Lent 2026: day 34 – qualia, sensitivity and attention

Sunrise is getting earlier and earlier in the run up to next Sunday's time change. I woke up this morning at quarter past five*, fed the cats, then caught the sun rising through the trees of the forest next door. Some thin clouds in the sky, but the red orb shines through branches touched by a light overnight frost. Scrapper and Czester, sitting on the window sill, framed this picture. 

A sense of bliss becomes me. All is well. I give thanks. I give thanks for noticing the sunrise, and for being able to revel in it for a moment. After all, this dawn could have been overcast and dull. Qualia like this are to live for.

Our daily lives are a progress through a constant cloud of potential qualia, some of which come to our attention; most, however, pass by without notice. Unremarkable. What collapses the wave function to trigger a memorable qualia experience? Vivid sensory inputs? Or is it more emotional? Is paying attention the answer? 

If so, I have only really started paying mindful attention to what's around me in recent years – yet my mind is crammed with memories from childhood, youth and earlier adult years. 

What selects for the experiences we note, and those we subconsciously overlook? The warmth of the sun on my face on a bright spring day like today, a subtly changing cloudscape, the buzzing of an early bee around my front door, the crunch of dry twigs underfoot. These experiences are the qualia that form the raw texture of reality.

However, at any given moment, there are far more of them available to experience than we are capable of being aware of. The world does not present itself to us in neatly lined-up row of sensations to sample one after the other. We live in a sensation-rich environment, abundant and random, that at times can feel almost overwhelming. 

What we define as 'our experience' is but a thin selection of all possible experiences that could potentially be experienced. So how do we allocate the finite resource of our awareness? Is it something that requires our active effort (attention)? Or is it something passive (sensitivity)?  Something we are born with to a lesser or greater degree? Is it something, that applying discipline to it, we can intensify? Should we sift through this firehose of sensory inputs looking for anything in particular?

One thing I learnt from my father is the importance of observation; to be observant, to notice, to be aware of detail. Attention can be trained, disciplined, refined. But as with talents, it is based on something that's already present. And that is sensitivity. Great artists have it, it opens their doors to perception.

Left to itself, attention drifts. It is captured by novelty, by movement, by threat, by desire, by commerce. It loops through familiar concerns. It returns, again and again, to whatever has most successfully hooked it in the past. In this sense, much of what we attend to is not chosen consciously at all, but inherited – from biology, from culture, from advertising, from habit.

What we notice, what strikes our inward eye to imprint itself on our long-term memory, accumulates over time to shape our inner life, and indeed to shape who we are. And with death, as consciousness passes on, I feel that the strongest of those qualia memories will resurface at some future time in another biological container.

A short walk before sunset; the air is getting chilly. Birdsong. A rising razor-crescent moon. The cats chasing each other down the drive. Qualia. And during the walk, a pleasant and familiar past-life flashback. Short, not particularly intense, but enough to provide me with continuity and assurance.

* While I mitigate seasonal affective disorder in autumn by ignoring the time change and going to bed at the same time relative to the sun, in spring, a different strategy is called for. In preparation for the spring time change, I start to go to bed one hour earlier relative to sunset, so when the clocks go forward at the end of March, I can wake up at the new hour and be up around sunrise.

Lent 2024: day 34
After death – what's next? (Pt I)

Lent 2023: day 34
Into the Afterlife (Pt II)

Lent 2022: day 34
A search for purpose

Lent 2021: day 34
The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson

Lent 2020; day 34
What goes round, comes around

Lent 2026: day 33 –talent and intuition

Imagine a blank canvas in front of you, a range of paint brushes, and access to paints in any shade you want to reach for. GO! Don't think, just feel yourself slipping into a trance-like state. Don't think: "Oh, it could do with a contrasting colour here, a splodge of white, maybe," rather let your intuition take control of all decisions. You have no previous experience, no 10,000 hours of practice, no theoretical knowledge about paint drying times and combinations of hue. Just go for it. Let it out; don't intellectualise, don't think: "this is starting to look like a city at night in the rain, so I'll steer it that way,"

What do you will come out? More than likely, brown sludge, slop; nothing, a distant approximation of what could be taken for abstract impressionism but lacking any redeeming qualities. Get 300 people in front of easels, however, and give them the same task, and a jury will have something to go on. Some curious quirk that catches the eye, there unintentionally. But importantly, some folk are better able to tap into the flow.

The early abstract impressionists knew exactly what they were aiming at; but daubing blank canvases seemingly at random – can it result in anything of interest?

You don't know until you've tried it!

Same with automatic writing. Put yourself in front of a keyboard, get into the flow and see what comes out. Imagine a higher entity, a separate entity, a strand of non-local consciousness, taking over your fingers, and letting words come out as they may. What are you getting?

This is certainly not going to work with musical instruments. The untutored, the unpracticed, will never manage a euphonious run of notes. Forget intuition alone serving as a guide to musical creativity! The 10,000 hours rule here is the rule that cannot be broken (though Sid Vicious had a good try). Having said that, the phenomenon I've noticed (and recorded) for some time now – waking up with an original tune going around my head – is very real (I have a phone's-worth of recordings), but these are typically short, two or three bars of music, certainly no Moonlight Sonata.

Mindfulness, meditation, altered states designed to enhance creativity – but not the creativity that comes from a thought process, rather a case of letting your consciousness reach for new quality.

Lent 2024: day 33
Time and spirituality, Pt III

Lent 2023, day 33
Into the Afterlife (Pt I) 

Lent 2022: day 33
The Search for Understanding

Lent 2021: day 33
Connecting with the Metaphysical

Lent 2020: day 33
"On my planet there is no disease"

Lent 2026: day 32 – what it is to be talented

The Parable of the Talents has puzzled me since I was a teenager. If the master or lord in the parable refers to God – where is God's mercy? Where is God's love? It was this parable that first caused me to question the authenticity of the Gospels. Were the Evangelists (who wrote the four canonical Gospels between 30 and 75 years after Christ's crucifixion) accurately recording the actual words of Christ, I wondered.

Let us begin with asking what is a 'talent'. In Biblical times, it was a monetary unit, expressed as the value of 30 kg of silver, equivalent to 6,000 denari, one denarius being a day's pay for a labourer, so therefore one talent represented the equivalent of about 20 years' worth of work. In modern terms, this would be somewhere around 1.1 million złotys or £200,000 at the national minimum wage. That's one talent. Now, the master gave his servants each five, three and one talent respectively. Those sums would have been understood by those who listened to the parables of Jesus as inconceivably vast amounts of wealth.

In the Middle Ages, the meaning of the word 'talent' came to be used figuratively in Latin as "a gift from God", "a marked natural skill or ability" and thus into our modern lexicons.

So let's read from the Gospel of St Matthew (chapter 25, verses 14-30)

14 For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. 15 And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey. 16 Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents. 17 And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two. 18 But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord's money. 19 After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them. 20 And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more. 21 His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. 22 He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them. 23 His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. 24 Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed: 25 And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine. 26 His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: 27 Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. 28 Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. 29 For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. 30 And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

I find these words harsh, and in all honesty, unGodlike. I have reflected upon the parable of the talent over the decades, but if we look at it through a Gnostic perspective, we can imagine the lord not as the loving Jesus, but as the Demiurge, the Archon that created the material world, more interested in what his servants can do for him materially than in what makes each one different, and maybe take account of the innate risk-averse nature of the third servant. The lord is extractive, profit-driven and punitive. I see not a trace of Jesus about him. More the 'rank-and-yank' corporate CEO with an eye on Q4 earnings and a big year-end bonus for himself. So why the inclusion of this parable (in two versions) in the New Testament? Certainly, there's not a trace of the Sermon on the Mount here ("Blessed are the unprofitable servants, for they too shall have abundance").

But age and experience has told me that the evangelist Matthew (who wrote his Gospel some 50 years after Christ's crucifixion) was merely being perceptive of the human condition. Verily, those that have shall get more, while those who have little shall have even that snatched away from them. Matthew posits this notion earlier in his Gospel (Chapter 13, verse 12): "For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath." From this comes the rather harsh 'Matthew effect' in economics – advantage begets further advantage. Wealth inequality has a natural tendency to increase over time.

OK, that's life, it doesn't sound particularly Christian, but Matthew puts these words into Christ's mouth. Matthew is backed up by his fellow synoptic evangelist Luke, writing on the same theme. "For unto you I say, that to every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that little he hath shall be taken away."

There is but one charitable interpretation that I can hold with – that the talents are neither money, nor indeed innate gifts or talents in the modern sense, but God's love. The servants that accept God's love and spread it in the world are rewarded, and the one who ignores it, burying it instead, is punished.

[If you are keen for a comparison with the Gospel of St Luke, here it is (chapter 19, verses 15-26):

15 And it came to pass, that when he was returned, having received the kingdom, then he commanded these servants to be called unto him, to whom he had given the money, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading. 16 Then came the first, saying, Lord, thy pound* hath gained ten pounds. 17 And he said unto him, Well, thou good servant: because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities. 18 And the second came, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained five pounds. 19 And he said likewise to him, Be thou also over five cities. 20 And another came, saying, Lord, behold, here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin: 21 For I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and reapest that thou didst not sow. 22 And he saith unto him, Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I was an austere man, taking up that I laid not down, and reaping that I did not sow: 23 Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury? 24 And he said unto them that stood by, Take from him the pound, and give it to him that hath ten pounds. 25 (And they said unto him, Lord, he hath ten pounds.) 26 For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.

* The 'pound' used in the King James Version of Luke's Gospel is also known as a mina, a Greek coin that is one-sixtieth of a talent, and rather than the servants being entrusted with five, three and one talent respectively, each gets just the one mina, a significantly smaller sum all round.

More on talents as gifts tomorrow.

Lent 2025: day 32 
[No post, the day of my heart attack]

Lent 2024: day 32
Time and spirituality Pt II

Lent 2023, day 32
The Practice of Gratitude

Lent 2022: day 32
The Search for Perfection

Lent 2021: day 32
Meditation

Lent 2020: day 32
Divine Intervention

Lent 2026: day 31 – what do you want from life?

A tough question to have to face up to. Doesn't it all depend where you are in life's cycle? "Get into a good university." "Get a good job." "Get married and buy a home." "Pay off the mortgage, get the children off to university."  "Inherit the family fortune." And then we'll see. Usually this means buying something you've always wanted, ticking off bucket-list destinations, boosting one's position in the status hierarchy, chasing honours and fame.

What do you want from life? Something material? Or something intangible? Is there an ulterior purpose?

It is useful to consider the Aristotelian notion of teleology (from the Greek telos, aim, purpose, end goal, design, final cause), the study of where we're heading to and why. This is about the fulfilment of your human potential. Making the most of your talents, temporal and spiritual. But reductionist materialists would argue that we are nothing more than stochastic products of emergence (evolution) existing in an indifferent and meaningless universe, and our only purpose is survival and reproduction, and there's nothing more. The race to own more stuff and to show off achievements is a vestigial remnant of sex drive; peacock feathers.

Personally, my own quest is for a higher level of consciousness; for greater understanding; transcendence; participating in something more than the ego; coherence. I am aware that I am destined never to get anywhere near grasping intuitively the wholeness of Cosmos, of which we are such a tiny part; nevertheless, each insight, each step nearer, is significant. Hence – one lifetime at a time.

Joy I seek, rather than pleasure. Comfort; not reaching out for luxury. Conscious experiences, rather than ego trips. So, I am (eventually, over time) to observe the Universe unfolding, as it experiences itself (Big 'C' Consciousness). And integrate my own small 'c' conscious experiences, my qualia, with those of the Universe. Over time. This is not (and this notion is central to my beliefs) something that can be achieved in a single lifetime! In feeling the sun and wind on my face on a sunny day, in reflecting upon triggered or unbidden memories, in experiencing simple joys, I am doing this. Physical reality is but a substrate for conscious experience; the biological layer (consciousness requires a container, a platform, from which to observe the unfolding Universe). Health is important, bodily aches distract consciousness from being aware of anything other than the source of the pain.

I asked Google Gemini for its distillation of  the purpose of life, and the answer astounded me: "Be at the interface where chaos becomes meaning". Wow! Very good. And ChatGPT? Slightly more prosaic, but instantly relatable. "To become more conscious, and to use that consciousness well." Yes, I'd agree with that too. It's a search, a journey – in the form of daily rural walks, a starry night, the changing seasons, cats, good food, good music, interesting conversations that share new ideas and refine old ones. The framework is complete.

Lent 2025: day 31
Hope and hopelessness

Lent 2024: day 31
Time and Spirituality

Lent 2023, day 31
Science vs. the Paranormal

Lent 2022: day 31
Consciousness – fundamental and universal?

Lent 2021: day 31
I'm better than you – no, really, I am!

Lent 2020: day 31
Divine Inspiration

Lent 2026: day 30 – how do souls migrate?

If we accept consciousness being immaterial and persisting beyond bodily death, rather than a phenomenon tethered to neurons and synapses of the brain – how does that signal bind, unbind and rebind to new biologies?

Over the years in this blog, I have considered possible vectors (or metaphors for mechanisms), from brain waves, quantum effects and gut flora to music. Today, I'll dive in deeper.         

Let's start with the metaphor of consciousness as a broadcast field. Our brains act as receivers, picking up signals from the field. At death, the receiver fails – but the field, the signal, persists; a new brain with compatible structure locks onto the same frequency or pattern. The question here is that of compatibility; is this purely a biological factor? Is it random? What of karmic affinity? The 'broadcast field' metaphor also explains atheists who do not feel the numinous, who have no spiritual attunement; for they are like computers, able to think, logically, quickly – but are not connected via wi-fi to the Cosmic Consciousness, to the Eternal Whole. Then there is the idea of the brain not so much as a receiver but as a transmitter, generating electromagnetic fields that might imprint on the environment and later be reabsorbed, but no there are no hypotheses as to storage or retrieval mechanisms.

Acoustic / vibrational models begin with the notion that reality is fundamentally vibrational, and that consciousness is a frequency pattern. At death, the pattern dissipates but does not vanish; it can be congruently reconstructed under the right conditions via resonance. As I wrote, this echoes Pythagoras's 'music of the spheres', as well as the Vedic concept of Nāda Brahma ('universe as sound'). Whether your physics is field-based or wave-based, this is intuitively powerful; and while lacking a concrete encoding mechanism for memory/identity, it could be that music somehow acts as trigger.

Physics (bless it) has not yet detected neither such fields nor such vibrations. (Note the word 'yet' there– as I wrote yesterday, should it? Will it ever detect them? Or is science destined never to nail down the numinous and ineffable as a mathematical formula?)

The next mechanism is quantum information transfer. This posits that consciousness as a quantum state (or information pattern). Consciousness is encoded in quantum information, potentially in microtubules (the Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory of Sir Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff) or some deeper quantum substrate. At death, quantum coherence collapses the information of consciousness, which disperses into the quantum vacuum or entangled states; it then recoheres in another system. This theory provides a technical framework for non-local persistence. However, there is no evidence that personal identity can survive decoherence.After 30 years, Orch-OR has neither been proven nor falsified. Sir Roger has often stated that he does not believe consciousness to be computational.

However, if we think of our consciousness as operating system software, and our thoughts as the apps run on that operating system, the brain being the biological hardware, then we can think of a computational continuity model of reincarnation, with old software being copied over into a new computer. A wave pattern of information reforms in a different medium, recreating the consciousness of the deceased person. This model is favoured by those who believe in a simulation hypothesis. But the question remains: what's the transfer mechanism? Pen-drive or wi-fi?

Biological carriers are also worth considering. Genetic memory links consciousness to DNA patterns. This can explain 'atavistic resurgence', whereby a memory from an ancestor re-emerges via blood lineage; however this can't explain non-familial cases of reincarnation. This could explain the strong feeling of familiarity I got in May 2010 while cresting a low hill outside Mogielnica, unaware of the fact that my grandmother was brought up nearby. Then there is the microbiome (gut flora). The gut-brain axis has been proved to influenced cognition; it could be  hypothesised that microbial ecosystems carry 'memory markers' from one human to another. This, however, is thought to be highly implausible as a carrier of identity and complex personality; at best microbes can influence mood.

The panpsychist and idealist models, towards which I lean, are based on the core idea that consciousness is primary, rather than derived. There is no migration of consciousness, only localisation (life), delocalisation (death), and relocalisation (rebirth); a whirlpool forming in a river dissolving and reforming elsewhere Advocates include three of my favourite philosophers, David Chalmers, Bernardo Kastrup and Phillip Goff. Idealism, which gets away from the primacy of matter, sidesteps the transport problem entirely, but is hard to reconcile with personal identity continuity that we see in those cases where one dead person's identity seems to inform the consciousness of another (which I experience).

If we want to abandon any pretence of scientific rigour, we can seek non-mechanistic answers in karmic or causal continuity, as propounded by Buddhism. There is no migrating entity here, only a causal chain, with one life conditioning the next, as a flame passed from candle to candle or a wave propagating on a calm surface of water. In Buddhism (unlike Hinduism) there is no permanent self, but continuity of tendencies. While philosophically rigorous, it doesn’t satisfy intuition of a persisting 'self'

So... what persists? Memories? Certainly. Personality traits/behaviours? Possibly. Physical traits (birthmarks etc). Personally, I can't see why. Causal chain (karma – learning lessons, undoing past-life wrongs), yes, I get that and appreciate this argument.

Any viable mechanism must explain memory continuity (rare but claimed cases), identity persistence, selectivity (why one body, not another), and ways whereby energy and information are conserved. The answer lies in a blend of the above. Perhaps.

Old Souls and New Souls: some people report the feeling of having experienced many previous human lifetimes. Others few, or just one. But most folk – none at all. My thinking here: humanity is expected to peak at ten billion sometime in the mid-2070s before settling back to a more sustainable and stable number in the middle of the 22nd century. More and more human beings will become inhabited by old souls, who will have experienced many lives and therefore become wiser, gentler, understanding the notion of win-win rather than looking at life adversarially. A stable population will mean lesser pressure on natural resources. Less greed. So – is the number of souls finite? Still so many questions remain.

Lent 2025: day 30
Getting On With It (Pt II)

Lent 2025: day 30
The Divine in your life

Lent 2023, day 30
God/No God

Lent 2022: day 30
Let the Spirit guide you!

Lent 2021: day 30
On being perceptive

Lent 2020: day 30
Time – religion and metaphysics

Lent 2026: day 29 – can reincarnation be proven?

The two great religions of the East, Hinduism and Buddhism, accept the concept of reincarnation. The great religions of the West, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, don't, while still accepting life after death in one form or another. [Certain esoteric traditions within or adjacent to the three Abrahamic faiths are more open to reincarnation, but they are far from the doctrinal mainstream.] Secular materialism, or physicalism, likewise rejects reincarnation. 

So to the Western mind the concept is entirely alien, on the one hand, it's not passed down in religious education, on the other it's poo-pooed by rigorous rationalism. Awareness of the transmigration of souls in the West only really kicked off with New Age in the 1960s, a movement focused on the unification of body, mind and spirit.

Today, reincarnation is considered increasingly seriously as a hypothesis in the context of life after death. The blending of Eastern traditions of reincarnation with science, and the philosophy of idealism, which posits that consciousness is the fundamental property of the universe, from which space, time, matter and energy are derived (and not the other way around, as science believes).

If any one Western researcher has done more serious work into this subject, it is Ian Stevenson (1918-2007), from the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Over his 40 years of work in this field, he authored 14 books and 300 academic papers, based on over 2,500 cases of children who claimed to remember past lives. What made his work notable was his systematic methodology. His research focused on children (typically aged 2–6) who spontaneously spoke about 'previous lives'. 

Prof Stevenson studied cases mainly in countries where reincarnation was a culturally accepted belief;  India, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Turkey, Burma and Thailand. He was looking for statements made by the child relating to a deceased individual that could be verified. In particular, he was looking out for behavioural and physical traits that corresponded with those of the deceased. Prof Stevenson's methodology focused heavily on early documentation, interviews with multiple witnesses, and taking care to minimise the possibility of information leakage between families.

I don't intend to highlight any of the cases that he brought to light (if you are interested, ask your favourite AI for a summary of Ian Stevenson's most persuasive cases). What I do want to share with you is what he claimed, and what he didn't claim. He never claimed to have proven reincarnation. His position was more restrained; the cases he published "may point to a currently unknown mechanism of memory transfer." ChatGPT sums up his work as "anomalous but not definitive, sitting at the boundary between psychiatry, anthropology, and parapsychology".

Stevenson emphasised that the information he collected was suggestive of reincarnation but "was not flawless and it certainly does not compel such a belief." Yet he believed that he had produced a body of evidence for reincarnation that should at least be taken seriously. Reincarnation, he posited, might represent a third factor, along with genetics and the environment ('nature and nurture'), contributing to the development of certain phobias, philias, unusual abilities and illnesses.

Now, while believing in reincarnation on the basis of first-hand experience, I feel that Prof Stevenson's approach is flawed. The problem I have with seeking empirical evidence to prove any metaphysical subject lies in the problem of using the scientific method as a tool to validate it in front of an innately sceptical scientific community. If they don't wish to accept it – fine. I just happen to do so, and if I need to validate my spiritual experiences to anyone, it is primarily to myself.

I don't reject Prof Stevenson's work, but consider it incomplete and pursuing the wrong goal. If he proves some unknown mechanism linking a living person with a dead one through memory, then why does it manifest itself so rarely? Are most people – even in cultures that accept reincarnation as reality – unable to reincarnate? Unworthy of reincarnation? Or do the hallmarks or a reincarnated soul manifest themselves in vaguer, more subtle ways than direct, literal, links to a real predeceased person?

I personally do not believe that the spiritual realm wishes itself to be proven empirically by science, with experiments, in a formula. We are not simply meant to know – yet. We should accept the mystery of these anomalies as part of our reality, but unless a case is too strong to overlook, we should not dig through archives in an attempt to prove its literal reality. 

Attempts by scientists (who have to endure taunts of 'pseudoscientist!' from their fellows) to prove the existence of a range of psi phenomena using the scientific method (repeatable experiments, peer-reviewed papers etc) are ultimately doomed to failure, not because the numbers lie, but because no one has the slightest idea of a mechanism, a framework, by which they can happen.

So let's say I find medical records of a 'Mr. Martin' who died in the early hours of the morning in a modern hospital building in America in the mid-late 1950s – then what? Does that prove anything? Does it explain my dream? Validate a lifetime of anomalous qualia memories? Would it silence the sceptics? Of course not. Do I need validation? Personally, no. I know what I experience – however, how it happens is a mystery. And I expect it to remain so. For many lifetimes to come.

More tomorrow.

Lent 2025: day 29
Getting On With It (Pt I)

Lent 2024: day 29
Altruism and consciousness

Lent 2023: day 29
Artificial Intelligence creates a religion

Lent 2022: day 29
Meditations on travel

Lent 2021: day 29
The ups and downs of life

Lent 2020: day 29
Prophetic

Lent 2026: day 28 – a case study in reincarnation

How does reincarnation 'work'? I put the word 'work' in quote marks because it suggests a mechanism, a process. To me, It doesn't feel that way. It's more ethereal. Whilst I have experienced a lifetime of what I call 'past-life flashbacks' and 'past-life dreams', I've long stopped looking for names, dates or precise locations. Such a search is futile, and indeed spurious. "Please, accept the mystery." I'm happy with a vague feeling, a familiar sense of the returning qualia. Dreams, I find, offer greater historical and geographical precision. Even so, pinning down a former biological container for my consciousness somehow does not feel to be the right thing to do. So much room for wishful thinking and other cognitive biases. 

Are we destined never to know names, dates, precise locations? That's what I think. But there are well-documented cases suggesting that it is possible. One of the most compelling cases I've come across of a 'past-life memory' corroborated by historical facts is that of James Leininger, born in 1998.

Starting around the age of two, the boy began having recurring nightmares of a plane crash. From his accounts of the dreams, his parents, Bruce and Andrea, pieced together a story far too detailed for a child of his age to invent. James provided specific information that his parents later verified in military archives; he identified the plane as an F4U Corsair and a ship called the Natoma. Research confirmed an escort carrier named the USS Natoma Bay. James mentioned a friend named 'Jack Larsen'. Bruce Leininger eventually tracked down the real Jack Larsen, who had indeed flown with the Natoma Bay squadron during WWII. James described his plane being hit in the engine by the Japanese, catching fire, and crashing into the sea near Iwo Jima. 

Bruce Leininger identified a pilot as James Huston Jr. from squadron VCS-81 on the USS Natoma Bay. The details align; Huston was the only pilot from that squadron killed during the battle of Iwo Jima. His plane was hit in the engine, caught fire, and crashed into the sea, just as the child had described in his nightmares. As James grew older, he met with James Huston’s surviving sister, Anne. After speaking with the boy and hearing his specific memories of their childhood home and family, she became convinced that James was the reincarnation of her brother.

Sceptics suggest suggestibility (where a child absorbs information from a documentary or book and later forgets the source), but the Leiningers maintained that James had had no exposure to WWII history or flight simulators before the nightmares began. By the age of eight, James’s memories began to fade, (common in these types of cases), and by on reaching his teenage years, he reported that the vivid memories had almost entirely faded, leaving him with only an interest in aviation.

I used ChatGPT to examine the veracity of the details. 

Squadron name was not strictly correct (VCS-81 flew floatplane scouts like the Vought Kingfisher from cruisers). There was, however, a squadron VC-81, which did indeed fly from the carrier USS Natoma Bay. But the big disparity between what James Leininger reported as a two-year-old and historical fact is that VC-81 did not fly F4U Corsairs; instead, the squadron flew FM2 Wildcat fighters.

Below: F4U Corsair (left) compared to FM2 Wildcat (right). Google Gemini Nano Banana 2 images. Note the significant difference in the wings and overall size.

Any naval-aviation historian will immediately tell you that escort carriers like the Natoma Bay were too small for F4U Corsairs to fly from. The Natoma Bay was, however, present at Iwo Jima and its squadron heavily involved in ground-attack missions supporting the US Marines' invasion. 

Asking ChatGPT about losses incurred by VC-81 at Iwo Jima, I got this:

"Confirmed loss: Lt. (jg) James M. Huston, Jr. Aircraft: FM-2 Wildcat. Mission type: Strike on shipping at Chichi Jima. Outcome: Aircraft hit in engine (likely AA fire), crashed into the sea. No wreckage recovered. Huston was the only pilot from Natoma Bay (VC-81) killed during the Iwo Jima operation."

I present this case in detail because it is unusual and represents, in my view, an atypical scenario. Striving to identify a real individual is something I don't personally feel comfortable with; while I have put together a 'past-life narrative' of my own, it was not in childhood, but over decades. The 'past-life' feelings have stayed consistent in terms of flashbacks and what I call my canonical dreams; they have not faded.

Another major difference between what I feel and the Leininger case is the time between lives. I sense an immediate overlap; the flavour America of the mid-1950s being so clear to me, so compelling. Death and rebirth within months, or even an overlap. Yet more than half a century passed between the death of James Huston Jr. and the birth of James Leininger. 

Finally – if James Leininger could experience this – why can't more of us? Why don't we hear of more such cases? It suggest that reincarnation is an extremely rare phenomenon.

So many questions...

More tomorrow!

Lent 2025: day 28
Death, dreams and memories

Lent 2024: day 28
Ego, Consciousness and the Environment

Lent 2023, day 28
Can the future affect our past?

Lent 2023, day 28
Understanding the Infinite and the Eternal

Lent 2021: day 28
Higher life forms, imagined

Lent 2020: day 28
The Secret and the Hidden

Lent 2026: day 27 – life after death

The conventional view held by most people today is that as brain activity ceases on biological death – that's it. Game over, Player One. The afterlife is seen as a historical notion, a religious construct that had been created for the purpose of social control, and as sop to the bereaved. 

Yet the conviction that there's no such thing as a afterlife is a modern thing. No one in Europe in the Middle Ages held that view. On the contrary – mediaeval Europeans would have been haggling with their parish priest over how many years they can shave off their time in Purgatory before being allowed into Heaven. To them, the afterlife was a real as the next harvest.

The sophisticated modern mind scoffs. "How easy it was to brainwash illiterate simpletons!"

But has not the sophisticated modern mind been brainwashed too? Through the seductively rational arguments of logic, science and materialist reductionism?

Reality, I believe, is more nuanced; it is not binary.

How do I see the afterlife then? I see it as being as real as one's childhood. We no longer live in our childhood, but we we retain memories of it. Those memories colour and flavour who we are. Those memories come back to us in flashbacks, some vivid, some less so – qualia memories. Some you can summon. Some are triggered (by smells, by music, etc). Some come to us unbidden. Yet there's no atom in our brains that was there ten years ago, let alone decades ago. Molecules, proteins, cells, restructure, recycle, die, grow – and yet memories persist. The neuronal structures of our brains remain the same, but my analogy is of these being bookcases in a library, and memories being books.

Survival of awareness after biological death hinges on one concept – that of non-local consciousness. In our lives, we have nothing but fleeting glimpses of this phenomenon. Déjà vus, precognitions, dreams, synchronicities, telepathically shared thoughts; these are hard to pin down, and impossible to rationalise satisfactorily within the framework of our prevailing scientific paradigm.

But if you place consciousness at the centre of Cosmic reality, as its fundamental property, everything clicks into place. Consciousness is one thing you can be certain of. You are currently aware of the moment? That cocktail of sensory inputs that creates consciousness leads you to conclude that you are alive. Qualia moments, registered in your memory.

And now – a thought experiment. One by one, close off your sensory inputs. No vision, no sound, no smell or taste, no feeling (your bum on your chair). What happens in your mind? Dreams, apparitions, memories will replace the awareness that stems from inputs, from the five senses, and will do so until the sensory inputs are restored.

I have no clue as to explain in scientific terms where consciousness 'goes' after bodily death, nor where it is 'stored', nor how it is 'transferred' to another location (heaven? A subsequent body?). All I know is the frequent experience of a sense of familiarity; the memories of qualia once experienced elsewhere and elsewhen.

I feel this in the form of 'congruent qualia'. Yes, sensory inputs are required as triggers. The wind blowing into my face as I walk towards a warm sun. Lying on the lawn and gazing up at white clouds dotting a blue summer sky. The sound of waves lapping on a beach. Snowflakes falling as Christmas shoppers bustle between brightly-lit storefronts. [Four qualia, illustrated by ChatGPT] 

Earlier today, I was getting these congruent qualia feelings in my garden as I clear the ground under the apple-trees and prune back dead vegetation. Again, bright sunlight, and that experience of exomnesia. It feels so familiar. From some other time, from some other place.

It is not a strong phenomenon but it is ever-present; it feels real to me, as real as my memories of childhood, familiar and comforting. Childhood lives on in memories; past lives live on in weaker memories, intangible; a fleeting sensation, a melting snowflake. It passes quickly, but if you are sensitive to it, you are left with a pleasant feeling, and a sense that there's more to eternity than just one allotted lifespan.

I have no proof, but I feel that with each successive life, the certainty becomes greater, the detail clearer. 

We want to know, "OK – it's a mystery – but how does this work?" What are the vectors that convey consciousness from body to body? Will we ever fully know? Will we inch closer to an answer? Or are we destined never to know?

One way or another, I am convinced that consciousness is not snuffed out with bodily death.

More tomorrow as the fourth week of Lent comes to an end.

Lent 2025: day 27
End of Time II

Lent 2024: day 27
Personality and Belief

Lent 2023, day 27
Being Positive is more than just being Optimistic

Lent 2022: day 27
God and Nationalism

Lent 2021: day 27
Consciousness in other creatures

Lent 2020: day 27
The Physical and the Metaphysical