Never Say Die! or Reincarnation 2.0, or Not.

There are clearly more theories about what happens after you die, than ones that explain what happens before you are born. Where do we come from? Here's my friend Calvin's great question, "What are we?!" Both these questions point us in the direction of metaphysical origins. The physical process is easy enough to understand (if you are unclear on this, think back to your sex ed. classes, if this is new material, than most likely; you are either the most advanced 1st grader on planet earth, or living at home with your aging parents - NDNM "no date-no mate.") This question of origin is usually met with some outlandish scene involving heaven, angel-singing-harp-carrying beings, losing a bet or contest-being sent back to earth...no really intelligent theories get put out there. (At least not in modern western civilization.) Plenty has been said about the pre-life origins of humans, many traditions incorporate the concept of reincarnation-life before life. I myself have spent considerable time toying with that notion of recycling. It occurred to me that there were other novel approaches to be found within the MWI framework of theories, which might better explain this mystery. Every single theory that I have heard, read or considered revolves around the concept that we are finite beings (at least our bodies, and ourselves as individual souls or lives) living a unique life that is lived out within a system thats surrounds us. Each individual has a finite body that is conceived, born, grows to maturity, ages and dies (Very few people would dispute that.) And yet, there is another possibility that has not (to my knowledge, and I have looked a bit) been proposed. Reincarnation suggests that we live again, in a new body, in a new life, with the same old soul - minus the conscious memory. There are millions of texts that do a much better job at explaining the whole process ("Good Life, Good Death: Tibetan Teachings on Reincarnation by: Gini Alhadeff, Mark Magill, Nawang Gehlek. is just one of them.) I would like to introduce a new theory, M.L.T. (Many Lives Theory.) MLT would take into account both an infinite omniverse and the infinite, eternal spectrum of life. If we can call the omniverse infinite we can also call time infinite as it would be repeated out forever throughout an infinite set of time-lines (none of which would ever end.) So to recap, time is infinite, space is infinite, and you are infinite. You in fact, are a system all unto yourself. If MWI is to be read correctly, there are an infinite number of "you" living out an infinite number of lives, some nearly the same as you are living now, others quite different. These other "you's" (twins, if you like) needn't be living right now (as we in this universe would see it) from our perspective they might not live for another million years. Let us remember an earlier figure or set of figures, the two Joes. Joe (totally hypothetical here) born midnight July 7th 1978 to his parents Dan and Sue in Paris, Texas, could be born under the exact same set of conditions in an infinite number of parallel universes where that universe's time-line could be assigned a positive (time-plus) or negative (time-minus) value when compared to our own universes time-line. This omniversal view of time would of course mean that time was even more relative than Einstein had predicted! There could never be an omniversal clock. The one thing that would hold true is that Joe would be have to be conceived at the exact same time and under those same exact conditions in every single universe he was born into, otherwise he would most likely-not be Joe. DNA and other biological constraints might restrict those conditions further. The end result would still be an infinite number of Joes living out their many lives eternally. One might die as another was born. One might shift back and forth between universes and never suspect a thing. In fact, we can't actually prove that this does not happen naturally. We could be born here, our body die, and our self, soul, spirit or mind could easily be transported to another "ourself" where we would never know that death, instead we would dream that we had died, wake up and begin living our new one. The mind is an excellent filter, and what it can't filter out, it will paint over. I have noted before that our memory is a mutable thing, so much so, that it is difficult to tell what has happened even 10 years ago. Try to remember a detailed set of events that happened 30 years ago and you will surely notice that you are having to reconstruct from the fallen remains, the fragments of a once solid memory structure. So Joe would die here (at least to us) but he would be reborn or shift into a new life and body- that of his own- but not quite. He might notice that things weren't exactly the same as they once were. His mind might even struggle to pin it all down into something that made sense. Eventually his new life would fade into reality and the remnants of his old life would haunt him only in his dreams, but for a moment. He would never know that he got to do all the things he wanted to do in his life. He would never remember all the experiences he had. He would have no idea that he was strangely living, an eternal life. Joe would never die, he would always be Joe, but he would never know! (This strange new view also meshes well with the John Titor view and personal account of time travel. The jury is still way-out on that one!)