Do you believe in Reincarnation?
 

My older sister is a grounded, smart, goal-oriented person. She always does the right thing even though it may be the hard thing.

She honestly believes that she has lived two other lives.

1) as a pilot in WWII who went down in the pacific; and
2) one as an octoroon or quadroon in NOLA; a 'kept' woman sort to say.

The first time she visited NOLA she told me "All my past lives came rushing back to me," but I did not experience that. (I've had a very good medium say that this was my first time around)


She's so practical and tough (she's getting the equivalent of a PhD in nursing and does pediatrics, which would break my heart in two) yet she truly believes these things about herself.

Do you ever have feelings like you've lived another life or an affinity for something you don't understand but it's there?


eta: she tells me she remembers her plane going down (obviously she was a dude then) and thinking that the reason the plane was going down was b/c (s)he had cheated a lot on his wife.

She tells me the spirits of the deceased have bothered her so much at times she's had to tell them to go away. one was her recently and highly unexpected death of her BIL. She also says my Grandpap, who died in the bathroom of this very house, was here for a long time but when we moved out he got confused and moved on. that would be just like my Grandpap---to take advantage of free rent!

What marvelous bullshit!

um. ok. so I guess that's a no from you, toad.

I was trying to be serious and have a discussion.

guess not.

Well fuuuuck me and my rational system of beliefs, I guess! All shutting down your discussion with three words! Come on now.

I've never had any feelings about previous lives. In the spirit of honest discussion, however, I will tell you that I have on several occasions felt that I knew things in advance that I could not possibly have known.

They are usually stupid and insignificant things: when I was about 10, I eagerly awaited each new issue of MAD magazine. The night before a particular issue was to arrive at our local convenience store, I had a dream about it, and saw vaguely what the cover would look like. I thought about it all the way to the store, amused to see how wrong I would be, but when we got there, sure enough, that's exactly what it looked like. I was so freaked out I didn't say anything, I knew people would think I was nuts. This is the first time I've ever mentioned it at all, in fact.

In another example, I knew what a particular acquaintance was going to name her baby before he was born. We weren't close and this person did not once discuss name choices with me or anyone around me, it's not a common name at all, and in fact I do not like the name, but I just felt certain months in advance that she would choose that name. When I got the email announcement I didn't even get freaked out, because like I said, I had already been certain I was right.

There are rational explanations, of course. For one thing, I know now that I have partial temporal lobe seizures, and one of the symptoms is intense, psychologically-convincing deja vu. I didn't have my first seizure until at least 5 years after the episode with the MAD magazine cover, but it's possible I was having some mild form back then without realizing it. On the other hand, even with the most intense seizures, the feeling is that I "must have" dreamed about it weeks ago in the past. In this case I remember waking up, thinking about the dream, going over the whole dream in my head (in which the magazine cover was an insignificant part,) and thinking about it all the way to the store. It was nothing at all like the experience of a seizure as I now feel them.

As for guessing the name choice, I feel like I am a very good analyst of people and their behavior patterns. It's a little of my spectrum traits coming out: I've been closely watching people since I was very young, trying to figure out why they are the way they are, because so much of human behavior is illogical to me--people almost never act in their best interests! Anyway, I'm good at predicting people's behavior, and isolating things like patterns in taste, so I don't think it's too impossible that I simply recognized that this woman was the kind of person who would be enamored of this particular name. A Sherlock-level analysis combined with a lucky guess--I later heard she was toying between the name she chose and a completely different name I never would have predicted, and supposedly didn't choose until the moment she saw the baby. So things could have gone the other way and I would have probably forgotten all about being wrong. We only remember the times we were right, of course.

I'm touchy-what can I say?

also - only one cup of coffee so far this morning.


I've just been thinking about this stuff- death all around us here in the cellar; trying to make sense, ANY sense, of why were are here.

I know I'm stupid but I keep seeing Autumn get hit. And I want, so badly, so badly, to think she's not really gone. You might feel the same way about Pearl. But you know i'm an unstable, un-sell-able bill of goods. so, yeah, that right off the bat on a sunday morning did kind of throw me.

sorry.

She still exists in your thoughts, in your mind, and in your understanding of the world. This is the wonder of being human.

Think about this for a moment: Time doesn't progress along as a river or one way road, despite the fact that we experience it that way. Everything that ever happened, and everything that is still to happen, are all happening right 'now' somewhere else in that spread of time. To have existed, is to exist somewhen. You are separated from Autumn in that temporal landscape, but that doesn't mean she doesn't exist.


We can still see the light and hear the sounds of the beginnings of the universe and the births and deaths of stars that in our time frame ceased to exist millennia ago. And the light our sun casts out today will be visible on the other side of the galaxy far far into our future.

But in answer to your question: I do not believe in reincarnation in the way you mean in the OP.

But energy doesn't die it is only transformed or transferred. In that sense we are all 'reincarnated'.

I don't believe in reincarnation with conservation of personality or memory, but I think that conservation of personality/memory is possible across time and states of existence. I agree that energy is conserved. I also agree with the multidimensional concept of time, that 'when' is not restricted to a line in two dimensions. I think we experience things at an intersection, such that something we do 'now' can also be happening, really happening, at that precise moment elsewhere and elsewhen. I also think it's possible for existence to go on outside of time; that time itself is a construct of the universe rather than an objective immutable condition. This is a central idea in Orthodox theology (not that anyone wants to hear about that here, just saying ... these ideas about time are concepts found in a number of different philosophies and theologies).

No to reincarnation, but even Patton strongly believed in it. I have begun to believe you live this life and that's it.

Yes, but it's a stupid end, isn't it? You're here, you learn or don't; you die.

what a waste.

It seems like a stupid god to do such a thing as create consciousness only to distinguish it like a fucking match.

Maybe the light at the end of the tunnel is another vagina, but so what?

Only if you waste it. If you sit around waiting for a do-over in another life, then it's a waste. But that's not god's fault, it's yours.

Trill,

There seems to me to be two kinds of people in the world. Those who rely soley on their sense of intellect. They rely on their 5 senses and what they can observe with their 5 senses. Intellect and science refute all other belief systems and the rest of the population of the world, poor souls, are living in various worlds of delusion and fantasy.

The rest of humanity believe in other things. That there is more then our 5 senses and our intellectual ability to reduce what we see with our 5 senses to the only complete understanding of our world and existence. They believe we have more then 5 senses, for instance.

Both believe that what they believe is based on evidence, and investigation and most importantly their experience. It is very difficult to bring the two sets of people together for a sane conversation about matters such as reincarnation. Though a valiant effort on your part I think this topic is doomed to become an argument.

There are also two types of people, those who like Elton John and those who don't. This may lead to a more productive talk over your morning coffee with Cellar Dwellers. Oh, and though I have no experience with reincarnation, I would not discount the occurrence or possibility. My experience leads me to know that this universe is much more than a cipher rushing no where, and that we are more than $75.00 worth of chemicals.

I don't know that Trilby is necessarily thinking of waiting for a do-over so much as wanting an assurance that we exist beyond the chemical and electrical impulses that make up physical brain activity. The extinction of personality seems to be the issue (correct me if I'm wrong here, Trilby). In that sense, reincarnation doesn't meet the need - it requires extinction of personality in favor of a different personality, memory, and learning experience, ending up with a conglomeration of multiple experiences that don't add to anything coherent (since people don't normally recall 'past lives').

So, do self-awareness and personality survive, even though probably in a somewhat different form or type of existence? Or are we just bags of chemicals and synaptic transmissions that eventually short out? Do our physical processes - the electricity etc. - constitute our entire being and thus we're just carbon-based machines that can be shut down and decommissioned? Or do our physical processes merely let our pre-existing selves function within the physical constraints of this world?

If we're just bags of chemicals with an inevitable decommission date and no further existence, I understand Trilby's question: why bother? It truly shouldn't matter what we do in our short time of awareness. Whether we destroy the planet or each other, or not, is immaterial. There is no morality, no sense of 'ought to' for machines.

Do we continue in some non-physical or differently-physical way after/before/outside the time our physical body breaks down here? This will probably degenerate into argument, as regular joe says. It's not something we have enough empirical evidence for or against to be able to debate logically.

Nirvāṇa is the soteriological goal within the Indian religions, Hinduism,[7][8] Jainism,[9] Buddhism,[8][10] and Sikhism.[11] It is synonymous with the concept of liberation (moksha) which refers to release from a state of suffering after an often lengthy period of committed spiritual practice. The concept of nirvāṇa comes from the Yogic traditions of the Sramanas whose origins go back to at least the earliest centuries of the first millennium BCE.[12] The Pali Canon contains the earliest written detailed discussion of nirvāṇa and the concept has thus become most associated with the teaching of the historical Buddha. It was later adopted in the Bhagavad Gita of the Mahabharata. In general terms nirvāṇa is a state of transcendence (Pali: lokuttara) involving the subjective experience of release from a prior state of bondage. This is the result of a natural re-ordering of the mind and body via means of yogic discipline or sadhana. According to the particular tradition, with the experience of nirvāṇa the mind (Buddhism) or soul (Jainism) or spirit (Hinduism) has ended its identity with material phenomena and experiences a sense of great peace and a unique form of awareness or intelligence that is called bodhi in Buddhism, Kevala Jnana in Jainism, kaivalya (Asamprajnata Samadhi) in Yoga.

We are meat sacks. Is there really a God? I used to have such strong faith and then I lost it. I've tried to rekindle it by converting to the religion of my ancestors to no avail. I want to believe, but I can't justify it. How could God allow his chosen people to suffer so much? They made a covenant.....

Why bother? It's not like you had a choice to be born, but here you are. So why waste it pondering, "The meaning of Life". Do what makes you happy. For some it will be living as a selfish douche-bag, and for some, living in sacrifice to the happiness of others. Most find a balance in between.

I disagree with regular.joe on the inevitability of an argument, but strongly agree there is much more to the universe than we could possibly know. I've experienced weird things that defy all logic, things I'll never be able to explain, but I don't dwell on them.
Hey look, a butterfly. ;)

I've had several experiences like the ones Clodfobble described, of knowing or seeing things before they happen.

I am generally a very rational person. I don't fit any formal models of belief, but I do believe in reincarnation. I think your soul goes around a few times, learning different things as you go. When you're here, you usually can't remember your other lives, but when you're there, you can see all of them, like a collection. Sometimes your soul rests, in the elsewhere. Takes a few decades or centuries off. I think new souls come in to being, and also that old souls sometimes get to call it a day and go chill for the rest of eternity. I also think there are kindred spirits that tend to cross paths, like that neighbor you always run into at the grocery store. Sometimes these soul mates end up being a spouse, a family member, a best friend.

I recognize that these beliefs don't make much rational sense, but they give me a sense of peace.

that's pretty much what I think, too, choco.

For what it's worth, belief or faith can only occur in the absence of evidence. If there is evidence, then faith isn't necessary.

I think our sense of being, our self awareness, is greater than these bags of meat we are walking around in. There's a spark there. It seems obvious to me that this is true, and yet there's no scientific test that can prove it.

Sitting in the waiting room at the New Body Bureau, cursing the guys buying condoms and women buying the pill, up on the monitor. :haha:

I'm not making fun of the recycling soul idea, I've heard it many times, and it's certainly possible. That picture of the waiting room just popped into my head when I started thinking about the dropping birthrate and the souls waiting.

My last wife was convinced she was recycled a few times. I was skeptical because each of her past lives was extreme suffering (Trail of Tears, Lobsang Rampa type torture), or royalty (Egyptian, European). Maybe that's why she was such a drama queen. :rolleyes:

Funny how no one ever remembers a past life as a run of the mill peasant. :)

I was just typing that ... :)

I guess my take on it would be that the mind (soul) and the brain are one so no living brain no soul. I don't deny the possibility of a god as the starting point of the universe, but don't imagine any interplay between the watchmaker and the watch. If Tebow throws an interception on fourth down he messed up don't blame Jesus. I find a sense of peace in the end being the end, no making up for being Stalin during the last go around no burdening the next me with my screw-ups this time. Tomorrow I may claim some special knowledge of ultimate reality but today no.

PS I think clod's mind is wicked perceptive in conscious mode, I have no doubt she could unconsciously assemble a reasonable facsimile of Mad's cover art.

As I understand the philosophy, each life is to learn a specific lesson, and if you don't pass the final they keep you back a life to do it over. I don't think you're burdened with past mistakes beyond that.

I've amused myself before with the idea of a soul hospital, where you periodically wake up during critical moments in your life, to see the possibilities set before you and then choose the next part of your story before diving back in with no memory of having chosen. Of course this relies on the premise that suffering is useful and interesting; the same way you would prefer to watch a movie full of drama rather than some dude sitting in a cubicle and leading a mostly happy and boring life.

I remember watching the actor Glen Ford on TV who had underwent hypnotic regression and had documented 5 or 6 previous lives, and one of his past lives was as a victorian teacher in Scotland, he was discussing this on a chat show and they showed him a picture of the grave stone of this teacher who had died in 1840.
Now he was either a fantastic actor but what i remember of that show was how shaken he actually was when the picture was shown to him.
Now whether this proves reincarnation or not I'm buggered if i know but I suppose unless something touches you and you have the "Paranomal experience" for a description of sorts well for me it's not a closed book.

I'd look at not getting off the wheel as pretty burdensome, but not as bad as hell.

I think there's a lot of people with the diametrically opposed view. Cheered by the possibility of more at bats.
Before you took on this thankless job, you've had a pretty good run. Beautiful wife, two great kids, fabulous home, loving goats, and first class dog. :)

Adjusting attitude, now.

The problem I have with a lot of the belief systems around reincarnation and also other kinds of afterlife come to that, is that they always sound so...I don't know...human I think. Going round the life death rebirth cycle, learning each time what you need to learn or haven't learned, always sounds so procedural and bureaucratic to me.

Theyalways sound to me like very human ideas and concepts of how to systemize and organise activities.

.

Going out on a limb here.

Yes, I'm a firm believer in reincarnation.

No, I don't believe that I was Napolean Bonaparte or other such historically significant figure in a prior life.... or a fighter pilot.

Hey bro. Tell us more.

Let me be careful with my wording here....

It seems very likely to me that a prior life was in Nazi Germany opposing Nazis, as a middle aged man. Probably killed as a political prisoner and not in any military service.

It also seems likely to me that a prior life was in Viet Nam, Laos or Cambodia during the war, as a teenage girl. Fighting the Communists with violence and ruthlessness. Possibly tortured to death at about 17-18 years old but died violently.

How have I come to believe that these lives might have been possible? Not through any individual or group's suggestions but through experiences that are too complex to describe right here and now.

I want to believe it.

When I read Brian Weiss's book, I believed it. Its just as likely as any other possibility, so why not?

I used to have glimpses of sighting a sniper rifle through the fog... But that could be a remembered dream.

The thing that makes me think it could be real is when I meet someone new and already know them.

Hmmmm, I dream the same dream everynight. It isn't a past life experience, but actual events that occured on a certain day in 2005. I'm envious and I want to believe in something

Two things:

=- The fact that everyone WANTS this to be true is, ironically, the main reason we know it isn't. We share the stories and the dreams and the desires of this world, more than the reality of it.

==- (The good side: we also share the apocalyptic beliefs of this world in a weird attempt to prepare for the end of it. So if you don't believe in reincarnation, you probably also don't believe that the Mayan calendar predicted an end to the world. It saves one a ton of worry!)

=- The universe does not owe you meaning or any explanation out of your existence. So when you say that a rational explanation can't be true because it means life is meaningless, this is like saying your cat can't be orange because it wouldn't match your maroon couch.

==- (The good side: you don't have to look hard to work out meaning if you look for it. I find meaning in trying to improve the lot of mankind. I find meaning in leaving the world a better place than when I arrived.)

The advanced reader is encouraged to read Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus" or at least the SparkNotes. Or at least this paragraph:

A third thing:

=- Our mortality and the mortality of our loved ones is horrible and we do not wish to ponder it, but the fact that our lives are finite is something we should find meaning in.

There is a cookie that says: Life is like pinball; you bounce around, and then you drain. Life would not be the marvelous... gift, that it is, if it were everlasting. You would not play pinball if there was no open area for the ball to disappear.

The fact that it ends is something that we should find more meaning in. We get our shot, and that's it. That's what makes our time here valuable -- at all.

Nicely put Undertoad. that was great. Especially the Sisyphus bit. I had heard that a looong time ago, but forgotten.

Also, this is so well put!

Thank you D!

Life is not a "gift" for everyone.

Life is all that there is. Gift or curse, there isn't an alternative.

Rational? What does it mean? Empirical evidence? Mathematics? What I happen to believe is true?

You know what I truly believe? I truly believe that whatever the individual believes is true for them. If you get a nothing after you pass, Tony, that is what you expected and what you get. I do not believe that. I believe the soul goes thru many incarnations until it has learned a/the lesson or does not wish to return. To believe in five senses only, to see thru a mirror darkly-----what about Plato's cave? I am not alone in thinking this is the dream and the real life is elsewhere.

You take a superior tone with me here. At least I hear it. your beliefs are as valid as mine---orange cat/maroon couch notwithstanding. :P (that's a true raspberry, btw, not a fake one)

Personally, I find the lack of a predefined purpose in life rather freeing.

Also, I don't like the notion that I might, upon death, find myself conscious in some as yet unknowable state. That's a scary as fuck thought. Good or bad, heaven or hell, that idea is not a fun one to me.

This is it, right here, for better or for worse, for as long or as little a stretch of time as I end up with. That I am comfortable with.

You deny the Greatness that is the universe. I believe there are many of them, like a loaf of sliced bread; up against each other but maybe, just maybe touching. How to get there? Death?

Incidentally: that's twice now someone has alluded to people who don't believe in reincarnation as only believing what their five senses tell them, of somehow thinking the world consists only of what those five senses find.

That's a hell of a leap.

Then whatever you do here is meaningless. Be Mother Theresa or be a war criminal (I didn't say Nazi!!) ;) what on earth could possibly be the difference? Why be 'good'? Why not a free for all? What the fuck could possibly be the point of being here at all if not to try to make some tiny, good difference? if there's no purpose-----hell, hold up that quicky mart you've got your eye on.

No; I meant-and probably said it poorly as I am not 'rational' at all, just ask my debtors-that you certainly don't have to believe in reincarnation as a substitute for the five senses. Just look up Plato's cave----maybe we are only seeing shadows of what is real. a Dream-like state almost.

I believe the soul has a meaningful path. That is different from what you believe. Okay. Looks like we won't find out till it's too late.

I would counter that it is your belief that does this. The universe is so unutterably marvellous I see no need to undermine its beauty with imaginary mechanics. It is truly magnificent. And the beliefs you espouse to me seem to shrink it down to a human size.

You and I were ultimately born in a star. And the essence of what we are, the energy that makes us and everything else on earth alive, will continue on. How is that not marvellous?

And there are all sorts of questions about what the universe is and has been and will be. Some of the questions being asked hint at things far stranger than the reincarnation model for our tiny lives.

ha! Oh, Tril, I'm sorry if that offended you. I am in debate mode. I am really just enjoying the intellectual argument.

I believe this.

and as far as shrinking it down to a human size---maybe that is all I can handle. It is, after all, my first time around. I don't want to be contentious but I don't want to be talked down to as if I'm a stupid child, either. i've spent a lot of time reading/learning/working on trying to figure things out. To pshaw me (UT) demeans me and thousands who think as I do (Hindu, anyone?) even Christ came back ffs! and I'm no Christian (though I do like what few things Jesus supposedly said)

The story of birth/death/re-birth is old and pagan. perhaps that is why derision is poured on it. If it's an old belief, than certainly it is a wrong belief.

and maybe I am just sad.

On a more cynical note:
Isn't worrying about reincarnation rather useless... a bit like today's politicians...

They don't do the jobs they were elected to do because they are too
busy doing the things they need to do to get re-elected. So then ...
They don't do the jobs they were elected to do because they are too
busy doing the things they need to do to get re-elected. So then ...
And so on and so forth ...

If you live your life now doing the job you believe you were put here to do,
there's no need to worry about if or how you come might around again.
...

as I said, I'm just sad. Reincarnation is useless anyway as you don't recall your past life; it's just another round in the boxing ring and I don't intend on fighting again.


so. Ok. Done with this.

I haven't given this thread quite the read-through it deserves, but I have a couple pennies I'd like to throw in.

I think we're 'energy.' Maybe not the sort of energy we typically recognize...I haven't gotten very far on this particular theory.

But we are created from energy and when we die that energy goes back to the grand scheme.

So it is possible, in my dumb brain, that where we die, where we give the energy back, or who we were, how did we use our energy, goes a long way into determining where that energy goes next...or to what form.

I've long said I want to just be thrown into a hole in the ground in the forest, or buried at sea...the nutrients from a body nourishing all the critters and plants...but my own personal energy that I borrowed for my time here, has gone to something, or someone, else. It's neither created nor destroyed. Then, in my dumb brain, it is also possible to have some idea, some vague notion, of where your energy has been...did you take part of your energy from this and part from that?

It's how I explain what people call 'old souls'; people who seem to understand and bear some of the weight of millions of years. There just might be an inclination to recover such energy memories, if the energy is an intuitive set that has evolved over the years.

Oh hell, I can't explain it. So it does sound dumb. And I'm sorry if I've repeated anything anyone said.

It's just what I believe. I don't necessarily believe in some supreme powers of good and evil, but I don't necessarily believe that we are here, then we're 'done.'

Living positively would seem to be more likely to send a more positive energy back into the universe.

But what the hell do I know? :o

'

Actually, science knows we have more than 5 senses. Just an interesting article on the subject:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19986...nowing-it.html

I know its cracked.com, but they have some good information.

Tril I think you should feel differently about this discussion.

People have generally attacked me for my belief system. It never bothers me! I want to hear their very best reasons for why my beliefs are wrong. If I can't justify my beliefs after hearing theirs, I have no other recourse but to change what I believe. I have done so, many times.

When I state my beliefs as clearly as possible, I am trying to help. When I dismiss things it's because I have examined them over and over and found them, personally, to be silly nonsense.

I believe in a lot of silly nonsense myself. We all do!

Generally, the way we have determined what is true and real is putting ideas through the scientific method. If something is observable and reproducible I find that makes a very strong case for believing in it. If not, I find that makes a very strong case for dismissing it.

But that's just my opinion, and I could be wrong.

Being a liberal arts major and being terrified of mathematics of any and all kinds, YET WORKING in a scientific field where intuition meant nothing and empirical evidence was everything taught me that empirical evidence, the scientific method, is not infallible, does NOT tell the whole picture. I could look at machines that told me my patient was just fine, all vitals good, but something else would nag at me about him/her and I would not believe the science in front of me and I was usually RIGHT. My patient was a human, not a series of vital signs, family info, accident info, reports, etc. When I was diagnosed with stage III cancer I KNEW I wouldn't die. Women with lesser cancers and a whole lot more going for them did die. If Dana says I shrink the universe by saying it's this or that than you do, too; by saying it's got to be science or it's nothing. I believe there are other forces at work----forces that science doesn't dream of.

I'm sorry if i'm taking this all too personally. I'm wracked. I'm wrecked. There are many reasons for this, yes, Autumn is one, but there are others.

And to tell you the honest to godd truth, I feel very alone and sad today. Alone. I usually like 'alone' and am never lonely but now I am. Very lonely. And being maudlin, I suppose, doesn't help or endear me to anyone. i come here for solace too much. I need to engage with RL people because I am afraid I am too ingrown.
so. all apologies. I cannot compete with you or Dana when it comes to articulating arguments. Your both smarter; let's face that fact. I've no wish to impose my beliefs on anyone. Or argue them. Or, actually, do anything.