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Reincarnation (The Phenomenon; The Process; Theories)

Why limit the available (some word other than 'souls' that will not attract the nit-picking lobby :) ) to the human species, the order mamalia, the animal kingdom, the planet earth or even this universe?

Then you can get into the concept that (some group of letters than carries an equivalent meaning to 'souls' but without the religious overtones) are exist outside of time.
 
Originally posted by AdamRang


I think most poeple accept the existence of intelligent beings elswhere in the universe now so, if reincarnation really does exist then why do Humans stick together? Is there something about our species like a collective conciousness that keeps us as a unit?
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Maybe life elsewhere in the universe is so similar to that on Earth that we dont recognise that we once lived on another World.
 
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Gaia's Knickers Are Showing

If it's postulated that all living things also have souls, and that any living thing's soul can inhabit any living form, and they can mix and match, then we may as well, to save the outside-of-time thing, simply say there is one big soul and everything with one is but a manifestation of it. Which comes perilously close to some rather uncomfortable ideas, doesn't it?

Of course, then we have to admit that we cannot in any meaningful way discern living from nonliving, or if there is such a thing as nonliving, and that makes REALITY ITSELF a MANIFESTATION of....whatever.

Prop me against the omphalos, I seem to have found center ground and boy is it tilted.
 
p.younger said:
Maybe life elsewhere in the universe is so similar to that on Earth that we dont recognise that we once lived on another World.
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Parallel universes and all that??

Carole
 
I am a devout Buddist and believe in reincarnation & I don't see why anyone should tell me that my beliefs are wrong. There is no scientific proof of the Christian/Muslim/Jewish afterlife beliefs either but no one is asking them to prove it.

I don't see how you can prove that reincarnation exists anyway. If you are not willing to accept a story like the one on this thread, i.e. where there is a account published in a book of an airman dying in a crash with his leg being taken off then a body matching this description is found many years later after publication then you are never going to accept any evidence of reincarnation. There is no proof that you can offer which is going to be better than this unless I supose you experience a memory for yourself.
 
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A very interesting thread, but what has stuck in my mind is mention of reincarnation being edited out of the bible, perhaps someone could start a new thread regarding what is believed or known to be edited out from the bible. I , for one would be most interested.
 
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We Dance

Lecky Mouse - I've taken your cue and have begun a thread on What's Been Edited from the Xtian bible.

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/whats-edited-from-the-xtian-bible.3159/

Zoe - Beliefs are neither right nor wrong. Some can be mistaken, as for example if you think you have gossamer wings and can fly, while others are a personal and private choice of philosophy, religion, or ethics, such as Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory.

However, some beliefs, such as reincarnation or, say, transubstantiation, are actually statements of alleged fact, observations about how reality works, and as such can and should be tested and figured out. Transubstantiation, for instance, is the idea that, during holy communion, the wafer becomes the actual flesh of Jesus and the wine his blood. True believers actually think they are eating "of" their "lord".

This can be tested. Scientists can ascertain whether there is any change brought about -- which would, incidentally, rearrange if not demolish all of the physics that has held together and proven itself over centuries and throughout observable reality.

When we see that no magical change comes about, it does nothing to alter the faith of the faithful in this miracle. It does, however, say something about belief and it being unrelated to reality per se.

Same with reincarnation. There is no way to disprove it, as one cannot prove a negative, but if one could PROVE it, think what an interesting array of changes would flow through the world. If you really truly knew you'd come back, then things here and now would be different. Perhaps you'd adopt a long-term view, and learn gradually, and be less quick to judge harshly. Or perhaps you'd fear coming back as a cockroach and act accordingly. If there were only human-to-human reincarnation, then maybe you'd hide journals and even wealth for your next self to find, and so on, to allow you continuity among many lives.

It's the doubt that makes the faith.

As a ZenTao Cowboy, I choose neither to believe nor to disbelief, but simply to do what good I can with what I can reach, and ride out the dance.
 
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I did physics at school and this is where my belief in reincarnation comes from, strange as it may seem. Can i stress that this is only an opinion.

Each of us has a physical body and that body is 'controlled' by energy. Physics teaches us that there are different forms of energy, kinetic, potential etc and that these forms of energy can't be got rid of, only changed from one form to another.
Obviously there is more to the body than just the physical. We each have a 'life spark', our own 'personality' which dictates the things we like and dislike and the path we take thru life. When the physical body is dead, what happens to the energy, the life spark that drives us?
This energy must surely be changed to some other form.

I don't pretend to know all the ins and outs and how energy gets to be one form or another but as long as all this energy is being 'recycled' surely there will always be such things as past lives or as images which are replayed in an area giving rise to ghostly tales. Perhaps some people are more open to receiving images or 'remembering' being someone/somewhere else.
 
bulldog said:
I don't pretend to know all the ins and outs and how energy gets to be one form or another but as long as all this energy is being 'recycled' surely there will always be such things as past lives or as images which are replayed in an area giving rise to ghostly tales. Perhaps some people are more open to receiving images or 'remembering' being someone/somewhere else.
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For memories to survive physical death, they would probably have to be encoded in some highly complex way into an actual physical energy type. Where would this energy be stored, how would you stop it from decaying, how would it become attached to another physical brain?? That's my major problem with the idea of reincarnation.
However, there are some six billion people in the world, and each person possesses an incredibly complex brain capable of producing an unimaginable amount of verbal or visual information, often without effort (think of dreams); coincidence alone could conceivably be responsible for the production of 'memories' that appear to resemble some part of a deceased person's life.
That's my tuppence worth.
 
I know I'm going to come across as very Strieber-centric
on the boards (I'm really not) but there was a very nice
discussion about this topic there today:

http://www.unknowncountry.com/diary/
Link is dead. The MIA web article can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
Is There Life After Death?
Thursday June 27th, 2002
https://web.archive.org/web/20020807003130/http://unknowncountry.com/diary/?id=98
--------------------------------------
If we knew where we went after death, would we have worked so hard to keep our bodies healthy and comfortable on this Earth? Medicine, electricity, agriculture, architecture—the list of our discoveries is endless, and they’re all based on the premise that we’d better postpone death as long as possible because we don’t know what happens afterwards.
----------------------------------------

I guess I'd just never thought of
"why we do what we do" in those terms before.

Food for thought-
TVgeek
 
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Annasdottir said:
However, there are some six billion people in the world, and each person possesses an incredibly complex brain capable of producing an unimaginable amount of verbal or visual information, often without effort (think of dreams); coincidence alone could conceivably be responsible for the production of 'memories' that appear to resemble some part of a deceased person's life.
That's my tuppence worth.
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It is possible to estimate the probabilities of these things, although people will probably disagree about the actual figures to be used. (Much as they do with the Drake equation for estimating the probablity of contacting ET civilizations, so the answers range from 'almost certain' to 'no chance'!)

Take a typical reincarnation story: a child born with a birth mark, who starts to talk about when he was living in town A as part of family B, but he was killed when X happened (and X corresponds to the the birth mark). So far, this could all be fantasy, perhaps even an imaginative attempt to explain the birthmark.

But now suppose researchers go to town A and discover there is a family B living there who lost a child in the circumstances claimed. Three pieces of information, with probabilities p(A), p(B) and p(X). (Probabilities lie between 0 and 1)

Now suppose the child is taken to the town and recognises the family without any prompting, and even knows their individual names: p(R). Then, on talking to them he reveals other details about the family that they confirm are correct: p(T).

The total probabilty that all these things happen purely by chance is the product of all the separate probabilities, ie,
p(A) x p(B) x p(X) x p(R) x p(T)

Now the combined probabilities have become very very small, depending on the values assigned to the various factors. Furthermore, there is not just one such documented tale, but dozens, if not hundreds or thousands. If the total estimated probability now is less than one in 6 billion, then there are grounds for thinking that chance is not the explanation.

(In fact, there are are specialised statistical techniques, routinely used in many fields every day, to say whether some result is statistically significant, but I'd have to dig some books out to give details!)

Statistics is often counter-intuitive (would you believe that in a game of soccer, there is a slightly better than 50-50 chance of the 23 men on the field (players and ref) having at least one shared birthday?), but my feeling on this reincarnation business is that there is something in it - even if it's not reincarnation!
 
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Same with reincarnation. There is no way to disprove it, as one cannot prove a negative, but if one could PROVE it, think what an interesting array of changes would flow through the world.
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But how could it ever be proved? Or disproved for that matter? Isn't all this just vain metaphysics, patterns of words 'thinking' for themselves, expanding without reference? I don't entirely agree with the idea that a statement that could never conceivably be falsified is a meaningless waste of time, but it's a powerful check on humans' long-standing tendency to get lost in their own creations, to take our own metaphors and imaginations too literally...:confused:

EDIT: hang on, tardy philosophy o'science clarification in my head.... surely science works by falsifying positive hypotheses, not proving them? The fact this doesn't work on concepts like god or reincarnation, which always seem to be able to elude disproof, may be significant in itself...
 
Statistics, ryn? I'm not getting into that debate again in this lifetime (not that I'm admitting you're correct or anything) ;)

Anyway, getting back to the topic... most (if not all) reincarnation stories I've read are about people who apparently remember a remarkably similar previous life in the same country. I've never heard of, say, a British white man claiming to have been a Brazilian black woman in their past life. Any stories that show me to wrong here would be most appreciated.

From a purely personal point of view, reincarnation seems the most plausible answer to the question of "where does the soul (life spark, personality... pick your metaphor) go?" So, if many, many years from now you find a small snail eating your cabbage... please be kind, 'tis only little me ;)

Jane.
 
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Actually, Jane , most of the most plausible reincarnation stories (which usually involve children) are also set in nearby geographical locations. There are many from India, but I have heard at least one from England, which I think involved a child killed on a railway.

But it could be that this is just because it's easier to investigate something in the next county than halfway round the world.

It's also interesting that those killed as children do seem to reincarnate within a few years, if these tales are true. But other accounts of reincarnation, eg under hypnotic regression, often seem to extend over centuries.

The wheel of rebirth rolls on...
 
I think there was a case of reincarnation in the States - a woman called Bridie Murphy? I've got a book about it somewhere, but has anyone else heard of it?
 
My theory..

I believe that everyone goes through reincarnation and that every soul has a series of lessons to learn. If we all remembered what we had done in the previous lives then a) we would only correct the things we did wrong because we had to and not because we wanted to. b) people wouldn't hold life sacred because "what the hell everything lives again, right?"
 
Hmm - then how can various people claim to have been Marie Antionette (for example)? When did the human soul first become part of us? When we were single-cell creatures? Did we only get a soul once we became fully human? I only ask this as it doesn't seem that people remember being earlier, extinct species of human (AFAIK) or our animal forebears...
 
Before you were born?

There's a lot of talk about what happens to the soul/conciousness/mind (call it what you will) after you die, but were where "you" before you were born?

As a devout agnostic (;)) I sit firmly on the fence and mutter "I dunno" incoherently, but part of me thinks that reincarnation and the associated idea of souls (or whatever) choosing to experience numerous different lives - some short and tragic; others long and happy; most somewhere inbetween - makes a lot of sense.

Certainly more sense than that paragraph made!

On the other hand, there's something like 6 billion humans alive now, far more than there was, say, 1000 years ago. So some of us must be "new" or were previously insects, or hibernating, or on a different planet...

Any thoughts? Comments? Jokes? Puzzled frowns? Or even philosophical replys?

Jane.

(Mods: I searched - I really did - but couldn't find an appropriate thread to tag on to... feel free to merge me :) )
 
What exactly is the offical "word" on reincarnation? I dont really know how to put the question lol. As far as i can see when looking at reincarnation some people were created at some point and their souls reused so to speak to we are all slightly different versions of one original soul?? Im confusing my self completly now so ill leave it to those who actually know what their talking about.
 
This is probably just my ego having trouble comprehending that there was ever a time when I wasn't the centre of the world, or an offshoot of some race memory or genetic memory or whatever, but I totally believe in reincarnation.

I believe in it so totally that I didn't even form the thought consciously. I just realised that I take it completely for granted that I've been around before and will go around again. This may sound like inane new age ramble of the kind my mother does, but if you knew me, and knew that I'm always the person in spiritual debates sitting in the corner and going "Oh, bullshit!" then... it still sounds like new age ramble. Hmm. But really, it's profound.

As for the whole body-to-soul ratio, well, clearly such trivial facts don't bother those of us with faith, so... um, Quiet, Heretic! With your numbers! Be gone!

Or...

There maybe more people, but there are fewer mammoths, wolverines and cod, and as people are little more than glorified chimps anyway, a couple of million souls could have just traded up the food chain. *shrug*

Or, actually, I have a better one! And it's the one about linear time being a human construction, and a handy tool to help us understand history and how come it hurts when we fall over, but really not relevant to disembodied souls... so your reincarnations don't follow linear time. Which means you could be more than one person at once... which means you could actually be everyone at once, and so there's only one soul, one love, etc. I believe Jung said exactly the same thing, right down to the bit with the wolverine. And so did Bono.
 
I like the concept of reincarnation but I dont so much believe in it like a matter of faith so much as hope it is real. Its a great idea because if we all have a huge number of lives, then the law of statistics means that we'll all have one or two lives where we are film stars or fighter pilots or whatever.

I've always asumed that Ive lived before and will live again but, as I said, I think Ive asumed this because I want this to happen not because its neccesarily real. I hope it is though.

And i hope I havnt used up all my cool lives already.
 
It's the strangest thing... I woke up.
All these years, since being born,
I've been asleep in a dream
I thought was real.
I wasn't thinking mystical thoughts
Or trying for a revelation.
Just parking my truck
Wanting lunch in a restaurant.
Suddenly I knew,
No belief involved, I just knew
That I had always been
And would always be.
That this self I am
Was only a part of me
Playing a game of living here and now.
Every thing I do matters
And nothing matters at all.

I was glad when the immediacy of the experience went away
and I could get on with the business of living without being so
absolutely aware all the time. Yes, I think we do this more than
once. I also think there is nothing supernatural about it. It is just the way things are , the way the universe is, a part of nature.

I sure would appreciate it if someone could point me toward a group of people who have had the same kind of experience. Somehow it leaves religions a little...wanting. The Buddahists
seem to be wrapped up in "right" thinking, acting and living.
And that doesn't make much sense since part of the awareness seems to be that the world is "right" just as it is. It is also "right "
to make what changes you can and will to it.

Forgive me if I'm off topic a bit and for going on and on.

Marel
 
The body is just a vessel for physical interaction and what we all have to realise is that everything from the organic to the inorganic is connected by this energy.
I tend to look at death in the same way as formatting a hard drive on a computer.
 
A woman called Delores Cannon wrote a book called Keepers of the Garden. She regresses people who may have had a past-life event and she stumbled into channelling by mistake and found out that, according to HER, alright?, that reincarnation doesn't exist. It's our souls that are spread out around the universe and some are sent here to learn but because we don't use telepathy we can feel shut off and alone and can become very prone to suicide or depression and loneliness which blocks the learning experience. The solution is to imprint souls with the past-life EXPERIENCES of earth-souls so that the alien soul can be eased into the new life less traumatically. Earth souls do not return but other world's souls can use the knowledge gained during that soul's life by 'feeling' it. That's why most people live and die and their soul's go on, and some people claim to have been here before.

It's what SHE reckons, anyway. And hey, it's as good a theory as any!;)
 
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reincarnation - alternative explanations

I agree that there is a definite body of evidence worthy of investigation.

From the cases I have seen and read about, there seem to be four possible explanations as a minimum:

1. Classic re-incarnation. One soul, many corporeal/living bodies, chronologically (with gaps) through time.

2. Possession of, or influence of living souls/bodies/corporeal entities by discarnate (formerly souls/corporeal/living) entities, who are too attached to this plane of existence (for good or bad reasons) to move on, whose memories/influence are so strong they can cause psychosomatic or physical symptoms in the bodies of their hosts.

3. Daemonic possession to mislead people to believe in religions other than a particular type of christianity (I don't like this one, but am stating it as it has been posited as a theory).

4. The ability of a new, corporeal/living person/entity to tap into a shared human consciousness of fluid dimensions and "tune in to" or empathise with the thoughts and feelings of those parts of discarnate entities which have survived physical death, or who may yet be living, or about to live.

Belief in 1 is more or less the Hindu belief system, as I understand it.

Beliefs in 2,3,4 allow for the fact that numerous people believe they were once Cleopatra/Napoleon - the "shared soul" theory, popular in the 1930s.

Beliefs in 2,3,4 are arguably compatible (depending on particular interpretations) with mainstream Biblical belief systems (as far as I am aware). 2, and 3 are dealt with in the Bible, and 4 is not specifically countermanded - in fact, the doctrines of Original Sin, the Babylonian exile, 40 years of the chosen people wandering in the desert, and the "blood guilt" of the Jews cannot logically exist without the concept of a particular act of evil being punished against not only the actual perpetrators, but spanning many generations of their descendants. That is not to say that I subscribe to these beliefs.

Belief in 4 means believing that it is possible to have a sort of "human consciousness internet". If this exists - what are the parameters ? That is what I mean by saying it has fluid dimensions. It may have a very narrow compass or a very wide applicability.

If it allows corporeal/living people to access people who were conscious in the past, it might also allow us as corporeal/living entities to tap into the thoughts and memories of other people now living, those who are probably going to exist, cause and experience significant events in the future (children now living) or even those whose future appears to us to only to be probable or possible (unborn children, or children likely to arise from existing relationships or criteria). Such a theory could explain why some premonitions are spot on and can't be avoided; some are seen vividly and can be acted on and avoided; some are too vaguely dreamed, and are only obvious in hindsight, and some never come to pass.

Belief in 4 does not exclude belief in any of 1-3, for a true Fortean.
I do think, however, that it would be useful to take a very large random sample of an even larger sample of people with no particular views on reincarnation, and another of those with a belief system which includes/excludes it. Both samples should come from a population with access to reliable birth, marriage,army/navy/police, census/parish and death records for at least 150 years. The UK/Scandinavia are the only places I can think of off-hand that have baptismal records that reliable.

If the entire sample were subjected to past life regression before they could access historical records to "fake" a past life and a significant number came up with viable "past lives" from the past 150 years outside their immediate family.....then we might even get Richard Wiseman to sit up and take notice.


Any thoughts ? Please be rude and picky as you like, as this is only a theory, and needs to be tested.
 
Originally posted by Marianina
If the entire sample were subjected to past life regression before they could access historical records to "fake" a past life and a significant number came up with viable "past lives" from the past 150 years outside their immediate family
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This is the only thing I really have difficulty with. How many of us have absolutely no historical knowledge from the past 150 years. Even if a person doesn't do much reading, they've probably seen old costumes and customs on movies and TV.

So "viable" would have to mean recalling life as an ordinary, not famous, person including name, location, and hopefully relatives, birth or marriage dates to distinguish your past life as Mary Jane from every other Mary Jane who lived in Country Clare around 1866. That would be difficult. I wonder what the success rate would be?

I have tried past life regression using a CD. :D Let's just say it was enormously inconclusive, but very relaxing. I experienced moments, but no names. The only thing my regression is good for is a conversation over beers and that's only if I'm with people remotely interested in paranormal topics. ;)
 
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Proof of reincarnation?

Your difficulty with "viability" is spot on. The only ways round it would be for the reincarnee (????) to have information OUT of the public domain, which could be confirmed by letters, or living relatives.

So - it would be very easy for you to claim to be my grandmother reincarnated, if you knew my birthday, and I had a reasonably uncommon name, and a local accent. You could look up my birth certificate, my mother's birth certificate, and then my grandmother's dates - siblings, parents - 1901 census. In a couple of years this will be doable online for anyone with a reasonably uncommon name, and place of birth within the last 100 years.

The only way to get independent evidence (not proof) would be for there to be family records or remembrances of events which would be difficult for an outsider to get. Why did Grandma wear old clothes at my mother's wedding ? (Answer - my mother had her clothes coupons stolen, so both grandmas gave theirs for her wedding outfit). Unregistered stillborn children, and information held on censuses not yet in the public domain would also be relevant. What do you think ?
 
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