Immediate rebirth or not?

In Buddhism the idea of rebirth is split into two main schools: The Theravada school with its Abhidhamma would insist that the continuum of consciousness from one body to another has no gaps between it. The Mahayana and Vajrayana (and the Pali source text) would suggest that there is an in-between stage between rebirths.

For the book Rebirth by Francis Story where he described some of the case interviews, he encountered a few describing in-between memories of rebirth. For Theravada scholars, they interpret it as being temporary in hungry ghost realm, it is a form of rebirth.

Bring in Physics, and we can see that there might be a sort of resolution to this disagreement. In Physics, specifically in general relativity or just special relativity, time is relative, it is personal, depending on the relative velocity of the observer. So, if the kamma and ignorance, or whatever that passes on from one life to another is transferred, if they are physical or information, then they can be subject to the laws of Physics. Then the transfer cannot be faster than the speed of light at least according to special relativity. And if it is massless, it should travel at the speed of light, where at that speed, to itself, it doesn't experience time passing from its starting location to its destination. (Same reason as photons not having experiencing time.)

Yet to an outside observer, there is some time lapse between the death and the subsequent rebirth if the distance is non-zero. Thus, to the person experiencing rebirth, there is no gap in between one body and the next. But to everyone else, there is a time gap. Satisfying both views from different schools. Yet, I suspect that this explanation would not work as in the case studies stories, the ghost in between lives seems to hang around some place, not moving, and since they can describe the experience, that means they experience time during the gap. Thus this is a nice idea, but refuted by evidence.

Time and Enlightenment

Dear readers,

Sorry for the lack of updates recently and of 2013. But I think I don't have the time now to write a full well done article too, yet I must write this note down to be expanded further later on before I forget it. Please excuse the brief and non-explanatory, non-citing nature of the following words.

From this article: https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/d5d3dc850933
Physicists has experimental verification that time is emergent from quantum entanglement and not absolute. There has been books like "the end of time" by Julien Barbour which uses the Wheeler-Dewitt equation (that unites quantum and gravity) as the main basis for the interpretation in Physics that there's no time, but the idea in the article above is less interpretation, more hypothesis that is tested.

Time exists only for the observer inside the universe that entangles with the entangled particles in the universe itself. If an external observer uses a clock to measure absolute time against entangled particles in the universe, there is no observable change. The experiment is done using a toy model of the universe and verifies the hypothesis.

This reminds me strongly of the experience of enlightened beings vs unenlightened beings in Buddhism. I do not know if enlightened beings dwell outside of the universe, but it is said that Nibbana, where enlightened beings attain to, is not a place, does not change, is timeless, unconditioned, without suffering. This is in direct contrast with all conditioned things in the world. All conditioned things are subject to change, therefore they are not free from suffering. To attain to Nibbana, one has to see the impermanence, non-self and suffering nature of all conditioned phenomena and let go of all clinging of the five aggregates which compromises our world. To let go of clinging sounds to me like disentangling oneself from the rest of the universe which is changing, then in Nibbana, you see that there's no changing.

Yet there are some problems to be addressed in this parallel, is it true that all of the universe would stop for an outside observer or just the entangled parts, or is everything entangled to each other despite decoherence? The paper is in ArXiV now, so it has not been peer reviewed, it might contain some mistake.

There are also beings like Brahma, form and formless, who might conceivably live outside of the universe, then where does that leave Nibbana to? Why does Physics presents so close a story to Buddhism? Perhaps only a Buddha can answer these questions.