• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Reincarnation (The Phenomenon; The Process; Theories)

Pete Younger

Venerable and Missed
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Jul 31, 2001
Messages
5,823
Can anyone explain the theory of reincarnation, as I understand it, when you die you are reincarnated into a new persona.
Question:...do you get to choose who you become or is it left to chance, if so why is it that people who claim to remember past lives are always of the same ethnisitty, ie, white people never seem to come back as black, asian, or oriental.
 
For Hindus, it's a part of their regular religion rather
than a weird and unusual event. I think most modern cases
come from India.

The race thing is interesting but modern sceptics have also
noticed that some Indian youngsters have attached
themselves to higher caste families by claiming to be
reincarnated sons or daughters.

People have been found to contain multitudes, especially
under hypnosis. In the nineteen twenties, an American
housewife called Pearl Curran started to write historical
novels dictated by an altar ego. They were said at the
time to have impressed the historians, though they are
seldom seen now.

Many anomalous phenomena seem to be classified under
different headings for different degrees of duration. The
temporary Spirit Guides and channelled entities of a medium
do not seem very different from the more extended identity
crisis of the "reincarnated" soul.

One of the classic early German cases had an orphan girl
who was able to recite swathes of Latin, though it turned
out that she had spent her earliest years in the care of a Pastor,
where she may have picked it up parrot fashion.

It is said that we forget nothing. It is also true that the split
mind can process information unconsciously and create competing
identities. How far we can tune in to other places and other
minds is always a matter of speculation.

I guess reincarnation is just another form of expanded consciousness.
:confused:
 
If reincarnation takes plave then shouldn't the world population be fairly constant? Or is there a mechanism to cover this?
 
tinfoilpants said:
If reincarnation takes plave then shouldn't the world population be fairly constant? Or is there a mechanism to cover this?

Reminds me of an SF story I read years ago. Medical authorities are worried by the soaring rate of "idiot child" births -- children who are fully functional at the physical level, but are growing up showing no signs of a cogitating mind. You're prob'ly ahead of me with the explanation: There's only so many minds to go round (and round, and round), and with the ever-rising birth rate ...
 
i have heard....

....that the number of "warrior soul,s" is 144,000.....but what do i know!!!!!
 
Maybe the extinction rate and depletion of animal numbers makes up for it... there could be millions of children who are reincarnated great auks, quaggas, Galapagos tortoises and dodos.
 
Don Mills said:
Reminds me of an SF story I read years ago. Medical authorities are worried by the soaring rate of "idiot child" births -- children who are fully functional at the physical level, but are growing up showing no signs of a cogitating mind. You're prob'ly ahead of me with the explanation: There's only so many minds to go round (and round, and round), and with the ever-rising birth rate ...
This is an interesting point, perhaps new souls are imported from other parts of the galaxy and that our Fortean names are correct after all.
 
p.younger said:
do you get to choose who you become or is it left to chance, if so why is it that people who claim to remember past lives are always of the same ethnisitty, ie, white people never seem to come back as black, asian, or oriental.

Actually, not true. There's a book (which I can't remember the title of right now) in my University library. It was fascinating. This researcher had taken all these past life regressions and made a database of them. He (or she) then compared all the data. He found that the lives reflected the historical record. For example, the number of past lives one has that are poor compared to those that are wealthy co-relate to the percentage of people who are rich/poor in reality, meaning you're more likely to be poor in a past life than rich. Also the race of the past life was broken down into percentages that reflected the races throughout history, meaning that people were having past life regressions that are not only one race. This sounds a little muddled since it's been awhile since I've read this book.

As for the number of people being reincarnated, whoever said there was a set number of souls? Or that they all come to earth at the same time :)

There are many books that discuss reincarnation, both pro and con, that can answer your questions. In particular check out books on children's past lives. Probably the most convincing evidence since children are less likely to experience cryptomnesia (remembering forgotten facts).

I don't believe every past life regression is true. One of the reason's I've never had one is because I'm highly imaginative and I wouldn't trust the regression as being real, and not made up. But I have seen regressions that are astounding, usually in their mundaneness.

I could go on and on, I'm fascinated by this :) But I'll stop there. Others can express it better. Go to the library and see what they've got.

Michael.
 
Perhaps souls and minds get divided between the available new bodies. This would explain the rise in popularity of being a stupid scumbag. If animals have an effect p'raps we should go culling for the sake of humanity.
 
A Question of re-incarnation

When reincarnated, do you keep your personality from a previous life? Or do you become a totally new person both physically and mentally?
 
Surely the whole point of reincarnation is that something gets carried over from life to life. If nothing is then you have good old materialistic death.
 
Life after death is full of social problems, I guess.

My mother used to ponder the notion of Eternity Catholic-
style and she was much troubled by the case of second
marriages. With which partner did one go on for ever?

Reincarnation means the same spirit in a different body. I
think the notion of awareness of past lives in detail as a
personal possession, so to speak, is very much a product of the
Me Generation.

The Hindu notion was that you could evolve or regress on the
spiritual plane. There have been no cases so far as I know
where people under hypnosis have admitted to having being
very aspirational slugs. :(
 
Divided souls

Funnily enough, that sort of fits the Ancient Greek legend of humans originally having two heads and four arms and having been split by the gods - we're each destined to seek out other half.

However, if souls were divided up to fill the vacancies, surely we see more extremes in both directions - more scumbags and more saints. (As it reached critical, we'd have Ragnarok...
:eek: )
 
What if we were all in some sort of constant subconcious telepathic communion with each other? Wouldn't it be possible to archive ones memories in other peoples' brains? In that case reincarnation might just be downloading the past experiences of dead people. The older the memories the more copies might be floating around, which would explain why Elizabeth I has been reincarnated so d+mn often, it's also possible that some memories are, subconciously, more popular than others.

It would be a kind of psychic internet! Just a thought... ;)

Niles
 
Sinister

Well there's a sinister thought - how do you tell the difference between reincarnation and possession from an early age? Is there a moral difference?

I read about a very nasty deathbed ritual (medieval?) where the mage OBEs and displaces the soul of a foetus in order to be reborn. His henchmen, meanwhile, mutilate his body to discourage his soul's return. Virgil supposedly attempted this.

The spooky thing about children's reincarnation experiences, is that - if true - they're all carrying around dead people [shudder].

Are people who collect stuffed toys really just filling the void left by children they had in a past life?

And check yourself for odd birthmarks - they're supposed to be the site of deathwounds. Not a cosy thought.

M
 
It intrigues me that re-incarnation seems to happen more in cultures where it is expected- the mundane explanation of this is that people see children do something slightly unusual and persuade themselves that they are re-incarnated because it is what they expect to cause this. A cool possible explanation could be that what form your afterlife takes is related to what you expect to happen.
 
...then our Christian friends really have got themselves a raw deal as compared, e.g. to our Viking forefathers. Asexual floating on clouds and harp twanging vs fighting all day and drinking and wenching all night... hmm let me think about that on my way to buy a sword.:p

Back on topic: I'd probably go with the mundane explanation (above) however, perhaps only societies that believe in it tend to notice reincarnation, hence the high incidence.

You can read evidence in so many different ways.

Recall the debunking experiment in a recent TV doc. They got kids to make up stories about past lives and then showed they could match a good % up to real, deceased, children. Their conclusion: it's pretty easy to match up random stories to reality, so reincarnation is bunk. However, you wanted to test for reincarnation, wouldn't you perform the exact same experiment?

By the way folks: how about there being only one soul, reincarnating back and forwards in time, thus explaining precognition and telepathy?

M
 
I have sometimes thought that you might just live the one life and then go back and live it again. That would explain precognition and deja-vu, but it would kind of suck if you have a boring life.

If there was only one soul I would suggest that each of us in our lives is more a fragment of it, going back to it afterwards. Otherwise, that one would seem to be zooming about everywhere without any real course and direction, although it could have a course and direction we would be unable to understand.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
There is the theory of reincarnation where when you die, your soul can possess any living thing, even one already in existence, almost as if you're knocking that soul out to take its place. but what happens to the displaced soul? i think i read that in FT but ican't remeber...sorry!
 
IF there is such a thing as reincarnation, perhaps it would explain certain aspects of our present characters, eg, a person who overeats in his present life perhaps died of malnutrition in a previous one?

Carole
 
There are a lot of pretty ideas about how we will suffer
after death for what we have done unto others. And how
one extreme in one life will be balanced by another.

The trouble is that this system of universal justice is built
on a very domestic scale and we have all hoped that a
big slapping in heaven awaits those whom we are too small
to slap back.

Dante is full of pictureque torments for sins of all kinds but
hey, it's a comedy. :D

If I spend my leisure hours cutting wasps in sections, surely
a big wasp with a scalpel will be waiting for me.

Far safer then to confine my wickedness to acts of corporate
negligence or political meanness, where I will be insulated not
only from the consequences of my actions in this world but
absolved from punishment in the next. Why? Because my own
negligence is a result of the negligence of others in allowing
me to persue my useless career.

So instead of a sectioned wasp, I can indirectly be part of a
cosy system which can lead to a trainfull of passengers being
chopped up. I might even seriously believe I am not responsible.

The focus of moral dilemmas on personal guilt is why you will
still find ranks of harmless old women beating their breasts in
church for imagined sins. Not I think, the Directors of Railtrack.

:mad:
 
On the subject of reincarnation, there is also the ancient Celtic theory of the 'Otherworld'. Basically, when you died in this world, you were supposed to be reborn in a sort of parallel universe (the Otherworld). When you had lived your life and died in the Otherworld, you were reincarnated again in this world, so your soul or whatever was supposed to shuttle between the two universes.
 
Reincarnation: Horse- Rope- Flower

As we have no solid, irrefutable proof od reincarnation, we know nowt about it save what we can postulate.

The various religions, creeds and philosophical groups that subscribe to reincarnation (mainly Buddhism) have offered many ideas, and these can only be judged by your faith. However, the general gist is this:

All humans have a soul that is representative of that person(animals, too?) and this soul is reborn after death into another body. Sometimes into the embyro, sometimes just before birth. The soul lives that life, and does good and bad. This is dependant on the souls past lives and inclinations. Our actions in this life are judged after death by...god knows. This is called karma. Depending on our 'score' for the last life, we are reborn into another body. If we live a bad life, we are put into a difficult and adverse life. If we live a good life, we are born into a peaceful and beneficial life. In this way, we live many, many lives. At some point, we reach such a level of human development (personally, morally, intellectually) that we no longer requrie physical reincarnation to live. We then leave the cycle of life and death (samsara) and achieve nirvana in the afterlife.

Reincarnation is a lto like the general dieas of life and death, except that you live mroe than one life. Simple as that. You still go to the afterlife at the end. Likely you will find God there, watering his plants. I am writing what may bloom into a book on this subject, which is marvellously fascinating. I would suggest contacting a local Buddhist group, or read up on Buddhism. By far, Buddhism offers the most coherent and impartial ideas. It's my preferred religion, even though I am irreligious.

As Vulcans say, 'live long and often'.
 
Re: Reincarnation: Horse- Rope- Flower

Iankidd said:
If we live a bad life, we are put into a difficult and adverse life

I must have been a dreadful b*stard. What happens when our selves get to a point when they can't get any worse? Can I be a demon? Yes I know about the wages of sin, but the hours are good and the benefit package is amazing.
 
Hmm, this is the fastest growing thread I have ever seen. I beleive there was a strong case for reincarnation inone of Charles Forts books.
 
Fingers, Toes, and Counting Souls

Where reincarnation is generally accepted, say in India, it's noticed much more and confirmed much more frequently. Some blame wishful thinking and self-fulfilling perceptions, but others admit it could simply be that being hostile or blind to it makes it much harder to spot. Also, in India it's not taboo for a child to discuss such things, whereas in USSA or UK, it's probably a sure ticket to the therapist.

The notion that it was editied out of the xtian bible is interesting to me. Why would this have been done? Could it be another control device? If you get only one chance, you're much more likely to be panicked into toe-ing the line, whereas if you know it's a nearly endless cycle of learning, you might be much more forgiving of your own mistakes and those of others.

Hm...

Also, the problem of enough souls to go around comes up, as more people are alive today than have ever died. Do we share souls? Do many not have souls? (Ah, governments...) Is there an infinite supply of souls up there and so many of them on earth now are "new"?

Inquiring minds want to know. LOL
 
FraterLibre said:
Also, the problem of enough souls to go around comes up, as more people are alive today than have ever died. Do we share souls? Do many not have souls? (Ah, governments...) Is there an infinite supply of souls up there and so many of them on earth now are "new"?

Inquiring minds want to know. LOL

When you illiminate the concept of time, you illiminate that problem. If reincarnation is possible then I don't see what the problem of being thrown back into a life before you died is.

Does anyone else wonder why whenever a past life is 'rememberd', its always from Earth? 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?
 
A Puzzled Punter

AdamRang - How does time solve the problem of numbers if there are more bodies than souls?
 
How do you know how many souls there are??? If souls can move through time during reincarnation then you have no problem concerning more bodies than souls.

Say for example there was only 1 soul and 6 billion bodies. That soul could first live my life, then when I die I could go back though time and live through your life, etc. etc. until I've gone through all 6 billion.
 
Wha?

I'll have what he's having.

And I won't even ask about sequentiality and simultaneity and so on, honestly I won't.

And no one knows even IF there are souls. I was using it merely as a handy place-holding term when discussing reincarnation, meaning persona or sense of self I suppose, and I'd figured there ought to be a soul for each body or poor Satan won't be making many contract deals.
 
Back
Top