Do you believe in life after death? Lent 2022, Day Six

Nearly everyone would frame this as a simple yes/no question. Either physical death is the end of our subjective consciousness - or it isn't. But what if it "sort-of" isn't? What if our consciousness, after we die, gets reincarnated into another body - but then has no memory of its past life? 

Since last year's Lent, I have watched many episodes of Closer to Truth, in which presenter Robert Lawrence Kuhn seeks answers to his personal quest for certainty as to what will happen to him after death. Over 20 years, he has had thousands of conversations with philosophers, physicists, theologians, cosmologists, neurologists and mathematicians, seeking answers. None satisfy him. He would like to believe that his consciousness will transcend his physical death - but doubt reigns in his mind. 

Personally, I feel that Robert Lawrence Kuhn's 'ask' is too great - he seeks nothing less than the full-on continuation of his ego. But I don't think it works that way at all - based on my experience.

My personal view of life after death is that the only proof you get of having lived before is sparse - the occasional flashback, a significant dream every now and then - but little more. In my case, it's enough to give me certainty that this is how it looks. The flashbacks, I believe, intensify in flavour in each passing incarnation. How much ego you carried with you to your past-life death (as opposed to pure consciousness) affects the quality of your afterlife.

You will not, seconds after emerging from your mother's birth canal, gaze around the delivery ward in the maternity hospital and think triumphantly to yourself, "Hey hey! I'm back again!". Rather, it comes a slow realisation, throughout childhood, that regular experiences of anomalous familiarity may signify a previous existence. I call these 'exomnesia' (memory from the outside) or 'xenomnesia' (foreign memory) events - flashbacks. For me, a life-long phenomenon, consistent in quality, and sense of place and time. Like current life qualia memories - but clearly not from this life. What subjective proof do you have that you were once a child? Objectively, snapshots from that time - but otherwise, it's all to do with memory. And if memories of early childhood - what about memories from previous lives?

However, despite my own convictions as to this phenomenon, I am sure that not everyone will experience this - we here in the West we have been conditioned not to indulge in such 'fantasies', both by the Christian religion and by materialist/ reductionist science. Even so, a strong message I received one evening last summer, is this: "Everyone who genuinely seeks God shall find God in their own way." Reincarnation may not necessarily be your way - but if you seek, you shall indeed find.

[In case you've not seen any episodes of Closer to Truth, here's the conversation between Robert Lawrence Kuhn and Robert Bilder about personal identity persisting over time (actually recorded in 2013) that was uploaded to YouTube today.]

This time last year:

Pleasure - put it off or have it now?

This time two years ago:
Dreams and the Afterlife

This time four years ago:
Free Will and Quantum Mechanics

This time five years ago:
Good thinking captured - the importance of jotting it down

This time six years ago:
Spirit of place and our own spirituality

This time seven years ago:
Poland's road death toll falls but remains too high

This time ten years ago:
My photos turned into beautiful watercolours

This time 11 years ago:
Silver birches and blue skies

This time 13 years ago:
Jeziorki's wetlands in late winter (2009)

This time 14 years ago:
Jeziorki's wetlands in late winter (2008)