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Empirical Proofs of reincarnation.

Buddha

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This method of past lives research requires presence of people who know foreign languages. This is my linguistic background: I am fluent in Russian (my parents are from the former USSR), I learned Spanish in the school, during my one-year assignment in Turkey I learned Turkish to some degree – I can watch TV programs but my verbal skills are far from being perfect.

I met Nicole at the church of Scientology shortly after I stopped working for the cult (I was a staff member for 4 months). Nicole is German, her husband is American, at the time of our meeting his was in Italy on a 3-year assignment (the cult elders love breaking up families just because they can). Nicole’s daughter’s name is Natasha.

Shortly after her birth Natasha begun talking some language, although no one was sure if this was a normal language or a baby talk. She was constantly repeating the word “Natasha” which is a Russian name.

When Natasha was 6 months old a new employee identified her language as Russian. He didn’t speak Russian, so he advised Nicole to find someone who does. There is a large Russian community in Los Angeles. But the cult staff are discouraged from making contacts with the outsiders although there is no explicit prohibition from talking with non-Scientologists.

Natasha was three years old when a Scientologist who knew that I speak Russian introduced me to Nicole. Natasha was not present at our first meeting. Nicole told me that Natasha uses her language infrequently and it seems she is no longer fluent in it. We decided that the next day I will meet Natasha to see if her language is really Russian.

Natasha was a spirited 3-year-old. I started talking to her in Russian, she was responding in English. I asked her what is her name, how old she is, what she is doing here, what is her mother’s name, etc,. In total I asked her about 30 questions and she gave correct answers to all of them, as Nicole confirmed. In the end I pointed at Natasha’s finger and said in English, “How do you call this?” She replied with “palets” which means “finger” in Russian.

There is a past lives recall techniques that Buddhist monks use. Unlike hypnosis, this technique does not produce immediate results, it takes from 8 to 12 hours to recall isolated past life episodes. A complete past life recall, including the language, could take from 3 to 6 months.

The monks are patient, but my subjects are not, so I had to modify the technique by guarding them first to certain present-life episodes before plunging them into the past ones that could have occurred centuries ago.

Joe was my first subject. He grew up in Moscow, USSR, where he learned English at the school. He moved to the USA at the age of 36. Joe was 51 when he was diagnosed with MS. He left his job and was spending most of his time in his apartment , he agreed to try the procedure. Joe was an atheist, he wanted to prove me wrong about “my past life nonsense” (unfortunately he died at the age of 56).

It took me about 10 hours to get Joe to the time of his past death. He recalled riding a horse thorough a dense forest and the arrow that appeared seemingly from nowhere hit him in the neck. Joe thought this was his imagination going wild, he didn’t take the matter seriously.

I asked Joe to recall his whereabouts three hours before his death. Joe’s comrades were sitting around a campfire, they all were wearing military uniforms and carrying bows and swords. Joe was sitting alone under a tree 100 feet away from the group. “Can you hear them talking?” I said. “Yes. One of them is talking to me”, said Joe. “What is he saying?” I said. But Joe could not reproduce the language that was unknown to him. It took me awhile to convince Joe that he can reproduce the friend’s phrase. Finally he said in a Turkic language, “Are you hungry?” (it was not exactly Turkish but close enough, so I could understand)

“Yes, I am”, said Joe. “Move close to the fire, we are cooking dinner,” said his friend. A third man joined the conversation, he said, ”A big battle lies ahead of us.” After that he said something that I couldn’t understand.” Joe had no idea what all these phrases meant, he never believed that he reproduced a foreign language that he didn’t learn by regular means.

My second subject recalled the time when he lived in Mongolia. I didn’t know anyone who speaks Mongolian, so I cannot confirm his recollection. My third subject spoke ancient Slavic, I cannot confirm that either.

I hit a jackpot with my fourth subject. Henrik was working on his Engineer Degree in Electrical Engineering at Columbia University. He is from Sweden, he learned English at the school prior to his arrival to the USA on a foreign student visa. He believes in reincarnation and was willing to learn about his past life.

Henrik was sitting in a Madrid café and reading a newspaper, it was 1948. “Can you copy a phrase from the newspaper?” I said. Henrik did better than that, he copied the whole paragraph. It was an article about crime statistics, I translated the copied paragraph for him, he had no idea what it meant.

8 years ago 20/20 produced a special about people who were able to recollect their past lives under hypnosis. The places that they described did exist in the past as the records show. They also were using languages that none of them learned in this life.

There is ample evidence showing that the reincarnation exists, you have to view it with an open mind.
 
Cool story bro.

Someone wake me up when we get some actual verifiable evidence rather than anecdotes.
 
This method of past lives research requires presence of people who know foreign languages. This is my linguistic background: I am fluent in Russian (my parents are from the former USSR), I learned Spanish in the school, during my one-year assignment in Turkey I learned Turkish to some degree – I can watch TV programs but my verbal skills are far from being perfect.

... snipped for brevity ...

8 years ago 20/20 produced a special about people who were able to recollect their past lives under hypnosis. The places that they described did exist in the past as the records show. They also were using languages that none of them learned in this life.

There is ample evidence showing that the reincarnation exists, you have to view it with an open mind.

You are wrong again 'Buddha'.

The confabulation of your subjects while under hypnosis is hardly an "empirical proof of reincarnation".
 
This method of past lives research requires presence of people who know foreign languages.

<onion-belting snipped>

Perhaps you should start by explaining what you think an empirical proof is, and how this qualifies.

Meanwhile, for the amusement of others reading this thread:

1. One possibility is that the subjects in these stories were reincarnated.

2. Another possibility is that Buddha invented these stories.

As to (1), the process of reincarnation was not observed. As to (2), we did in fact observe that Buddha has written the stories. Therefore, by the principles of Conductive Logic, (2) is the empirically correct solution.

Now that this has been resolved, we can turn to the true purpose of this thread: Debating Karl Popper's contributions to the philosophy of science.
 
She replied with “palets” which means “finger” in Russian.

That was a lot of extra background. Okay, so you met a 3 year old that you believe referred to her finger in Russian. This is pretty weak evidence.

It took me about 10 hours to get Joe to the time of his past death.

Hang on. This guy was a skeptic that was only doing this to prove you wrong and he played your game for TEN HOURS? I call shenanigans.

Joe thought this was his imagination going wild, he didn’t take the matter seriously.

Okay so you spent ten(!?) hours telling Joe to describe something, he humored you, you said "Eureka!" and he said "No dude I'm just imagining something." Got it.

You go on to describe essentially a guided meditation, something I've been on both sides of. You can do this with anything, getting people to add details and asking leading questions. I could do this with someone and get them to describe hunting a dragon, that wouldn't mean it ever really happened.

My second subject recalled the time when he lived in Mongolia. I didn’t know anyone who speaks Mongolian, so I cannot confirm his recollection. My third subject spoke ancient Slavic, I cannot confirm that either.

So these are both useless. So far we have absolutely nothing.

He believes in reincarnation and was willing to learn about his past life.

Yes, it's always easier to fabricate this kind of thing with a willing participant.

Henrik did better than that, he copied the whole paragraph. It was an article about crime statistics, I translated the copied paragraph for him, he had no idea what it meant.

And so you looked up the actual article, and... oh, no? Hmm. So someone wrote a paragraph of fake news copy. Or are you trying to imply it was in a language you knew and he didn't? If so, let's see his original writing so we can check your translation against it.

8 years ago 20/20 produced a special about people who were able to recollect their past lives under hypnosis. The places that they described did exist in the past as the records show. They also were using languages that none of them learned in this life.

Citation needed.
 
I mean some of this is pretty stupid.

8 years ago 20/20 produced a special about people who were able to recollect their past lives under hypnosis. The places that they described did exist in the past as the records show. They also were using languages that none of them learned in this life.

TV specials are not empirical sources. 20/20 is not a recognized source of truth for this subject.

Describing locations for which records exist is not impressive. In a past life, I built the Eiffel Tower. Don't believe me? Check the records. Checkmate, skeptics.

How do you prove someone didn't learn a language?
 
Meanwhile, for the amusement of others reading this thread:

Actually yeah, let's talk about possibilities.

MOST LIKELY (IMO):
  1. The examples Buddha gave were based on real things, but selectively presented and with details exaggerated or made up.

OTHER PLAUSIBLE:
  1. Buddha is just lying.
  2. Buddha is delusional.
  3. Buddha has been misled by people that are lying.
  4. Buddha has been misled by people that are delusional.
  5. Some combination of the above.

SUPERNATURAL:
  1. They were reincarnated.
  2. They're psychic and were picking up other people's memories.
  3. They're immortal and are remembering things from earlier in this same ilfe.
  4. They've been repeatedly mind-wiped and re-written a la Dark City and bits are starting to bleed through.
  5. They've been partially possessed by ghosts, and these are the ghost's memories.
  6. They're aliens, they've been to Earth multiple times in different bodies.
  7. The terrible god Nuuk'ta is doing this just to mess with Buddha.
  8. The people in the past were psychics, and sent their thoughts forward in time.
  9. Demons are trying to corrupt people by making them believe they'll get reincarnated rather than going to hell.
  10. It doesn't matter because once we throw supernatural stuff into the mix it could be virtually anything at all.
 
Most belief systems of reincarnation also posit a vast elaborate spiritual apparatus for not only keeping score over multiple lifetimes, but preserving all the memories of everyone's previous lifetimes, which is necessary for multiple lifetimes having the long-term instructional purpose they're usually posited to have (learning without memory being rather pointless).

Absent that apparatus, there's actually no difference between dying then being reincarnated, and dying then someone else being born. So if the idea of reincarnation is comforting to you, it should be equally comforting whether you believe in it or not.
 
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Reading the OP reminded me the time I was mad about graphology in my early twenties. I studied a lot of books and practised it with whoever lend themselves. I quickly became a "master" on describing the personality of individuals departing from their signatures, specially when I already knew them a bit and they were in front of me. No wonder my abilities, as signatures are the way we want to be seen by others, not the way we really are.

The problem was describing an unknown person departing from their signature. Once I hit the bullseye describing his boss to a professor of mine. I could described him physically in a pretty precise way, as well as a few aspects of his personality.

To make long stories short, I later realized I was doing 10% graphology and 90% cold reading. That was the end of it for me, as it all went well while I could convince myself I was doing it with some success, but not once I was aware of the real processes at play.

"Buddha"'s anecdotes are ... well ... just anecdotal, so they have zilch value as evidence. At most, they suggest somebody would do some serious and proper research about this subject, starting from people with the ability to learn who know things they aren't supposed to know according to the limited information the observer has, and people with imagination and emphatic abilities able to imagine themselves in certain situations. "Reincarnation" here is just a flag in all those anecdotes, which have been selected among what is for sure a much more vast collection of blurrier "evidence" in spite of the presenter having a burning desire for them to be "it" -most probably just at an unconscious level-, exactly like I did when I was cold reading people and I foolishly thought I was doing a different thing.
 
This method of past lives research requires presence of people who know foreign languages.

Your first sentence contains your first presumption: that linguistic carryover should be a consequence of reincarnation. Please outline in suitable detail what "reincarnation" consists of in your model, and the preliminary studies you did to determine that the properties suggested by your model are based on observation. One of the things that defeats a good scientific proof is ill-defined and mobile goalposts.

Nicole’s daughter’s name is Natasha.

....She was constantly repeating the word “Natasha” which is a Russian name.

It doesn't matter whether it's a Russian name. It's her name. An infant learning to say her name is unremarkable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natasha contains a list of notable people named Natasha. Note how many of them seem to have no Slavic origins or connections whatsoever. Further, since the child's parents gave her the name at birth, it can hardly be because they understood that she had a Slavic past life and named her accordingly.

When Natasha was 6 months old a new employee identified her language as Russian. He didn’t speak Russian...

...and therefore cannot be considered much of an authority on what a language is, especially when spoken by a toddler. Since you didn't know her when she was 6 months old, I take it this was told to you by a third party. What did you do to verify the testimony of the third party?

It seems that so far all we have is presumption and hearsay. Let's move on to evidence you observed directly, as that's the only evidence that really matters, empirically speaking:

I started talking to her in Russian, she was responding in English. I asked her what is her name, how old she is, what she is doing here, what is her mother’s name, etc,. In total I asked her about 30 questions and she gave correct answers to all of them, as Nicole confirmed. In the end I pointed at Natasha’s finger and said in English, “How do you call this?” She replied with “palets” which means “finger” in Russian.

The sum total of your "empirical" evidence in this case is a three-year-old who speaks Russian for reasons you simply seem to have chosen not to investigate. You verified that she had some proficiency in Russian and then assumed that this must be because she had some prior life experience that carried over into the present, that "must" have included a Slavic influence. You describe no methodology by which you tested, and attempted to falsify, your hypothesis with additional evidence. Your "proof" is purely attributional in this case -- you observe a phenomenon and immediately attribute it to a speculative cause with no further testing. That's the opposite of empiricism.

There is a past lives recall techniques that Buddhist monks use. Unlike hypnosis...

What is your formal training and experience with hypnosis? I will stipulate for the time being that you are reasonably familiar with the "recall techniques that Buddhist monks use." But you have not established yourself by any stated credential or qualification as an expert in hypnosis such that you can state such a comparison as a matter of evidence. Please provide a reference to published, peer-reviewed research that establishes the difference between your proffered technique and "hypnosis."

...this technique does not produce immediate results, it takes from 8 to 12 hours to recall isolated past life episodes. A complete past life recall, including the language, could take from 3 to 6 months.

Please provide the published, peer-reviewed research that demonstrates via a transparent, complete, and correct methodology that the technique produces any of the results you claim. A method purported as empirical must be able to demonstrate empirical validity. Since your claim arises in and from a religion for which belief in reincarnation is a central tenet, and among which past-life claims inform social status, your audience cannot take your word that it is effective and free from bias.

The monks are patient, but my subjects are not, so I had to modify the technique...

What controlled experiments did you perform to establish the empirical validity of your modifications to the technique, independent of any previous empirical validation on the parent technique? You seem to imply that the parent method was formulated for willing subjects who believe in incarnation. To what extent was the parent technique and your modified technique validated on a properly controlled mix of subjects? Please describe your method in enough detail so that someone reasonably versed in the scientific method can evaluate its strength.

I will address the case studies allegedly based on this method once you have demonstrate the validity of the method. The actual cases are moot until then.

I hit a jackpot with my fourth subject.

This indicates that you were favoring a certain outcome and are not necessarily therefore a dispassionate researcher. Since the technique you mention is allegedly well known in Buddhism, did you allow your subjects to be interviewed or mediated by other experts in the technique to validate the results? Or did you rely solely on your own examination and interpretations?

This is especially important since your previous thread seems to indicate you are just as motivated in establishing your own personal prowess as you are in supplying objective, empirical proofs for your religious beliefs. Your "success" in recovering past memories might be explained also by your desire to believe that you have skills that would be praised and valued by your religious peers. Since a proper empiricism would eliminate evident biases in the researcher deriving from such things as narcissism, you need to tell us what empirical controls you applied, if any, to address this.

There is ample evidence showing that the reincarnation exists...

There may be, but you haven't provided any. Your first case is simply an assumption drawn from incomplete data. The remainder of your cases are personal claims made on the basis of an alleged religious technique for which you provide no suitable validation. All of it is anecdotal.

...you have to view it with an open mind.

What precisely do you mean by "open mind" in this thread? If I read between the lines, you seem to suggest that open-mindedness would involve relaxing or ignoring appropriate empirical controls as they affect your claims. That is simply not going to happen, so don't bother asking. Far too many fringe claimants have tried to gaslight their critics into believing that they must lower their standards in order to participate in the debate. I assure you the audience here is well attuned to such shoddy and transparent tactics.

A very large part of my job involves testing putatively scientific claims for validity. I will be merciless, but fair according to science. If you can meet the reasonable standards of scientific inquiry, you will having nothing to fear. If you're simply going to play the same social-engineering games as your predecessors, and as you've done in the past, I will afford you no quarter whatsoever. Whereupon I predict you will fabricate some excuse to ignore me.

Let me ask you this question: Are you open-minded enough to consider as a real possibility that your religious beliefs are false?
 
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Most belief systems of reincarnation also posit a vast elaborate spiritual apparatus for not only keeping score over multiple lifetimes, but preserving all the memories of everyone's previous lifetimes, which is necessary for multiple lifetimes having the long-term instructional purpose they're usually posited to have (learning without memory being rather pointless).

It's probably not an accident that a good deal of the research purporting to empirically valid proof of reincarnation looks for its data to cultures in which reincarnation is widely held as a socio-religious belief, and which place considerable social value on the identity and quality of purported past lives. So few of those studies apply any semblance of proper rigor. For example, in the ones Jabba cited it was claimed several times that past recollections were "verified," by which it was insinuated that the researchers had conducted a reasonably defensible, reasonably independent historical inquiry into the validity of the past-life claim. You have to dig very deep into their research to discover that they simply asked the proud parents of the allegedly reincarnated child if such a thing had occurred. No attempt was made to corroborate the parents' claim.
 
When Natasha was 6 months old a new employee identified her language as Russian. He didn’t speak Russian...

I don't speak Russian. I speak fluent Portuguese, Brazilian dialect. My hometown has an AM radio station that broadcasts programs for the local Portuguese community, in European Portuguese dialect. Whenever I tune in, I identify the language as Russian, even though I know it isn't. Usually takes me several minutes for my ears to adjust to the accent and start making sense of the words.

I'm not sure if this is relevant. Let me find an onion for my belt. BRB.
 

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