo of Marty Martyn with some other men including a Senator Ives from New York.

I reckon there are four possible explanations for these cases where the child's memories match historical facts:

1) Elaborate fraud
2) Multiple coincidences
3) Extra-sensory perception of 'memory bundles'
4) Reincarnation

I think you'd have to be very cynical to accept 1 and very sceptical to accept 2.

Sary wrote:I wonder why, if reincarnation is possible that not everyone is able to remember.

I'll wait until I've finished the book in a few days before I try to answer that

Maybe it is some kind of soul possession?

Sary wrote:Maybe it is some kind of soul possession?

I found a sample of the book I'm reading on-line. On pages 25-30 Tucker does write about possession as a possible explanation for a rare type of case: Return to Life

Thank you for that, NK.
I want to read more about reincarnation.

The idea that a bad person/soul can come back and try again, gain redemption through an endless cycle, is a much better alternative to everlasting hell.
And then to think that maybe, just maybe that little baby is really somebody that you may have known not so long ago..
It is a comforting thought.

I ended up buying the book and just finished reading it today.
I was a good read, very well documented. The end was a little over my head, when he started talking about quantum mechanics and the part about existence growing out of consciousness.
The book did answer my question about why not everyone remembers past lives and it gave me some insight on not only life after death but also on psychic phenomena.

Sary wrote:I ended up buying the book and just finished reading it today.  
I was a good read, very well documented.  The end was a little over my head, when he started talking about quantum mechanics and the part about existence growing out of consciousness.
The book did answer my question about why not everyone remembers past lives and it gave me some insight on not only life after death but also on psychic phenomena.

You're a quick reader! I'm up to the last chapter now. The chapter about quantum physics is difficult and most of it can probably be skipped. His point seems to be that physics allows for the possibility that our conscious minds (or souls) are the real things behind everything and that physical reality is a kind of 'hard illusion'.

I wish that I was smart enough to grasp the basic physic/quantum mechanic aspect , of life after death. The subjects that Tucker touched upon, realism, entanglement, existence is truly mind boggling.
It seems that we need another Einstein, in order to get to the next step of understanding.
It is a shame that more money for research is not being allotted for this sort of thing.
It is a soft science.

I've finished the book now. I think Jim Tucker is saying that some interpretations of quantum physics experiments fit the idea that consciousness produces the material world and not the other way around. But even if QP turns out to have nothing to do with conscious observation, we are still left with (in my opinion) pretty good evidence that some part of humans is non-physical and survives death.

The final chapter I found really interesting and I think Tucker makes a good attempt to tie everything together. A possible alternative to his theory that minds created the universe is that both matter and consciousness are two sides of the same coin and came into being simultaneously. Actually, I think it's impossible for there to be absolute nothingness and that something has always existed; zero is an abstract mathematical concept.

I did this diagram to illustrate his idea about souls having 'shared dreams' in different worlds which are essentially hard illusions that we experience as physical reality:



But maybe there is just one universe where souls, not being restricted by time, can reincarnate into the past as well as the future, skipping back and forth. When a soul has experienced all possible lives then the cycle begins again and this goes on forever.

I like your diagram, it has always been easier for me to understand something by visualization. The idea of shared dreams is a difficult one to grasp.

I started to read more about the philosophy of idealism.  It is a subject that I knew nothing about before, but come to find out, has been around for hundreds of years! This is a good link for study, that I came across.

https://peped.org/philosophicalinvestigations/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2012/09/Handout-Body-Soul-in-Modern-Thought.pdf

This study explores some theories of body and soul (or mind) that have emerged in what we term ‘modern thought’, that is to say, in philosophy and related disciplines since the contribution of Rene Descartes (1596-1650).
Through this period THREE main types of theory of body and soul have been in evidence:
1. The view that humans are physical organisms and so biological entities. Thus all aspects of the human, including self-consciousness, memory and thought are functions of the body. These are termed MATERIALIST theories of body and mind (or soul).
2. The view that humans are essentially MINDS (or MIND) and that the physical reality, including the physical reality of the body, is an illusion. These are called IDEALIST theories of body and mind (or soul).
3. The view that humans are compose of two distinct but related substances, mind or soul, and body. These theories are called DUALIST theories of body and soul or mind.
It is reasonably safe to assume that ALL THEORIES of Body and Soul/Mind will be either MATERIALSIT or IDEALIST or DUALIST – or they will be some variation of one of these!

I did a short course in philosophy of mind as a student and it is the most enjoyable subject I've studied. I'll read through that document Sary posted the link to.

Suppose we have a man sat in a lab with his brain activity being monitored by a magnetic imaging machine and we could see the activity pattern on a screen outside. The light in the lab is switched off and the man is told to visualise a pineapple as strongly as he can. When he does this, the scanner records a certain pattern of activity in his brain. This is repeated for hundreds of subjects and the resulting brain activity patterns are recorded and averaged. So we now know what an imaginary pineapple looks like as a thought pattern.

In the next study, using the same set-up, we monitor a number of subjects in turn, each one being instructed to visualise either a thunderstorm, a shark or a pineapple. We know when a subject is obeying the instruction to imagine a pineapple because the magnetic activity looks similar to the average pattern in the first study. But the brain activity pattern is just something which correlates with the imaginary pineapple - the visual pineapple image itself seems to exist in a separate, non-physical dimension and is made of 'mind stuff'.

"Moreover, it must be confessed that perception and that which depends upon it are inexplicable on mechanical grounds, that is to say, by means of figures and motions. And supposing there were a machine, so constructed as to think, feel, and have perception, it might be conceived as increased in size, while keeping the same proportions, so that one might go into it as into a mill. That being so, we should, on examining its interior, find only parts which work one upon another, and never anything by which to explain a perception." - Gottfried Leibniz, 1714.

Someone with a true psychic ability to read minds would have access to the non-physical dimension and be able to see the imaginary pineapple. But it would be undetectable by any normal means.

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how and why sentient organisms have qualia or phenomenal experiences—how and why it is that some internal states are felt states, such as heat or pain, rather than unfelt states, as in a thermostat or a toaster. The philosopher David Chalmers, who introduced the term "hard problem" of consciousness, contrasts this with the "easy problems" of explaining the ability to discriminate, integrate information, report mental states, focus attention, and so forth . . . The existence of a "hard problem" is controversial. (Wikipedia)

From the study that Sary quoted:

Descarte's main problem with this view is to explain how the two distinct substances [mind and body] interact.  

Any ideas?  

That ^ was a trick question really, because no one as ever been able to satisfactorally explain how mind and matter can interact with each other. I did this diagram to illustrate the dualist concept of mind and body - though I think it might better be called tri-ism because there are three elements: physycal objects, non-physical objects (in the mind) and the non-physical mind itself:

And to add to the complication, non physical mind stuff is no doubt perceived and interpreted differently by the eye of each individual beholder.
When the mind stuff is generated by human imagination, who is to say what is real and what is not?