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rojo's avatar

Considering reincarnation, can/could you be born anywhere or rather anytime in time?

Asked by rojo (24179points) May 10th, 2019

I mean would it be possible for you to have been born in, say, the 25th. Century prior to your present incarnation?

Or could your next incarnation be in the 15th. Century?

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11 Answers

ragingloli's avatar

In order to travel backwards in time, you would have to curve space-time in a way that it folds in on itself, to create a closed timelike curve.
I very much doubt, that souls can do that.

Yellowdog's avatar

If the spirit leaves this space/time continuum altogether, so as to not have to wait outside of the body through time until a suitable new body becomes available , there is no reason it couldn’t be anywhere in time, past, present or future.

If we can leap forwards a century or more in time, why not leap anywhere in time?

ragingloli's avatar

If reincarnation were real, then it must be assumed that some of those people who claim to have been reincarnated and have memories of former lived must be true.
No one has ever claimed to have been alive in the future.
Therefore souls can not travel to the past.

Response moderated
kritiper's avatar

No. What’s done is done, even with reincarnation.

Inspired_2write's avatar

Yes thousands of lifetimes.
see link.
10 things everyone should know about reincarnation – Personality…
personalityspirituality.net/.../10-things-everyone-should-know-about-reincarnation/

Darth_Algar's avatar

No. Neither the past nor the future exist. There is only the present moment.

Zaku's avatar

Well, according to people who have done past-life regression hypnosis, and the people who have recorded and shared about it, people seem to be reincarnated in a variety in times and places over the centuries, but no one AFAIK has reported regressing to a past life that was at a future date. That’s one of several major reasons that would have me say no.
(P.S.: I just now read @ragingloli‘s second answer above, which says this same point.)

I’d make a half-joke about how humans are about to wipe themselves out, so that might explain it, but regressions have been reported for decades, and the spread of reported times suggests to me that there would be some people reporting future regressions even if we’re about to go extinct.

Another major reason I’d say no is that I think backwards time travel in the same slice of the multiverse is paradoxical as it would or could contradict the timeline that led to that travel, even, I think, if it were only via reincarnation.

However there are two senses in which I would not say no:

One is if the multiverse exists as an infinite continuum of possibilities. In that case, I suppose it could theoretically be possible to reincarnate into another similar but earlier part of the multiverse, maybe. No one really knows if or how that (the multiverse part) might be the case or work, but serious cosmological theorists do mention such ideas. And I don’t see the same paradoxes with that that I mentioned above.

Another, is the perspective available from certain philosophies and theories that the ultimate reality is not just that we are falling steadily through time. But that consciousness shifts attention from time and place to time and place. In that sense, I think consciousness does shift attention and may be able to go back to past times. But that’s not about reincarnation per se, and so while a consciousness now might shift its attention to an earlier time, the perspective at that time would have no access to the memories from the later time.

ucme's avatar

Reincarnation…tsk…you must think I was born yesterday.

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Bill1939's avatar

The “Many Worlds” hypothesis posited by Quantum cosmologists provides a potential basis for reincarnation. The probability web emerging from this theory suggests each instant leads to all possible outcomes in the next instant, each in different realities. If so, an individual in the now could only have had prior existences in the past; future existences could not have occurred.

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