Reincarnation: Is Rebirth Before Death Possible?

Question

Setting aside religious debate and whether reincarnation is plausible, I'm looking for a simple yes-or-no answer: In theory, is it possible for one person to be reincarnated as another while the original is still living?

Background: In the 1930s, a couple fell deeply in love. They were split up and married off to other people, but loved each other to the exclusion of their spouses the rest of their lives. Recently, a pair of young adults met. The man is a clone, from appearance to personality, of his grandfather and the woman, of her grandmother. It's to such a degree that they're often described as a glimpse into their respective grandparents' past, and indistinguishable in comparative photographs taken at similar ages.

The grandfather is still living, but the grandmother died in childbirth with her first son, the granddaughter's father. When the grandchildren met, they felt each other familiar and like their grandparents, fell in love. They later learned about their grandparents' history.

The granddaughter is straightforward and the principles of reincarnation, as I understand them, apply. But the grandson is throwing me for a loop. How does one explain it? If not reincarnation, then what?

Answer 1

There is a big difference between reincarnation and rebirth. Reincarnation is the concept generally associated with Hinduism, and is the idea that something of a person, their soul or personality or energy or whathaveyou is passed onto another person after they die. The other is the name of a phenomenon, identified by Buddhist philosophy as rebirth. It takes a little bit of explaining. Anything that acts upon the world has an effect on how the things it has acted upon will continue to act upon other things. This isn't the action being performed as much as how that action changes the future actions of the object. For example, rain may erode a piece off a rock, and the rock later rolls off the mountain. The rock will have taken a different path being a different shape. This is the effect of Karma, in the Buddhist sense. Now rebirth comes into play when you add consciousness to the matter. If someone willfully chooses to act some way then their actions will effect how other people act in the future. This is rebirth.

Now the story you present us is rebirth, in that the grandparents' influence on the situation(genetics, which values they raised their children with, what environment they were raised in, what the children have internalized through watching or admiration of their parents and grandparents, and many many more subtle influences.) has placed the children into a similiar situation in which the grandparents found themselves in, and has also shaped their minds into such a manner that they reacted in the same way their grandparents did when they found themselves in that situation.

One must remember, each of us is no more our own than a product of what has gone into us.

Answer 2

properly we can't in any respect understand for particular, because of the fact if we've been reincarnated as yet another individual as they say, we'd have no memory of our previous existence, yet ever heard of deja vu? a feeling you get like say...you have been in a position that for some reason, you felt which you have been there earlier. that would desire to be an illustration that a prior existence has been in that place earlier and your merely remembering a prior existence. Thats merely what i think of besides

Answer 3

that would mean that the "person" who is left after the soul had been reincarnated is an empty shell with no soul.... now is THAT possible? i couldnt tell you. i tend to believe that just because you die a human doesnt mean that you reincarnate as one. and it could take a soul many lifetimes to reincarnate if need be

Answer 4

Nopeski

Answer 5

Then nothing. Humans are pattern-seeing animals. You're seeing something that's not actually there.