Imagine you’ve just come home from work. You sit down and relax, not in any elated or distressed state of mind. The state of awareness you are in—the emotional state you return to and have returned to all your life—can exist in a future life. That calm state is who you are from a point of view of awareness. It is the neutral state you return to after anger, sadness or excitement. I refer to this as baseline awareness.
Don’t confuse awareness with an object. If I throw a basketball into a volcano it’s gone for good. I can make one just like it but I won’t have the same one ever again. This is the way it is with objects, but processes are different. I can play the same song again and again on the radio, because a song is a process. Baseline awareness is also a patterned process in the brain. But it is probably not unique. Anger is the same kind of experience for everyone because it produces a universal response. Indeed, our ability to empathize with others indicates universality, even though the particulars may differ. Your baseline awareness—the awareness you return to after a heated moment—is probably something that is common to many other people. Who’s to say it can’t exist again?
Consider this: If someone hits me over the head I will see stars (as opposed to some other geometric form). But so would anyone else. It doesn't matter which human brain you have, everyone sees stars, because the process of getting hit over the head and the brain's way of processing that event is the same for everyone (more or less). No one reports seeing squares or circles instead of stars. If a bee stings me on the back of the
Page 2
hand then stings you on the back of the hand the only difference in perception would be in degree, not kind. The reaction to the bee sting is universal in kind but maybe not in degree. The point is that our underlying awareness is common, not unique. Humans are genetically very similar. But these sensations occur to baseline awareness
Since awareness is a process it can cease to exist then exist again. I can play a song ten times on ten different radios. The confusion comes in when people think of living
beings as objects. But minds are patterned processes, not objects. The two things have different ontologies.
I am a continuation of what I was a year ago. Likewise, I would not necessarily expect to have an absolutely identical baseline awareness as the person I was in a previous life. All that would be needed is for certain key features to be the same. If I project a square of light onto a wall it could slowly turn into a circle. But the circle would be a coherent continuation of the square. However, reincarnation is seen here as a matter of recurrence, not continuation.
All my awareness arises out of my baseline awareness. So, if a baby born today has baseline awareness that is a recurrence of a baby from 1,000 years ago the baby born today is a reincarnation of the baby from 1,000 years ago.
Page 3
About baseline awareness, there are three and only three possibilities: 1.) it is unique to each person 2.) It is possessed by different groups (meaning each group possesses it’s own baseline awareness ). 3.) It is common to everyone. The reason I strongly doubt
the first option is that different emotions (anger, sadness, etc.) are the same types of experiences for everyone. Anger is one pattern of awareness, sadness another, etc. Also, people act like me when they are relaxing. This simply means that you can tell when someone is relaxing or tense. This could be analogous to a stare. Each time I lapse into a stare it is the same state of awareness that I have experienced before. Also, since I am only a recurrence of what I was in a previous life, I do not need to have identical baseline awareness that that person had. So, since even option 1 could
produce reincarnation, reincarnation very well may occur, because baseline awareness is the part of me that feels emotion, and the higher faculties have their base in this
awareness and follow from it. If options 2 or 3 hold I am even more likely to reincarnate because there would be a stronger correlation between the baseline awareness of this life and the previous life.
A possible counter to this argument is that the influence of genes on the human population would cause each individual to have unique and unreproducible baseline aware
ness. However, the gene pool for humans is very small, and certain traits, like brown eyes, are almost universal.
Page 4
While it is true that each beaver dam is unique, the method of building beaver dams is universal. It stands to reason that there is only one type of consciousness that produces beaver dams. It has minuscule variations, but that consciousness is one process with many possible forms.
If I slip into a coma and wake with a different personality I am still the same person because I am a continuation of what I was before the coma. Likewise, I could just as easily be the same person I was in a previous life even if I have a different personality. My thinking is that baseline awareness is one coherent type of awareness since it serves a definite purpose, which is to sense the world is a broad way, to be receptive to changes both internally and externally so that any impulse which needs to arise can. But even if there is no self, my experience of life would be recurrent.
But by far the best objective evidence for baseline awareness comes from evolution. A hunter-gatherer would have to return to the same relatively flat emotional state so he could make tools, stalk prey and gather fruit. If he were distracted by his emotions constantly he would not be able to focus. Focus is only possible when one is undistracted. In this way, baseline awareness would not be like a snowflake, created by chance winds. It has been carefully molded by natural selection to be consistent in each person.
Page 5
I realize current science cannot verify whether someone has actually reincarnated, but with this mechanism in mind there may be a way of exploring the issue more deeply.
Much more work would need to be done. Of all the billions of people who have lived before it is possible that someone who died before I was born had a baseline awareness that was close enough to mine to be a match. I can say nothing with certainty though.
Another way of looking at the problem is through the lens of what I call “most basic awareness.” Most basic awareness is the awareness to which all thoughts occur. As with baseline awareness, three possibilities are present: It may be unique to each individual. It may consist in groups. It may be universal. As with baseline awareness, the same caveats apply. If I say, “It occurs to me it’s Sunday” I mean the thought that it is Sunday occurs to my most basic awareness. I am not my thoughts anymore than I am the hair on my head.
Most basic awareness recurs in each generation after the time of my death. I am most basic awareness. It is the seed from which all my awareness arises. Therefore, since it will recur, I will recur. Therefore, reincarnation. The existence of most basic awareness is confirmed by the fact that Buddhist monks can enter a thoughtless state in which they are still aware.
