Do you believe in reincarnation?
The second one was around the 1800's and I just remember living with a whole bunch of women and "knowing them", but at the same time not knowing who they were. Nothing happened in the dream, but I was happy.
The third was around the 1940's or 50's and what I remember is the house - a white farmhouse and we were having dinner. I'd never seen these people in my life, but I felt a part of the family having a mother and father and there were two siblings there as well. I remember that there was a problem the "father" was going to try to fix with the outside wiring hooked to the house. I remember oil lamps being used.
Those are the 3 dreams. I keep thinking that we come to this earth to learn and grow so why would we only have one life to do it with?
It's the brain that holds memories, and the brain definitely gets destroyed upon death.
techstepgenr8tion
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Most of the value of reincarnation and the work of reincarnation (ie. evolution of the conscious self, etc.) seems to really center around giving people something to organize their lives around. The consideration that everything you learn, everything you work for, every way you make yourself a better person greatens the chance of really being something great or saintly the next time around, or just being able to dig oneself out of cycle of misery. That and it seems like it's an approach that's aimed at making the universe a friendly and helpful place (through both pleasure and pain) rather than either a moral monster or a dead machine.
This is a good example of where fear of death as a sociological explanation for life-after ontology misses the mark. If anyone's fudging their logic out of fear or emotional necessity it's likely far more often something akin to the notion that most people's lives, under the conditions they're in, couldn't hold under nihilism. So many people would rather have something constructive to do, believe they have value, and believe it right to the very end - then cease to exist - rather than spending the bulk of their lives with complete impotence and insignificance constantly on their minds before going to the same place anyway.
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I believe reincarnation is the only currently plausible, anthropogenic suggestion towards any form of afterlife. It would make sense, and I mostly believe that consciousness is separate from physical form.
I've found no valid evidence for reincarnation, just a lot of anecdotal "memories" and obscure references to alleged events in remote places.
No evidence doesn't mean no possibility.
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techstepgenr8tion
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One of the stronger research cases for extra-corporeal consciousness is Stuart Hameroff's work which seems to suggest that the microtubules of the brain do quantum compute, originate brainwave transmission, etc.. There are biologists as well who are talking about things like 'quantum biology' as a new field of science (Jim Al-Khalili etc.) which would address the use of this in nature, such as the adaption birds use in migration or how certain plants seem to use collapse in their metabolic processes.
If the 'material' of materialism does go in this holographic and soupy of a direction on the macro and especially on the biological levels it's headed toward a place where any hard-line-in-the-sand belief set could be right or wrong about the ultimate situation of things. Somehow I doubt we'll be shouting that HP Blavatski and Rudolph Steiner were right all along, or at least not quite..., but if so it means we'll have a whole other way to look at ourselves as sentient life and a whole new institution or set of institutions to work in, experiment, and further tighten the best formulas we have on how to engage such states productively (ie. esoteric Hindu and Buddhist practices, Golden Dawn, Rosicrucian, and Sufi practices, etc. etc.).
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“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin
Based on research I've done in the past, I believe that reincarnation and a separation of the body from the "soul" or consciousness is possible, however I'm not convinced.
I'm an agnostic, and I do believe that there are many things that cannot currently be explained by science that may indicate the possibility of an afterlife or separation of mind and body. There's no proof of anything, however, so I refuse to make any kind of decision regarding the matter without more conclusive evidence.
One of the stronger research cases for extra-corporeal consciousness is Stuart Hameroff's work which seems to suggest that the microtubules of the brain do quantum compute, originate brainwave transmission, etc.. There are biologists as well who are talking about things like 'quantum biology' as a new field of science (Jim Al-Khalili etc.) which would address the use of this in nature, such as the adaption birds use in migration or how certain plants seem to use collapse in their metabolic processes.
If the 'material' of materialism does go in this holographic and soupy of a direction on the macro and especially on the biological levels it's headed toward a place where any hard-line-in-the-sand belief set could be right or wrong about the ultimate situation of things. Somehow I doubt we'll be shouting that HP Blavatski and Rudolph Steiner were right all along, or at least not quite..., but if so it means we'll have a whole other way to look at ourselves as sentient life and a whole new institution or set of institutions to work in, experiment, and further tighten the best formulas we have on how to engage such states productively (ie. esoteric Hindu and Buddhist practices, Golden Dawn, Rosicrucian, and Sufi practices, etc. etc.).
That is very interesting, actually. I'm quite excited to see if that new field happens to come to fruition. Metaphysical consciousness was always a fascination of mine, so thank you for sharing.
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A question keeps nagging at me ... Why is it than whenever I converse with an allegedly reincarnated person, he or she was always someone famous from the past?
Not one of them has ever claimed to have been an ordinary person, or even a member of the "underbelly of society". Instead, they all claim to have been royalty or some other notable historical personage of the upper classes from our history books.
Among others, I've met three Marie Antoinettes, two Napoleon Bonaparts, and a half-dozen men and women who claimed to have been Joan of Arc in a past life. No one ever claims to have been a peasant, a serf, or a common merchant or tradesperson. They all want to be reincarnated historical figures of great fame and influence!
Why is that, I wonder?
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techstepgenr8tion
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Dunno. Just off knee jerk - they're full?
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My biggest problem with reincarnation is, if we've lived our lives as other people in the past, how is that possible in modern times, when every living soul wouldn't have had a previous life, as there were far less people to have been in the past.
Then there's the belief that humans might not have been human in previous lives. If so, how many times would we have to live as amoebas, fruit flies, salmon, etc, till we can be humans? Crimony, I hope that such endless existences as one non-thinking life form or another isn't so.
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techstepgenr8tion
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Don't worry - planetary rounds solve that problem. At each root race you do two incarnations at each planet on a circuit of twelve - seven times around! It's like a birthing poker-run!
If there's anything to it I think it's likely way oversimplified by anyone who says 'It's x'. We could split into a dozen, fuse with a dozen others, do a little bit of both, feel absolutely great no matter what we're doing, and finding our hangovers and depressions again next time we decide to check into a womb. If consciousness is in some way fundamental, eg. Chalmers, it probably would flow like water and not be quite as much hung up on identity anyway.
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No, I don't believe in any kind of religion. If people come back as a different person each time, why does the population continue to increase? Where are all these extra souls or whatever coming from?
And if reincarnation was real, with my luck I'd come back as someone with a much worse life than I have now for things I've done. Maybe I'll even come back as something extinct or a creature most people hate, like a mosquito or a cockroach.
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