Palmistry, Predictions, Psychic phenomena and Changing Fate

The Watercooler
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My apologies for assuming you believed in psychics, but you did start a topic where you claimed a palm-reader said that your girlfriend would die in 10 years. You were asking for solutions to help her live longer, and pass your “merits” onto her, so I assumed you actually believed in it. I’m not sure why you would start a topic looking for a solution to a problem that you don’t believe exists…

Why would you believe that people were wiser 2000 years ago? I certainly don’t… people believed in all manner of crazy things 2000 years ago… people believed in vampires, dragons, faeries, etc… graves have been found where bodies were staked through the heart because people were afraid vampires would rise out of the grave… wise? No

I’ve studied Buddhism, and still study it (I’m here aren’t I?)… I think there is some great wisdom in the Buddhist texts, but there are some mistakes(?) as well. Buddha predicted in the Vinaya that the “true Dhamma” would last only 500 years. When were the Buddhist texts written down? 500+ years after Buddha?

But, Ānanda, if women had not obtained the Going-forth from the home life into homelessness in the Dhamma and discipline made known by the Tathāgata, the holy life would have lasted long, the true Dhamma would have lasted 1,000 years. But now that they have gotten to go forth… this holy life will not last long, the true Dhamma will last only 500 years.

My understanding of this passage is that Buddha is saying that the Dhamma will become corrupted 500 years after his teaching. If this passage is true, then the dhamma was corrupted before it was ever written down. Buddha predicted this would happen. This is why I can’t take the texts on faith, and must discover the truth of them for myself through personal experience (like Buddha did himself).

I believe that Buddha was not a Buddhist anymore than Jesus was a Christian. Buddha’s path was one of discovering the truth for himself, not reading an ancient text and believing what other people claim to be true.

I have read several passages in the Pali canon where Buddha specifically says do not take what people say on faith, no matter if they are a respected teacher or not. Take MN38 for example:

“would you say, ‘The Teacher is our respected mentor. We speak thus out of respect for the Teacher’?”
“No, lord.”

“would you say, ‘The Contemplative says this. We speak thus in line with the Contemplative’s words’?”
“No, lord.”

“Is it the case that you speak simply in line with what you have known, seen, & understood for yourselves?”
“Yes, lord.”

"Good, monks. You have been guided by me in this Dhamma which is to be seen here & now, timeless, inviting verification, pertinent, to be realized by the observant for themselves.

The key words here being “inviting verification”. If it cannot be verified, there is no reason to believe it.

Or the Kalama Sutta:

Please, Kālāmas, don’t go by oral transmission, don’t go by lineage, don’t go by testament, don’t go by canonical authority, don’t rely on logic, don’t rely on inference, don’t go by reasoned contemplation, don’t go by the acceptance of a view after consideration, don’t go by the appearance of competence, and don’t think ‘The ascetic is our respected teacher.’ But when you know for yourselves: ‘These things are skillful, blameless, praised by sensible people, and when you undertake them, they lead to welfare and happiness’, then you should acquire them and keep them.

For myself, the key word in the Kalama Sutta I quoted is know… when you know for yourself that something is true/skillful.

Knowledge is a subset of beliefs… my preferred definition for knowledge is, “justified, true belief”. A person could believe things that aren’t true, or they could believe true things without proper justification… these are both mistakes. Without the belief being true, and justified, it is not knowledge.

The Kalama sutta seems to echo this point. Do not believe things on faith just because someone said it, even if they are an “authority” or “respected teacher”. Always find the truth within your own experience.

I don’t mean to be rude, but you ask a lot of questions which appear pointless or trivial to me:
“Why do some animals get killed while others are pets?” That’s just how the world works…
“Why are some people ugly and others pretty?” That’s just how the world works…
“Why do some people die painful violent deaths, and others have natural deaths?” That’s just how the world works…

These are not things that need a supernatural explanation, so why are you searching for one?

My understanding of Buddhism is the way to free yourself from this dissatisfaction is to stop caring about it. That’s the message Buddha repeats over and over, it’s our craving/clinging/attachment to things which produces this dissatisfaction (or repulsion of things we don’t want… in this example, death). The solution is to stop worrying about it. Either things work out well, or they don’t… does it matter? If you believe in rebirth, then why are you worried about death?

Does any of this matter? Would it affect your life in any meaningful way? I forget exactly which questions Buddha refused to answer, but IIRC, they were these types of questions… these are not questions that could be scientifically studied, so any answer you get will be someone’s opinion only (and probably incorrect).

This sounds close to things I have pondered in the past. I have no good evidence to support such claims, so I am hesitant to even speak about them, but… IF (and this is a BIG IF) we have a soul that existed before our bodies, then I could speculate on several possibilities for us being here. We could have made the choice to come here as you say, “we are the ones who decided to play”. Or, perhaps we are here as a punishment for committing a crime before we had this body (more akin to karma)? Or perhaps it is exactly like The Matrix movie and we are being used as batteries for some other entity. I could “what if” all day, but without evidence, speculation is meaningless…

I am fond of Simulation Theory, but I have no good reason to believe in it. And, even if it was true, would it make a difference? Would my life be any different if I thought I was a simulation vs a real person? No, I don’t believe it would. Even if I thought I was inside a video game, I would not go around shooting people and looting their corpses as if I’m playing World of Warcraft.

I study Buddhism for the parts which I can confirm to myself are true and skillful. I know that craving leads to dissatisfaction, and I understand this at a deep level. I can know via personal experience that this is true… but a belief in souls is not something I can know via personal experience, so it is quite pointless to even speculate on such things.

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Yes sir I started that topic. Talking about my girlfriend, she has cyst and in her ovary and also a very small and mild tumour somewhere else and doctor said it can have carcinogenic potential in future. So she is actually not well and not perfectly healthy. She is good now. I love her more than anything. And suddenly this so called palm reader told that thing to her. So I was scared as hell. Even if I believe palmistry is con artistry still I felt I need to make sure by asking people who are wiser than me or anyone around me. Because if that’s not true it’s well and good but if it turned out true then whom can I blame!! I was panicked…so that’s why I started this topic to look for a solution in case if problem arrived in future! I am searching for guidance because I am not wise enough…and yes I got the guidance here.

Sir today also there are many who are abusing people’s blind faith by claiming they are psychics, can read minds and so on…still there are people like us and many others here who are wiser and who don’t believe in any such nonsense. So I meant to say that just as people in past believed in more non sense(vampires, dragons, fairies …so on) compared to today’s people…then there is possibility that wiser people at that time were actually more wiser than wise people of today…just as nonsense was more at that time compared to today so there is possibility that even wiseness was more at that time I mean.

Yes sir I agree with you completely we all should discover truth for ourselves. But even though Buddha said dhamma will corrupt 500 years after his passing. He didn’t say dhamma will vanish after 500 years…so it can mean dhamma is here although in impure form. We can realize it if we study it like you are studying (evidence based studying without blindly following), or like me(always inquiring to teachers and posing questions). So I meant here we can search for evidences and proofs and after finding them we can take these texts on faith to the heart.

Completely agreed sir. I must be sounding like I have taken on belief some texts about Buddhism (such as rebirth or different planes of existence) but I have reason for that…my intuition says this can be true…and I then checked reasons for that so that’s why I felt yes it can be true and can be taken on faith. About virtue/merits can increase lifespan, happiness, beauty(all good things included). This also I pondered …texts say collective human lifespan on earth can increase and collective problems such as sickness, poverty, lack of satisfaction can decrease if all the people start behaving morally good, following precepts and caring for each other. But it is obviously impossible because it’s hard for ourselves to make our conduct morally pure perfectly …and how can every single person on this earth would follow this? It can’t be possible even in dreams! So increasing lifespan of every human is utterly impossible thing just as causing every human on earth to behave virtuously and morally pure is, which is also utterly impossible. So these both impossibilities meet each other equally so I thought we can say that it’s true that virtuous behaviour can increase lifespan, happiness and decrease problems and dissatisfaction. And yes for atleast oneself it seems true…if we became good it actually benefits us and makes us happy.

So just as above I am trying to confirm or subtantiate all the supernatural things mentioned such as clairvoyance, and all that. Not yet confirmed though.

Sir even though above questions seem pointless/trivial, doctrine of karma and rebirth actually answers above questions…and I thought of it as way of substantiating law of karma and rebirth…or else that law of karma and rebirth could be false. I tried to understand it.

Yes sir it can be solution to stop worrying but it doesn’t satisfy me I want to find a way to make every thing or atleast most of the things work out…(yea I know it also sounds trivial). I am worried because if I believe in rebirth then next question comes where? So it makes me study further things given in texts.

Yes sir I am also trying to do the same thing like you maybe in different way. For me I am soul(constantly changing unlike it implies) or more correctly the ‘self’ which is seeing feeling doing all the things, and maybe awakening will happen when I will realize that this soul or self is actually not there. Same as if we try to look for the one who is looking we will see noone. That’s anatta I guess. So in this way I try to understand things. Just as everyone I am prone to make mistakes and hence this studying goes on.

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I’m probably the worst person to have this conversation with because I don’t believe in anything supernatural. I believe every supernatural claim is a fraud (or a mistake/delusion). I study all religions, but do so with a skeptical mind. I follow the path that the Buddha followed, not the texts of Buddhism. This is to say that I do what Buddha did - I study the world’s religions looking for what is true or false based upon my own personal experiences and meditating deeply on each topic. Buddha spoke with the religious leaders of his day, listening to what each of them had to say. This is how Buddha found the truth - he did not study a bunch of old books and believe everything he read…

I suppose I’m a “secular Buddhist”, because I don’t believe in any supernatural claims. I believe these are the parts of Buddhism that became corrupted through a misunderstanding of the dhamma while it was being passed down through the oral tradition of the early Buddhist monks. Could I be wrong? Certainly. Perhaps some day I will find evidence that shows I am incorrect, and I will change my opinion if that happens.

I am hesitant to speak about the parts of Buddhism that I don’t believe, because this is not my forum. It is usually a bad idea to walk into another person’s home and criticize it.

There are certainly parts of Buddhism which can be confirmed through personal experience. There are even parts which have been confirmed by science. MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) has been shown to be as effective as modern chemical anti-depressants in treating stress, anxiety and depression. In my eyes, this is a huge victory for Buddhism, mindfulness meditation has been confirmed by science! But, many Buddhists dislike MBSR because it only takes the mindfulness part of Buddhism, and separates it from the ethical teachings.

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Ummm… up there. You seemed to skipped the whole rebirth evidences thing altogether.

I am trying to get at least one secular Buddhist to convert via this rebirth evidence thing, then he/she can properly use this technique to convert other secular Buddhists. So far, I haven’t seen success yet. Haiz.

I thought the since the standard is to ask for evidences, provide them, let them read enough then they got convinced. However, by feedback, a lot of the secular Buddhists who later became Buddhists got converted via faith, after they had practised enough and faith kept on increasing, rather than the evidences, as they kept on saying: if got evidence, then I’ll change my mind. Seems like it’s not so easy to change views, even if one believe one can do so via evidences.

Usually the standard reply by secular Buddhists when shown these rebirth evidences is: but mainstream science has not approved it, so not scientific, or certain procedure is not up to standard… I would say that design a better way to investigate if rebirth is true. Seriously, read enough cases, then judge. Not all cases are going to be very strong, but the strong ones adds up until Occam’s razor says: it’s a much simpler explanation for all these cases to see that rebirth is true rather than to have to explain away all the details of all the various cases of all the various researchers.

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No, I have looked at them, but find it lacking. I do not accept anecdotes as evidence… science does not take someone’s word for anything, it must be tested. It is too easy to fake an anecdote. A child could have read about a character in a book, or had his parents tell him what to say… there are a million explanations that don’t involve anything supernatural.

And why is it always children who can view past lives? Isn’t this supposed to be a Buddha/Arahat ability, not a child’s ability? Where in the Pali canon does it say children possess the ability to view past lives?

As always, extraordinary claims (like supernatural claims) require extraordinary evidence… anecdotes are not even ordinary evidence, much less EXTRAordinary evidence.

I will never be convinced that someone saw a ghost just because they claim to have seen a ghost (or alien or gremlin or vampire or past lives). People love telling fantastic stories, and sometimes these people even believe their own stories… but that does not make them true.

Please do this if it interests you. If you find a better way to investigate these claims using a scientific method, I will surely look at it. But this is not something that interests me enough to waste my time looking for something that I do not believe exists… why would I waste my time doing that?

The same could be said about alien abductions, or ghosts, or near death experiences, or bigfoot, or religious people seeing visions of Jesus/Mary… If I believed everything people said, I would fall for every scam in the world. Once again, anecdotes are not evidence… a whole bunch of anecdotes is still not evidence. It doesn’t matter to me if a billion people claim they saw Jesus, it does not make it true… “Pics or it didn’t happen”

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Did you miss the part where the child’s story is validated by real world details?

Say someone realised he lost a baggage, after exiting the passport checking area, the airport staff asked the person to describe his baggage, he described it to the best of his memory, the airport people found the exact baggage more or less to the details as he described it, at the exact location where he said he left it. We all would agree that it’s reasonable to conclude that this baggage belongs to the traveller right?

In the same way, kid= traveller, baggage=past life. Searching the baggage described, and found to the exact description= matching the exact location and name of the past life person.

According to what you prefer to think of what happened is that, the traveller had never been inside the airport and is now trying to lie (or brainedwashed into lying) that a certain baggage with some exact description is his. Maybe he got drones to go into the airport and checked it, including X-ray to scan the insides of the baggage to get some items correctly identified. It’s a more elaborate way to explain what’s a clear cut lost baggage (rebirth) case. And actually in many of the cases, there’s no way for them to send drones, cause the tech has not been invented.

This tells me you haven’t actually read enough cases. Many of them actually have ruled out unfair play and normal means for the kid to obtain information which they had never learnt or encountered in this life, with parents objecting to the kid’s delusional stories and so on.

The prediction to verify here is that rebirth exist.

Also, not all arahants can recall past lives. Nope, the prediction is not to verify that the sutta says kids can recall past lives, which so far, I see not mentioned in the suttas.

Here’s some from B. Analayo’s Rebirth in Early Buddhism and Current Research.

In three cases in Sri Lanka, assistants of Ian Stevenson were able to arrive on the scene before a corresponding previous personality was recognized.259 This enabled them to take down various statements made by the three girls in question and then proceed themselves to identify a corresponding deceased person. In the first of these three cases, the location of the previous personality was over two hundred kilometers away from the town of the girl’s present life, and the two families concerned were to all appearances not previously acquainted with each other.260 Several of the statements she made about the past life were rather specific, and they turned out to be correct.

In the second case, besides various verified details about the family of the previous personality, the girl also correctly described earlier features of the boutique run by the previous person’s father and of the former house, even though in both cases these features had in the meantime changed. The roof of the boutique had earlier been made of coconut leaves, but in the meantime this had been replaced by tiles; the walls of the house had been painted in a different color.261 The two families involved did not appear to have known each other prior to the development of the case.

The third girl remembered dying in a landslide in a different part of the country and as part of a family unrelated to her present one.262 When her present father took her to the tea estate where the landslide had happened, she started to scream and refused to proceed, whereupon he had to abandon his plan to reach the site. Besides providing various correct details about the previous personality, the girl also showed behavioral continuities with the former life that were out of keeping with her present living situation, including the use of specific words appropriate for dwellers on a tea estate.

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Sir I would say by reading suttas, it seems clear to me that those disciples of Buddha(mahakassapa, ananda and so on…) were far more wiser and capable than you and me and many others. Just by looking how they answered questions or how they even asked questions or how they converted other people…it seems pretty clear to me that they were very capable and far more advanced than us! Don’t you think they would have done this task of transmitting teachings by keeping them as pure as possible, very efficiently? Don’t you think they would have made sure that dhamma reaches to future generations as purely as possible? Atleast to me it seems yes…because that conversations they seem flawless to me atleast! And I think that’s enough proof for me to trust those texts.

One thing I suppose you know the discovery of Higgs boson the god particle which dies almost instantly as its formed. Something like this is actually given in abhidhamma called kalapas. In theravada Buddhist phenomenology, Kalapas are defined as the smallest units of physical matter. Kalapas are described as tiny units of materiality, “tens of thousands of times smaller than a particle of dust,” coming into existence and disappearing in as little as a billionth of a second or a trillionth of the blink of an eye. And science has found proof for that now. But through meditation it is possible to perceive that phenomenon inside our body directly!

I suppose you know Vipassana insight meditation…if we progress through it we can feel sensations/vibrations on our body itself and if we continue to do it whole body can be seen as a sensation/vibration. When whole body is seen as sensation our attachment to this body reduces because we are seeing impermanence directly in our body! And after seeing impermanence in this way we see smallest particles in our body constantly forming and decaying! Now after seeing this inside our body by ourself we know that this body is not worth getting attached to and then when we drop our attachment to this body…we get the glimpse of permanence, glimpse of immortality, glimpse of nirvana.

Now why I explained Vipassana above which you probably know. I wanted to show that …the Higgs boson discovery actually became so late and in our texts its mentioned already and even through experience we can see that. So do you still really think science can be the perfect parameter for judging something? I am not saying it is bad parameter it is actually best parameter, all I am saying is that it’s not complete, it is lacking in many things and is imperfect. Above evidence I provided is a proof that whatever discoveries are mentioned in texts(buddhism) science hasn’t yet fully discovered. What I am saying is that…whatever things which are possible through science such as flying, hearing things from far away(through transmission), seeing inside our body without cutting open(x-rays and all), and so on, all of these things actually can be done through our mind also just as we can perceive Higgs boson inside as well as outside and that’s what constitutes supernatural.

Here also by supernatural I don’t mean bigfoot, alien abductions are real things…these things i don’t think exist because they don’t feel scientific to me. By supernatural I meant extension of our abilities! I mean whatever we can do with body we can do that with our mind also…just as we can see Higgs boson with our mind.

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Well. There’s an issue with the Theravada model of kalapas, which as far as I know is not in EBT, so I wouldn’t place too much faith in it.

Kalapas in the Theravada model doesn’t corresponds to any of the particles in particle physics.

Say from Knowing and Seeing (5th ed) by Pa Auk.

Colour (vaõõa), the fifth type of materiality to be discerned, is the object of sight , and is found in all rupa-kalàpas. It is very easily known with a mind consciousness alone, because by seeing the rupa-kal- àpas you have already seen colour. Colour is always the colour of some- thing, and that something is the four elements.

Well, if we stick to visible colours, it’s about 500 nm for wavelength, go smaller than that, then we can’t see the things, as it’s smaller than visible light. Atoms are around 1nm size. We use electron microscope to see atoms, not visible light microscope. Needless to say, subatomic particles are even smaller.

Say we be generous and give that light can mean gamma ray with very small wavelength as long as we got enough energy for the photon (light). There’s issue with the next few properties of kalapa.

Odour (gandha), the sixth type of materiality to be discerned, is the object of smell and is also found in all rupa kalapas, because it is a lifelong habit to use the nose to smell with, you will in the beginning need a nose consciousness to help you know odour with a mind consci- ousness.

Flavour (rasa) is the seventh type of materiality to discern, is the object of taste (rasàrammaõa), and is also found in all rupa-kalàpas. As with the nose, you will in the beginning need a tongue consciousness to help you know flavour with a mind consciousness. And here too, you need first to discern the materiality that the two types of consciousness depend on: the tongue translucency and heart materiality. Having done that, you then discern the flavour of a rupa-kalàpa. You can take a rupa-kalàpa from the saliva on your tongue.

Molecules are the smallest unit whereby smelling and tasting are discerned. If each rupa kalapa has molecules which can break off from it for it to be smelt and tasted, then… it’s certainly not subatomic size.

Also, do learn more about particle physics before placing too much importance to Higgs’ boson.

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Venerable sir I will keep that in mind from now on. Thank you for pointing out the mistake!

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My path was like this:

I had to give myself permission to “try on” a belief in reincarnation “temporarily” by framing it as an experiment. Just to see what having the belief would be like … I was so scared to give up my “scientific” identity and embrace something so “out there” So yeah, no amount of arguing online is going to convince anyone, @NgXinZhao Btw: do you have a new Dharma name, brother? You said in the other thread you finally got full ordination? If so: congratulations!

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Yup in Profile - NgXinZhao - Discuss & Discover Paññādhammika

Thanks!

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I am trying to gauge if it is worth putting a chapter on rebirth evidences in my Physics and Buddhism book. Much of the book already addresses that Buddhism is largely compatible with Physics, no need for secular Buddhism, so the main issue which secular Buddhist might have issue with is rebirth, which could be important to include, so the book can be used as a defence of Buddhism against the perceived need to transform Buddhism to secular Buddhism to fit in with science.

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Yeah, I think the main things are going to be the “mundane right view” stuff: rebirth, heaven/hell, karma, etc.

Well congratulations again, and welcome to the Bhikkhu Sangha! May your holy life be fruitful! :grin::pray:

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How difficult would it be for a child to gain access to said details ahead of time? It seems very easy to me, and this is the most likely situation (Occam’s Razor).

It is no different than Christian children preaching the gospel and speaking in tongues… they were either taught by their parents, or came across it on their own… but it is not real, it’s fiction.

I see this as exactly the same thing as children pretending they are viewing past lives. It’s fraud.

I have my doubts that could even be proven… much less was proven… how could you prove a child never had access to information? Were you watching them 24/7 for 5+ years?

As far as I am aware, children are not able to view past lives in the suttas. This is solely an ability of an awakened/enlightened mind. Unless these children are already Buddhas/Arahants, I see no reason for anyone to believe their stories. It really is super easy to make this stuff up.

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Yes and no… how many pages of text are there in the Pali canon? According to Wikipedia, there are over 80,000 pages of text in the Pali canon… I am familiar with oral traditions, as I learned one myself about 20 years ago… it takes a long time to memorize even 1 page of text, much less 80,000 pages… it simply is not possible for any 1 person to pass 80,000 pages of text in an oral tradition… literally impossible for anyone but a savant.

Sure, maybe there were 80 monks who each memorized 1,000 pages of text… that’s perhaps a possibility, but what if one of them died unexpectedly? Now we lost more than 1% of the original text.

Have you ever played “the telephone game”? It is not easy to pass along even a simple message, word for word. But you expect me to believe that these early monks not only memorized 80,000 pages of Buddha’s speeches in real time (while he spoke them), and passed them along for 500 years without a single flaw? I cannot believe that, no.

Does it die? I’ve never heard any scientist claim such a thing. And the term “god particle” has nothing at all to do with gods.

Is that your experience?

The Higgs boson is not mentioned in the Pali texts. You are falling victim to confirmation bias. You are trying to make the puzzle pieces fit when they do not. I typically see this from Muslims, who want to claim that the Qur’an is super scientific when it is not.

It isn’t perfect, but it is the only tool for finding truth vs fiction. The scientific method works, but it cannot answer every question… supernatural claims are, by definition, outside the realm of science, which deals specifically with the natural world. If something supernatural had an effect on the natural world, then it could be studied by science… but then it would be natural, not supernatural.

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This is the definition of confirmation bias. Choosing to believe in a conclusion, then searching for evidence to support the preconceived conclusion.

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Sir I agree remembering even single page is very hard for us but not everyone can be same. We all have different abilities, some people do have extraordinary memory. Still buddha was a single historical person who taught all these things…what do you think how Buddha knew all this? Did he study? How was he even able to remember all the things he taught? Surely there is no evidence that he used to study regularly. I hope you believe atleast that Buddha’s capability and our capability is not same. We can agree that buddha was wisest one having greatest wisdom (evidence for this is texts itself)…if not how could he even teach this much amount of teachings!?
So if Buddha could teach this much (80000 pages or whatever the number) don’t you think his disciples could be having… not equal to him but still extraordinary ability to memorize unlike us in today’s time? Saying that brain capacity of his disciples and today’s humans like us is same, would be foolish thing don’t you agree!?

Sir you said it simply is not possible for one person to pass 80000 of pages in oral tradition. Why do you think there can be no better or capable person(or persons) than us? For example I can’t play football like Ronaldo…so it would be wrong for me to say that football can’t be played properly by anyone! How can I think or say that if I can’t do it then noone can? Because the way Ronaldo plays it simply looks impossible…still he makes impossible possible. It applies to every field. Every field has legends whose capabilities are way higher than average humans.

By death I meant that Higgs boson is particle which decays very fast, we can call it death or whatever. But it is detectable only for extremely little amount of time. By ‘god particle’ I was just using its complete name…nothing else.

Yes but I haven’t yet realized the so called glimpse of nirvana but I could feel the vibrations over my body and based on that me and anyone(who did study about this technique and did meditation under guidance) would be able to know that what can happen if we progress and sir you can check it for yourself right now wherever you are …this is not any supernatural claim but simple truth which can be experienced by anyone here and now(infact this is the way which frees us from suffering)! Obviously it can not happen overnight as efforts and diligence is required to experience all that just as everything. I did 10 days Vipassana course by S. N. Goenka at Igatpuri. You can search for that if you want. Scientific evidence for this can only be experienced by sitting and closing eyes and trust me anyone can see it for himself but it requires efforts, for atleast regular 3-4-5 days depending upon the capacity of every person. Capacity differs …I hope you agree here!

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Medical science is exploring the minds of people that have had head injuries and wake to find themselves with different spoken language and character ? There have been people that have had heart transplants that know the character of the donor in their own memory there are twins that are on the otherside of the world and experience the pain of the other with science trying to explain these qualities to others so why is everything else not a possibility to anyone or any thing because people dont express it enough yet because of criticism in the facts or fictions being accused of deciet to another as lies of curruption to forfiet on attention seeking mental states ? What you mind is not open to will be no value to you but others that open minded as the buddha expressed can become clear of this in enlightenment :pray:t2: Everybody has different views of everyone and everything thats what makes us as a superior individual on your own path to your lifetimes in general none of us are built for the same experience otherwise the world would never change may your progression to life and the living be a benefit to all living conditions possible in possibilities yet unknow to us all :pray:t2::microbe:everything matters in unfortunate events to caperbilities for us to learn by not just in a book written by one or another in all experiences concerned …

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It’s like trying to convince someone who is red-green colour blind, that “red” is actually a “thing” (for other humans, but not most mammals). It takes some time for the overwhelming evidence to break through the misperception that keeps telling them that “red” isn’t a thing. If even colours (and shapes) aren’t something that everyone can agree on what hope for the (correct) doctrine of rebirth? It’s a shame because it closes off many valuable teachings for those who don’t make the leap.

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How thoroughly were these claims examined for the truth?

People who believe in these things always seem to think the evidence is in their own favor. Take NDE’s for example. I’ve heard numerous people claim that while undergoing surgery, they were able to see and hear exactly what the doctor was saying, etc… but every single time these claims are investigated by science, they turn out false. There are often video recordings of surgery which contradict the claims of the NDE patient.

I used to believe in past-life regression, because it seemed legitimate and scientific-ish. How are people going to lie under hypnosis about a past life?.. well… they kinda do:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_life_regression#Studies

Studies suggest that past lives are likely false memories, implanted through the susceptibility of the hypnotic method. A 1976 study found that 40% of hypnotizable subjects described new identities and used different names when given a suggestion to regress past their birth.[5] In the 1990s, a series of experiments undertaken by Nicholas Spanos examined the nature of past life memories. Descriptions of alleged past lives were found to be extremely elaborate, with vivid, detailed descriptions. This, however, is not indicative of the validity of this therapeutic method. Subjects who reported memories of past lives exhibited high hypnotizability, and patients demonstrated that the expectations conveyed by the experimenter were most important in determining the characteristics of the reported memories. The degree to which the memories were considered credible by the experimental subjects was correlated most significantly to the subjects’ beliefs about reincarnation and their expectation to remember a past life rather than hypnotizability. Spanos’ research leads him to the conclusion that past lives are not memories, but actually social constructions based on patients acting “as if” they were someone else, but with significant flaws that would not be expected of actual memories. To create these memories, Spanos’ subjects drew upon the expectations established by authority figures and information outside of the experiment such as television, novels, life experiences and their own desires.[5] In sum, it is therefore suggested that past lives are likely false memories, implanted through the susceptibility of the hypnotic method.