An ever-growing number of scientists is prepared to speculate on immortality - either physical immortality (medical science works out how to keep us alive forever); digital immortality (a virtual brain to which our consciousness is uploaded); or by explaining how consciousness can transcend bodily death.
The notion of a 'longevity escape velocity' has been posited by biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey and espoused by AI pioneer Ray Kurzweil; whether this will happen within the next few decades remains to be seen. And the idea of a brain-computer interface is being developed by Elon Musk's firm Neuralink. Both ideas appeal to those with a materialist mindset, as they do not require belief in the notion of an eternal soul - or indeed eternal consciousness.
Consciousness itself remains a divisive topic among scientists and philosophers. The split is between those who hold that consciousness is merely an emergent epiphenomenon that evolved within the brains of higher-order animals, and those who are open to the idea that consciousness could be fundamental to the Universe. The latter group will either hold that consciousness is a property of matter, or a force-carrier permeating the entire Cosmos. Both would agree that it is massless and eternal.
Either way, panpsychism - consciousness everywhere - is a useful concept when it comes to explaining phenomena such as reincarnation, near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences or remote viewing.
OK - so I don't know how it works. But let me explain my first-hand experience of the phenomenon.
My memories of childhood are proof to me that the 65-year-old man writing these words was once a boy living in West London in the early 1960s. Qualia memories - not so much of events, but memories of feelings, experiences - a composite of the texture of lilac-tree bark, the smell of creosote, the sound of the latch on the front-garden gate, the taste of freshly picked strawberries, the sight of fluffy clouds in a summer sky. I can readily summon up such qualia memories and attribute them to something that's my childhood.
In a similar, but vaguer, way, the flashbacks I experience to past existences feel familiar and comforting, though I cannot place them to the same degree of accuracy. They are not scenes from films - for films do not convey the sense of the smell, taste or feeling. And here, I'd reject the confident assertions of materialist-reductionists that all I'm experiencing is a memory of some movie I once watched.
Searching for a vector, a mechanism, whereby one can experience (albeit infrequently and weakly) glimpses into a past beyond one's childhood, I have considered electromagnetic waves, DNA, bacteria passing through our bodies, and quantum entanglement. Science would feel comfortable with such an explanation. I don't know - but I am sure that once the underlying nature of consciousness is better understood, it will fill many of our gaps in knowledge.
I hold the belief that we are evolving spiritually as well as biologically; becoming ever-more angelic with each subsequent incarnation, rising in understanding towards goodness, away from brutality and evil.
One thing is clear to me - it is not the Ego that reincarnates. Not the proud, boastful Ego, quick to anger, quick to take offence. It is the Consciousness, the Consciousness alone. The singular, the purest, unfiltered experience of being. Of feeling alive. By not being able to distinguish between the two, many people's expectations of an afterlife are unrealistic. A next-life continuation of the biological you is as unlikely as a scrapped 1993 Nissan Micra being melted down and the steel and other recycled parts ending up as another 1993 Nissan Micra.
If you want your Ego to survive you after death - it's not something that I believe will happen. In Heaven, seated at the right hand of God, or indeed anywhere. The more powerful your Ego in your current life, the less of the youness of you will make its way to the next conscious incarnation. If you are essentially an Egotistical being, the flashbacks you'll get from this current life in your next life will be few and they will be weak. Too weak to even recognise. The more conscious you are, the more qualia you will experience, the more memories of them will carry over. This is, however, no more than my belief, based on a dataset where n = 1.
Why, you may ask, why should your consciousness reincarnate? For me the answer is simple - it is so that it may witness the further unfolding of the Universe. So that it may partake in this unfolding, growing ever in understanding and wisdom, seeking unity, evolving spiritually. So that it continues the conscious journey from Zero to One.
Further incarnations may well have greater powers that we'd currently call 'supernatural' - telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis. Over thousands of generations, our ability to manipulate matter with mind might just enable us to engage in interstellar travel... but that's for another post.
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