Jim asked:

Is it possible that when we die we could be re-incarnated back to the time we were born and live our
own life over and over again, regardless of the ribbon of time?

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Anything is possible, Jim, anything at all. Consider that there is an INFINITY "out there", of which we
know probably not even a millionth of a percent.

On the other hand, there are a few things which we do know. And from those few things which we
can positively assert to be possible, probable or likely, irrespective of what kind of secrets may be
lurking in that gargantuan realm of the INFINITE, we can say that reincarnation, as in your question,
is out of the question.

This is not to say that in the space of all possible, probable or likely occurrences in the INFINITE
universe, you and reincarnation are present and accounted for, even though perhaps in no other state
that the thought you had. I think you meant your question to be taken literally, however, and that's
why I positively answered it in the negative. Now if you are wondering, why I captalised INFINITY, it
was as a reminder that if the world/ universe/ God etc are really infinite, then questions like yours
(and probably most of the questions we put to the world/universe/God) are just the toys of our mind.
Because being FINITE, we cannot know anything at all about the INFINITE. We can only know what
prevails in our local FINITE segment; and this implies that, for all intents and purposes, the INFINITE
universe beyond the tiny little bubble of our local system does not exist.

You see the problem, I hope? For anything to be possible that is actually impossible, you require an
infinite range of possibilities. But infinite possibilities can only occur in an infinite system. And ours is
not, it's a finite system. Therefore impossibilities cannot occur in our system.

Jürgen Lawrenz

Sydney

The thought that you have expressed, the idea of an 'eternal recurrence' was first formulated by the
Greek Stoics, and was later taken up by Nietzsche:

"The greatest stress.How, if some day or night a demon were to sneak after you into your loneliest
loneliness and say to you, 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more
and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and
every thought and sigh and everything immeasurably small or great in your life must return to you —
all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight between the trees,
and even this moment and myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over, and
you with it, a dust grain of dust.' Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse
the demon who spoke thus?

F. Nietzsche Thus Spake ZarathustraPart One, 101"

Leaving aside the question whether this information ought to make us gnash our teeth, or, on the
contrary, ought to reassure us that our existence has some 'weight' to it (see the opening of Milan
Kundera's novel The Unbearable LIghtness of Being) Nietzsche's hypothesis bothers me for two
reasons.

First, I don't see why I have to think of 'the next GK who comes around' after the history of the
universe has repeated itself as being me. Suppose the demon had whispered that reality consists of
an infinite three-dimensional array, each compartment containing an identical universe. Surely, there
would not be any temptation to think that the GK in one of the compartments next to this one, or the
compartment after that, is myself.No, it is someone likein every respect. The next GK along is writing
these very words, just as I write them, is thinking the very same thoughts as I am thinking and so on.
But that does not make us one and the same individual.

That does not necessarily take away from the sublimity of the idea of an infinite recurrence or
repetition, whether taken in a temporal or a spatial sense.

However, the analogy with the spatial array ought to make us stop and think whether we really
understand what is meantby the idea of infinitely many identical universes, whether extended in time
or stretched out in space. By hypothesis, there could be no 'travel' to the next universe along, nor
could any empirical observation count in support of either hypothesis. Every possible observation and
experience, for now and for evermore, will be the same whether the universe is infinitely repeated or
not.

You might dismiss that as merely an expression of verificationism. At any rate, Nietzsche evidently
took the challenge sufficiently seriously, because he attempted to prove the truth of the eternal
recurrence on the basis of the principle of universal determinism. His idea was that if determinism
holds, then given sufficient time the particles which make up the universe must one day fall into an
identical arrangement to one that has existed at a previous occasion. From that time onwards,
determinism guarantees that everything that happens from that moment will be the same as what
happened the previous time, and so on to infinity. Unfortunately, the proof has a fatal flaw (see my
answer to Nick Answers 7).

Even if we reject the verificationist worry, in the case of time there is a third alternative to consider,
that time is not like 'a ribbon' as you put it, but is circular. I would very much like someone to explain
to me the difference between the hypothesis of infinite temporal recurrence in linear time and the
hypothesis that time is not linear but circular.

Geoffrey Klempner