[hkpack]

When I was thinking about the same concept, I wanted to make another leap - that everyone else is also different instances of you / me. There is actually no need to die, to “reborn”. Your consciousness can exist in multiple instances!

[SamPatt]

The older I get the more I believe some version of this.

It's related to empathy somehow. I think we're inherently self-centered, but that we also recognize ourselves within others, and don't desire suffering for ourselves, hence we don't desire it for others.

Also I've had a few moments of something similar to deja vu in my life, except it was the realization that I was the continuation of my father's life. And I catch glimpses of this in my children (though I don't believe they're yet consciously aware of it).

[sshine]

> the realization that I was the continuation of my father's life

I've had it a lot with friends.

Realizing a part of me is them.

For example, reflections on how one's body ages:

The experience is always personal, but predictable and shared.

[Gupie]

If the alternative is true, then I think how fortunate/strange that I, this consciousness, exists at all, considering the fast length of time preceding my birth during which I was not conscious, considering the fast number of conscious entities that have existed on earth during that time, assuming animals are to some varying extent conscious, and considering the vast number conscious entities on other inhabitable planets in all the vast number of galaxies. The universe could easily have carried on until heat death without me myself being a conscious entity in it.

[weard_beard]

Supposing the speed of light is a hard limit. How might a sufficiently advanced society explore the universe? Construct vessels from what is already there.

My body is a tour guide.

[candiddevmike]

You're a vessel between two places you've never been.

[MathMonkeyMan]

The mystery of The Other.

[hilariouswhip]

Sure. But concurrent consciousness is too advanced for me to think about. All I know is serial consciousness.

There are all kinds of possibilities, but that barrier of Death is a clear cut-off from my perspective. What’s beyond that? I for sure could imagine annihilation, too. After all I can be knocked unconscious.

[heisenzombie]

Perhaps like the Wheeler/Feynman one-electron universe!

Hm, except that would require anti-consciousness to exist… On second thought, this makes me uncomfortable.