The issue of reincarnation is really just the symptomatic surface of a deeper issue.

A great deal of agreement and momentum has accrued in Western thought built on a fundamental belief that the existence of a human being is defined by the scale and scope of the human body. With this point of departure, psychology becames a branch of neurology, and the Skinners and Cricks of the world can rest easy knowing only the physically measurable need apply for reflection and analysis.

If a single case of a remembering self is found which stands up against analysis as demonstrating a transition from onle lifetie to the next, as in the cases cited in Stephensen above, then a serious creaking and shifting starts up in consequence. IF a remembering self transitions across the lifetime boundary intact, then it is clear the seat of that recollection is not the body; and possibly, not even a physical time-frame element at all (I suppose you could argue for a soliton of high-frequency RF but it is not consisten with the consciousness involved). This possibility means that a person who is identified with a near-term genetic structure (I am the son of Bill and Emma Codwallop) or the current body itself (I AM a brunette with long feet) is going to have some shaking down to do in coming to terms with what they might really be if these safe assumptions are not true.

If the nature of our kind is NOT defined by the body....then what is it?

This question is so much work, and so unsettling to some people that it is understandable they would "rather err with Galen than be right with Harvey" as one scholar in London put it about a similar paradigm problem in the 17th century.

M.D.