Zen Physics

I'm a dualist -- can't help it, always have been -- no matter how eloquently Hofstadter tells me that I am a strange loop. And I just don't buy the bit about reincarnation. I've studied reincarnation from every angle, and it has simply never made sense to me.

Until now, that is.

I recently opened David Darling's 1996 book titled Zen Physics: The Science of Death, the Logic of Reincarnation prepared to defeat any and all of his arguments in support of reincarnation, but then he goes and blindsides me with this:

We are the products of our life stories. [...] So, inevitably, a lot of what we remember is not what actually happened--whatever this may mean--but rather a kind of myth or confabulation that helps us sustain the impression that we know what is going on. [...] We maintain a sense of continuity and so provide a basis for our feeling of personal identity at the cost of never knowing what is true. We are as much a myth as the stories we tell ourselves. (35-36)

This makes perfect sense from a Campbellian perspective, and from there Darling continues to chip away at every wall of incredulity. He goes on to show how the brain is a memory device, nothing more, and certainly not the source of consciousness as Hofstadter would contend. It is, in fact, a filter that limits our awareness of the singular consciousness that is the universe at large. Moreover, the brain seems to have a built-in storyteller that puts everything (i.e., the insignificant amount of data actually processed and stored by the brain) into a "single coherent narrative." With a nod to Hua-Yen Buddhism and Indra's Net of Gems, Darling advances into a discussion of Zen and quantum mechanics to show how upon death we will each undergo secular reincarnation into a new and previously unknown example of fragmented consciousness, each with a new story to tell.

If all the world's a stage, then the universe must be a multiplex theatre.

Maybe God's just a film buff.