I've been pondering reality for a long time and had been doing
quite a lot of reading, with my main interest in physics,
philosophy, psychology, various religions etc.
My findings is as follows:
1) There is no soul, no self, no free will, all that is an
illusion.
People might thought of buddhism from the above statement, but
it is very true that our perception of self is just an illusion
brought about by our various sensory receptors, such as eyes, ears,
mind. When each sense are doing their job and our human instinct
kicks in, a self develops. The notion of self disappears when we
sleep and our sensory receptors shut down.
From a scientific point of view, the universal law is that every
effect is the result of a cause. That is the cause and effect
theory. To put it plainly, every thoughts that go through your head
right now is the resultant effect of the configuration of
hormones, DNA coding, personal experience and it'll obey the rules
of physics.
In theory, a person who had the exact genetics coding with
you and who happens to lead a life experience identical to you in
every aspect will think exactly like you everytime. There is no
water who can choose not to be composed of hydrogen and oxygen, and
there is no wood that refuse to be a conductor of fire. Likewise,
we as a being make up of physical atoms and molecules, has no
control of our own self.
By saying we have a free will, a soul, capable of making our own
decision is a joke! It's the same as suggesting a water or wood has
a mind of its own, which we know is not possible. The difference
here is we're a complex biological being, which lead to the
illusion that we've our own soul, free will etc, which in reality
is really an illusion caused by the various cells in our
body doing its own work.
2) We're eternal, ever changing(reborning) from one state
to another, never truely born and never truely die either.
Buddhist believe in reincarnation, but the real reincarnation
might be not what they think it is to be. The scientific community
had given a really good answer to that.
According to quantum theory, reality is in an ever continuing
state of flux, nothing stays in the same state for a long time,
they are constantly moving from one realm to another, from one
state to another. It is impossible to have a stationery
singularity, since it will move through the fabric of time
anyway.
When we die, all the atoms we have will be returned back
to nature, some of the atoms will be remake into plants. some into
another living creature, some into the air. I believe this is the
reincarnation in reality. In another words, we're make up of all
the atoms which are previously from other creature, state and which
all combined to make up our temporary body for the time being.
Another pillar of modern physics, E = mc(square), states that
matter is convertable to energy, matter and energy is essential the
same thing, they're the same thing in different state and
convertable. Since we know energy can never die, but can only be
convert from one type to another, so is it hard to see that
our own very essence, the very thing that we're make up of, is
eternal?
