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Do you believe in reincarnation?
Strong "yes!" 12%  12%  [ 6 ]
Strong "no!" 43%  43%  [ 22 ]
Eh, maybe it's possible... 45%  45%  [ 23 ]
Total votes : 51

Pergerlady
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31 Jan 2016, 8:40 pm

I hope I don't start a fight. I'm just curious. Sometimes, I feel like this isn't my first life.



slenkar
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31 Jan 2016, 9:38 pm

Many many people in Asia believe in it
Do you have any specific reasons for believing in it?



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31 Jan 2016, 9:55 pm

No.

I've found no valid evidence for reincarnation, just a lot of anecdotal "memories" and obscure references to alleged events in remote places.


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31 Jan 2016, 9:57 pm

No.


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techstepgenr8tion
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01 Feb 2016, 7:14 am

I have my doubts about the wholesale destruction of information in the universe - personal or otherwise. That said I still don't necessarily know that reincarnation follows. Even if a person comes up with an impressive list of truths about a person who they could have known nothing of outside of some kind of extraphysical transfer of information it wouldn't necessarily prove that they were that person. There really isn't a good enough handle on subjective experiences and how they present themselves to be able to pick out a detail in how the experience presents itself to say 'Yes - you were that person' or 'No - you had an intimate brush with that person's imprint' (WP caveat - if such things happen at all).


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01 Feb 2016, 10:35 am

I have a bit of an unorthodox opinion on this. I believe the body is the immortal thing, and the mind is acquired through experience with other minds.



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01 Feb 2016, 10:46 pm

I had recurring dreams of previous lifetimes for many years.



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01 Feb 2016, 10:54 pm

Physics supports the notion of reincarnation.

For instance, 'nothing' is inherently unstable. The early universe which contained nothing was actually physically biased towards 'something.' https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/mor ... rs-origin/

As Heisenberg's uncertainty principle can attest towards, that is why I do not believe that there is endless nothingness when I pass away, because nothing is an uncertain abstraction. Once you give nothing a meaning, it becomes something..

Just because we don't remember a previous life, doesn't mean that it did not occur. Likewise, when I pass away does not mean that I will not be somewhere else.


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01 Feb 2016, 10:58 pm

I've been curious about this since I was a child and first heard of the idea. However, not one person in the history of humanity has ever been able to actually show that we are anything other than animals who think so highly of ourselves that each individual should be preserved throughout time, past when our body dies. While that may sound dismal to some, from my point of view it suggests that we should live each day as if it is something amazing and wonderful, never to be repeated and in quite short supply.


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01 Feb 2016, 11:03 pm

I'm unsure. I used to scoff at this and in simplistic terms, still do. People who go on about karma (like whether you're short with someone or nice to the dog) influencing whether you come back as a human (viewed as the ultimate in biological life, which is a bit crap in of itself) or as a snail or ant. It seems to me the same controlling thinking as teaching people they'll go to hell if they're "bad" and heaven if they're "good" just with the terms changed.
But what is reincarnation? It's known the heavy elements of our bodies and brains were once interstellar junk, so have been part of nonanimate matter before, and it's plausible they could be recycled and incorporated into other sentient life after the death of the body. There is also the theory that no energy is ever wholly destroyed, suggesting the energy that animates us must go elsewhere when this biological engine stops turning.
There are people who believe in a collective unconscious, and some studies using crossword performance had some surprising results. I suppose this could be seen as a form of reincarnation, a sort of returning to the source.
There may be some interest to the idea, in my view. But I don't believe in the simplistic A = B thinking that is generally referenced when people talk of reincarnation. The more abstract ideas around it seem more sensible.


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techstepgenr8tion
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01 Feb 2016, 11:25 pm

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Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 01 Feb 2016, 11:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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01 Feb 2016, 11:29 pm

Edgar Cayce did not believe in transmigration of the soul, but Rumi did, as expressed in the following-

I died as a mineral and became a plant;
I died as a plant and rose to animal;
I died as animal and I was a man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as man to soar
With angels blest. Yet even from an angel
I must pass on; All except God must perish.
When I have sacrificed my angel soul,
I shall become what no mind ever conceived.



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01 Feb 2016, 11:33 pm

AspE wrote:
I have a bit of an unorthodox opinion on this. I believe the body is the immortal thing, and the mind is acquired through experience with other minds.


I know AspE is going to deny it to the very end, but for some unknown reason, I always felt that he has at least some spiritual connections. Although we should be careful with using that word.


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02 Feb 2016, 9:25 am

Deltaville wrote:
AspE wrote:
I have a bit of an unorthodox opinion on this. I believe the body is the immortal thing, and the mind is acquired through experience with other minds.


I know AspE is going to deny it to the very end, but for some unknown reason, I always felt that he has at least some spiritual connections. Although we should be careful with using that word.

Why would I deny it? I reject the supernatural, not philosophy.



nurseangela
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02 Feb 2016, 10:14 am

I'll just say I'm not supposed to and the Bible doesn't say we are reincarnated, however, I have to say that I have had 3 dreams that make me wonder. In these dreams, I "know" the people, but I don't know who they are. One dream was set in the 16 or 1700's and I was a girl about 15 yrs old. In the dream I was running and holding my stomach. I came upon this small cabin where this man was there and he took me in. I remember laying on this wooden table and he was looking at my stomach - I had been stabbed in the stomach and was bleeding profusely. What the man said that I have never forgotten was "just accept it and it will go quicker". It was then that I actually died in the dream and could see myself floating upwards to the ceiling and then I was looking down at my dead body. I've never forgotten that dream.

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?


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02 Feb 2016, 10:57 am

nurseangela wrote:
I'll just say I'm not supposed to and the Bible doesn't say we are reincarnated, however, I have to say that I have had 3 dreams that make me wonder. In these dreams, I "know" the people, but I don't know who they are. One dream was set in the 16 or 1700's and I was a girl about 15 yrs old. In the dream I was running and holding my stomach. I came upon this small cabin where this man was there and he took me in. I remember laying on this wooden table and he was looking at my stomach - I had been stabbed in the stomach and was bleeding profusely. What the man said that I have never forgotten was "just accept it and it will go quicker". It was then that I actually died in the dream and could see myself floating upwards to the ceiling and then I was looking down at my dead body. I've never forgotten that dream.

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.