Information transfer between galaxies via rebirth (writing in progress)

One thing we know for sure from studies of cases of rebirth is that they transfer information, from the dead previous body to the next person being born.

Of course most of us do not remember our previous life, thus the main lack of evidence that inspires lack of belief in this phenomena. Regardless, there are some people who spontaneously remember their past lives (and found facts in the present that agrees with the memory)  and it is possible to remember past life information via meditation practice, so for the purpose of this thought experiment, rebirth is equal to information transfer or at least the potential for it.

Now consider the scenario that humans as a species survive the ongoing climate change, possible nuclear war and colonise space without being exterminated by hostile aliens and not creating enemies by being hostile to aliens. Humans would spread out not only throughout the whole galaxy, which is merely 100,000 light years across, but the whole universe, in particular, consider galaxies that are about 1 billion light years apart from each other. Assuming faster than light travel and time travel via general relativistic time machines are prohibited or plain impossible, there would be no practical means of communication between the two galaxies because by the time a laser communication device reach from one galaxy to another, one billion years might had wiped out all other traces of civilisation from the sender.

However, consider this: what if one person from this galaxy gets reborn in another one about one billion light years away? According to the Theravada Buddhist tradition, the rebirth is instantaneous (from the point of view of the consciousness, the death consciousness is immediately followed by a rebirth consciousness). Bringing this back to Physics, instantaneous between two bodies means two events (death and rebirth) happening at different place at the same time, or simultaneous.

The problem is, there is no such thing as absolute simultaneity. Special Relativity (SR) threw that out long time ago, the plane of simultaneous events changes according to your velocity.

Here we shall make a short detour to address if SR really applies in intergalactic distances. SR is just a local flat approximation of General Relativity (GR), the theory that made Einstein famous. For universal scales of intergalactic distances, we should use GR. Yet, now we know that in the large scale of the universe, it is very near to being a flat universe, or that the mass distribution is uniform enough that general relativity does not matter (much) in the large scale. That means special relativity could be applied across intergalactic distances.

Back to planes of simultaneity. There would be no such thing as that plane in the universal scale. Thus if rebirth is instantaneous from the outside, this begs the question: instantaneous to who?

If we can solve this problem, we might have information time travel, or even time travel itself!

One easy way out is to refer to the one of the cases in Francis Story's book: Rebirth: Doctrine and Case Studies.

In this case, the person who died had

Samsara=nirvana and the end of time

In the book, the end of time, by julian barbour, the interpertation of the absence of time in the equation of quantum gravity is taken literally.

That is our parallel to nirvana. The way time and change emerge is via looking at a subset of the universe, and run it relative to the rest of the universe. Thus, samsara exists when one does not completely understand dependent origination.

And since the difference is only in how one perceive it, then samsara is equal to nirvana. Even in physics, it has been recently shown that the mind can alter results of an quantum experiment.

Guide to ultimate physics according to dependent origination philosophy

This article is written for Physics using the central philosophy in Buddhism as a guiding principle to select the assumptions in the theories to construct and how to interpret them. In particular, the philosopher Nagarjuna with the philosophy of the Middle Way, which emphasizes on the emptiness (non-independent arising) is used.

The philosophy of Middle Way uses the examples to illustrate the relativity of concepts. A thing that is long is only long relative to something else. In Physics, this principle can translate into relativity of everything that needs to be compared to make sense.

Position relativity is one of the cornerstone that explains the conservation of momentum in Physics. So to there are time relativity, size, etc... most of the principles of symmetry in Physics that can be used, should be used to construct a theory.

Also another principle we can use is non-independent existence of phenomena without observation.

Quantum Physics has this principle in its mathematics when it describes the collapse of wave-function due to measurement. According to Buddhist philosophy then, it is pointless to speculate on the philosophical nature of wave-function before collapse. Operational quantum physics approach as in taking care of the input and output of the theory as opposed to the philosophical interpretations would be the result of applying that philosophy.

More parallels should be available as I learn more about speculative physics, but as of now, I am not in a position to indulge in that yet.