Expert: Stephen Sakellarios - 9/19/2009

Question
thinking of death bothers me,especially now that i am in my mid 40's. I cannot imagine me not being on this earth. Do we return after death into another person,or is this just what we believe?

Answer
Hi,

The quick answer is that we do, indeed, return into another person. But when you delve more deeply into this question, the waters get more muddy. For example, now you are in your mid 40's. Are you the same person you were when you were 30? 20? 10? If not, in what sense? If so, in what sense?

What is it that continues, that's constant from 10 years old until your mid-40's?

If it is true that every seven years we renew all (or most) of the cells in our body, then you didn't even have the same body 10 years ago. It was you; and yet, it wasn't you.

So the same logic applies to reincarnation; except that you don't remember the past life, for several very good reasons. Each new lifetime you get a fresh start under new circumstances; that couldn't happen if you remembered your previous lifetime. It would also be too confusing.

I could go on--but the point is that the question itself contains a number of assumptions that could be analyzed; and in the analysis of those assumptions would lie the answer.

Look at each part of the question:
1) "thinking of death"--what is death?

2) "now that I am in my mid-40's"--who is in their mid-40's? Your mind? Your body?

3) "I cannot imagine"--does that make it implausible, because you can't imagine it? Haven't many things turned out to be true that people of the past couldn't imagine?

4)"Do we return after death into another person"--if you are your body, then it would be "another person"--but, what if you aren't even your body *right now*? Then, wouldn't it be the *same person*?

5)"or is this just what we believe?" Who is "we"--Western society, Eastern society, me, you, you and me...the 24% of Americans who believe in reincarnation? If it's the 24%, then some of them believe with no logical or factual basis, but many of them have studied the evidence and have carefully reasoned it out logically. So it would depend on who you're talking about.

Hope this helps, if not answer the question, to question the question more deeply!

Best,
Stephen