For those looking for clues into who they were in their past lives. No one will give us the benefit of the doubt, when it comes to reincarnation.
Here is something that needs to be addressed by those which place a lot of weight on physical resemblance as being one of the major corroborative points in the consideration for the truth of reincarnation. And we have heard the argument that physical resemblance is not alone the basis for accepting reincarnation, but something that goes towards the overall proof. Fine and dandy, as they say. But, is not truth worthy of consideration, before physical resemblance can be placed on the same column which claims reincarnation to be real? And shall we not all agree that truth is logical, and most of all, the same consistent self when looked upon by unbiased reason?
Here is what I mean. We have researchers/advocates of past lives who make much to do about physical resemblances. These have come up with a percentage figure for the physical resemblance, which they say is a standard, and meeting the standard is strong OBJECTIVE evidence for making the case that, in reincarnation, spotting this standard physical resemblance is one of the keys for identifying and corroborating a previous life. This too is fine and dandy. But let us look closer, and use this physical standard as they do. And here let me make clear that I heavily favor the truth of reincarnation, and I'm only playing the devil's advocate, before anyone gets the wrong idea.
Now, let us look at this standard. The 85% physical resemblance is the standard. Let us take someone at random, someone claiming to have been a certain person in a past live, and making use of the 85% physical resemblance standard to fortify the claim made for having been that particular person in a past life. And now, I'm just addressing the physical resemblance, since some will also claim resemblances for past lives' mental/skills abilities.
If in reincarnation it is a truth that we reincarnate into our next body which is a standard of 85% resemblance to our last one, than this characteristic has to consistent from one life to the next. For instance, let us take this hypothetical case to test the standard.
Someone reincarnates 5 times from point A to point E. Where point A is the standard starting point. Meaning, that at point A we are taking the snapshot of what we look like, as being the 100% image to be used to test out the standard of 85% for the next life at point B. We then take point B, our 85% of point A, as our standard for the next life at point C, Again, taking point C, our 85% of point B as our 85%, for point D. Finally, we take point D, as our 85% of point E. In this way we have gone through the changes for these lives, and retaining 85% of our immediate past life for each new successive future life.
Mathematically, to show the expected resulting resemblance for the life at point E from the one at point A, we have this. A=100%, B=85%, C=72.25%, D=61.41%, and E=52.20%. It's obvious to see that in a few more future lives, the physical resemble to point A life will be completely lost, if we are to apply our 85% standard consistently and in all cases. Of course, there are those that cherry-pick with the standard. Who would that be? That would be anyone who claims to have had 3 or more previous lives from their current one, but selects a previous life from 4 lives ago, to then claim an 85% physical resemblance to that one in this current life.
And we have not even touched on the problems of physical resemblances when a particular soul/consciousness takes on a female body on the successive reincarnation, and vice versa. Or touched upon reincarnation into different races. Then throw in the "monkey wrench" that, as discussed in this thread, the natural tendencies of physical resemblances between unrelated physical human beings, or souls, and our standard 85% rule is further distorted into more nonsense because it's not logical, nor a truthful calibrated standard to be used as objective evidence for making a case for reincarnation.