Lots of people I personally know also have very vivid, clear memories of past lives.
In Buddhism, rebirth happens Without a soul... This is the difference between Hinduism's reincarnation of a soul, and Buddhism's soul-less rebirth due to its doctrine of anatta.
In my comparison between Actual Freedom, Buddhism, and Thusness's (as well as my) experience here: http://www.box.net/shared/sbyi64jrms
I wrote (see especially bolded part):
And lest you ask me how can rebirth happen without a self or a soul from the Buddhist POV: it simply happens due to conditions and tendencies, just as standing up, talking, writing happens according to conditions but without a need for a soul. (And anyway the Dependent Origination/Emptiness Realization, aka Thusness Stage 6 seems to be missing in AF) When the afflictions and the conceit of ‘I AM’ persist – rebirth will inevitably happen because the ‘fuel’ for birth is still present.
In hearing there is always only interdependently originated (along with the ear, stick, bell, hitting, air, ears, etc, i.e. the entire universe coming together as this very manifestation) sound which is of itself vividly present and clear, without a hearer/feeler – hence there is no denial of sound, only that the “I hear sound” is an illusion. Similarly, there is no denial of the process/phenomena of rebirth in Buddhism, but the notion that a self/Self/soul is being reborn is an illusion. Rebirth is simply any kind other kind of phenomena, like sound, sight, thoughts, etc. All are happening according to Dependent Origination without a need for a Soul.
Hence, the issue of ‘soul’ and the issue of ‘rebirth’ are two separate things: you can believe in Soul + Reincarnation (Hinduism), you can believe in Rebirth BUT No Soul (the insight and experience of Buddha/Buddhism), you can believe that there is No Rebirth and No Soul (Richard/Actual Freedom).
Any of these combinations can take place. However, Buddha’s experience with remembering past lives and his insight of Anatta allowed him to conclude that there is indeed rebirth, but no soul. Richard’s error is not simply that he did not remember his past lives and therefore did not believe in rebirth, but it is that he is completely mixing up two separate issues: rebirth, and soul – he thinks that rebirth automatically implies the necessity of soul, but this is *Not Necessarily The Case* (at least not in Buddhism).
Due to his error, he wrongly accused Buddhism of believing that Buddhism teaches that a soul reincarnates, which is totally false, against the countless articles by many Buddhist masters explaining how the “soulless rebirth” of Buddhism is totally different from Hinduism’s “soul-reincarnation”. He then criticizes that although Buddhism does not believe in an unchanging or substantial soul, they believed that karma survives and therefore karma is the soul. How can karma be a soul or fixed self or identity when karma is simply a stream of insubstantial volitional phenomena rolling on in the very same way as thoughts and sounds and sights are a stream of insubstantial and impermanent sensations rolling on according to dependent origination without a doer/recipient/feeler and does not even stay the same for even a moment? Just because you can remember an event yesterday, does that imply that there is a soul? No! Just because you have a habit to smoke and this habit continues day by day, does that mean that there is a continuous soul? The fact that you can remember yesterday means there are some imprints and tendencies and these karmic tendencies and propensities continue to play and affect our lives moment to moment, but none of them implies a soul or a self!
In Buddhism, you cannot say that you are the same person/soul you are one hour ago, one day ago, or one year ago, and neither can you say that you are a different person. Both ‘same’ and ‘different’ implies that there is an entity: a self/Self/soul that can remain the same or different. In Buddhism, there is no eternality, only timeless continuity (timeless as in vividness in present moment but change and continue like a wave pattern). There is no changing thing, only change. In actuality, there is simply an ever-changing stream of ever-fresh (Heraclitus: you cannot step into the same river twice, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.) action and sensation showing up moment by moment without a doer nor a soul/feeler. That there are seemingly predictable patterns that keep showing up simply means (karmic) tendencies and nothing else.
In short: Rebirth is simply a stream of arisings (the meaning of ‘re-birth’) that is the continuity of a process but not the continuity or passing on of a self-entity – in the same way that the fact that when I wake up today I still remember what ‘I’ did yesterday is a testimony to a continuity of a selfless process, and not the passing on of a self-entity or soul.
I shall also disgress from the main focus (Pali suttas, Theravada) of comparison with AF in this paragraph and also state that what I just explained is the case understood not only in Theravada Buddhism but also in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism – which means that all traditions of Buddhism does not teach a ‘soul’ being reborn – for example in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, it is the alaya-vijnana (storehouse consciousness) or the 8th Consciousness that functions as a kind of receptacle for so-called “seeds” or elementary units of past experiences, which then project into various experiences, as well as the illusions of there being inherently existing empirical subjects and corresponding objects (prior to transforming ‘consciousness’ into ‘wisdom’ through realizations). All memories, habits, tendencies, karma, are ‘stored’ therein. Now, the point to be understood here is that even though the alaya-vijnana is prior and above subject-object duality, it is also not a kind of Absolute mind: rather, alaya-vijnana is considered momentary and insubstantial, simply part of the mind-stream – nothing unchanging or independent or ‘Self’ unlike the views of non-Buddhist traditions. The term ‘store-house’ is not literally talking about a location, a place, an inherent Self/Soul, it is simply a convention for a process of consciousness. And there is no other Self or Absolute apart from the 8 consciousness-es – the only job Buddhists need to do with is to transform the 8 existing impure state of consciousness (which comes with the illusion of self/Self and subject-object duality) into ‘pure consciousness experience’ (though in Buddhism we call it wisdom/awareness instead of ‘consciousness’) ridded of the illusion of self/Self and all illusions of inherency through the insight into Anatta and Emptiness.
Here’s what a wise and experienced forummer ‘rizenfenix’ wrote:
Continuing consciousness after death is, in most religions, a matter of revealed truth. In Buddhism, the evidence comes from the contemplative experience of people who are certainly not ordinary but who are sufficiently numerous that what they say about it is worth taking seriously into account. Indeed, such testimonies begin with those of the Buddha himself.
Nevertheless, it’s important to understand that what’s called reincarnation in Buddhism has nothing to do with the transmigration of some ‘entity’ or other. It’s not a process of metempsychosis because there is no ‘soul’. As long as one thinks in terms of entities rather than function and continuity, it’s impossible to understand the Buddhist concept of rebirth. As it’s said, ‘There is no thread passing through the beads of the necklace of rebirths.’ Over successive rebirths, what is maintained is not the identity of a ‘person’, but the conditioning of a stream of consciousness.
Additionally, Buddhism speaks of successive states of existence; in other words, everything isn’t limited to just one lifetime. We’ve experienced other states of existence before our birth in this lifetime, and we’ll experience others after death. This, of course, leads to a fundamental question: is there a nonmaterial consciousness distinct from the body? It would be virtually impossible to talk about reincarnation without first examining the relationship between body and mind. Moreover, since Buddhism denies the existence of any self that could be seen as a separate entity capable of transmigrating from one existence to another by passing from one body to another, one might well wonder what it could be that links those successive states of existence together.
One could possibly understand it better by considering it as a continuum, a stream of consciousness that continues to flow without there being any fixed or autonomous entity running through it… Rather it could be likened to a river without a boat, or to a lamp flame that lights a second lamp, which in-turn lights a third lamp, and so on and so forth; the flame at the end of the process is neither the same flame as at the outset, nor a completely different one…
But as if the experiential accounts of rebirth from countless practitioners in the world dating back to Buddha and contemplatives prior to him, as well as the ability and techniques to be able to remember past lives through deep meditation *on your own* in Buddhism weren’t enough to substantiate ‘karma’ and ‘rebirth’, there are actually substantial scientific evidence that proves for rebirth. Search, for example, Dr. Ian Stevenson’s research and case studies of young children on their past lives memories (tracing and proving them to be accurate remembrance of a past life) and reincarnation and you may yield incredible results and information. His work has been published in well-known scientific and medical journals (and is therefore generally accepted as credible, even the skeptics do give him benefit of doubt, saying things like ‘ok maybe it does prove that rebirth happens to some people but maybe not all’, etc, but I shall not go into that). There are many other scientists who have done similar research, equally interesting. But I shall digress.
