1. Hmm .. If free will exists you will get different outcomes at each cycle and most likely you will never be born in most cycles. That sperm meeting that particular egg is an extremely rare event. In the cycles where you are born you will most likely get a different environment or a chance to change things around.
If by "cycles" you mean dimensions, or realities, i doubt, no matter how many dimensions exist (could be 3, 5, 11 or an infinity of them) that there would be any in which we weren't ever born. The fact you were born from a particular sperm that met that particular egg doesn't mean you couldn't have been born from the sperm and egg of different persons and/or in another time frame, unless you considered yourself as matter without consciousness.
As counter-intuitive as it sounds, there is a point in our reality where common laws of physics don't matter anymore and where randomness rules everything: quantum mechanics will remind you that objects, such as particles, no longer have defined properties: they don't have a defined position or a defined speed, they can be in a superposition of different states: the "spin" (of the electron) has only two values, + or - (and of course the superposition of both). When
intricated, once the spin of one electron has been measured,
that of the other is necessarily determined. The same thing happens with photons and their polarisation.
As matter and light make our reality what we at least think it is
, reality is nonetheless a matter of perception, and perception nothing but a byproduct of being alive for enough time.
But it doesn't define in any way where our consciousness come from or when it seeded.
We consider ourselves as being born with consciousness, but memory seem to fail us all remembering our first years. We all start to "experience" reality only until years after we were born. Remembering doesn't make consciousness, experience does.
Babies can cry, yell, feel cold or hot, hunger, thirst, noises, smell, vibrations, pain, love... We could say that they perceive the reality they're into, that they are conscious. Yet having no memories of it, it later in life constitutes their personality, who they are, hence how they will act.
A lot happened from the moment of your birth to the moment you start remembering things, and there is no other way than asking your parents and trust them, or dig into old pictures. The perfect scenario for a simulation, some would say (joking).
We'll never know, given the randomness that occurs in quantum mechanics that rule the universe and the duality that exist in the superposition of two states, if we, as a consciousness in a human body, are "wired" to reality by life or death. But ironically we can't "know" that until we're dead, and i tend to think because of that, that where we go when we'll die is where we come from. It wouldn't make any sense that the universe is reborn and all the events that took place happen again because it would mean that space and time exist in the afterlife.
