100%. When my wife asks me this question, I always ask…“are you sure you want to know?”.
Once it was the astronomical odds of reincarnation if bacteria was a factor when reincarnating. The math just isn’t there and your odds of coming back as a human would be older than the universe.
That would imply that bacteria have souls which means that I’m committing genocide each time I’m cleaning my toilet. I always assumed that you could only reincarnate into creatures complex enough to actually have sentience.
Edit: Also a fun fact is that if you count all human beings that have ever lived in the entire human history it would still not be close enough to the number of bacteria that live in or on a single human being (roughly 117 billion humans compared to around 20 to 30 trillion bacteria).
First, mathematically, It’s sort of a moot concern. Reincarnation comes with the framework that lives are the universe experiencing itself. So There’s no “loss” in going between species as “you” will actually incarnate as everything and everyone once in non-linear time on the backend making “time” immaterial. I am you and you are me. We are all one existence. So you have time.
Second, that reincarnation frameworks usually also include a structure where it’s not random what you reincarnate as next time around. Karma doesn’t usually boot people back down to bacterium right after human. It’s usually more of a leveling up in order to experience deeper and more meaningful lifetimes. But YMMV.
100%. When my wife asks me this question, I always ask…“are you sure you want to know?”.
Once it was the astronomical odds of reincarnation if bacteria was a factor when reincarnating. The math just isn’t there and your odds of coming back as a human would be older than the universe.
She rarely asks me this ever now lol.
It’s a quick reset, though. You’ll get back to human eventually unless you end up as one of those immortal trees or something.
I hope after this I’m always born as anything but a human.
That would imply that bacteria have souls which means that I’m committing genocide each time I’m cleaning my toilet. I always assumed that you could only reincarnate into creatures complex enough to actually have sentience.
Edit: Also a fun fact is that if you count all human beings that have ever lived in the entire human history it would still not be close enough to the number of bacteria that live in or on a single human being (roughly 117 billion humans compared to around 20 to 30 trillion bacteria).
Isn’t there a sect that kinda believes exactly this?
Jainism believes this. Their monks carry little brooms around to sweep ahead of them so they won’t crush any insects by stepping on them.
Two things:
First, mathematically, It’s sort of a moot concern. Reincarnation comes with the framework that lives are the universe experiencing itself. So There’s no “loss” in going between species as “you” will actually incarnate as everything and everyone once in non-linear time on the backend making “time” immaterial. I am you and you are me. We are all one existence. So you have time.
Second, that reincarnation frameworks usually also include a structure where it’s not random what you reincarnate as next time around. Karma doesn’t usually boot people back down to bacterium right after human. It’s usually more of a leveling up in order to experience deeper and more meaningful lifetimes. But YMMV.