BIG Question about 'Reincarnation'

Remembering not only defeats the object, it defeats all the objects of the exercise. You cannot learn your lessons from such a vantage point or your lessons would be different lessons.

Remembering means that the illusion is not an illusion, the recognition that the world is a stage.

To learn your lessons, you must not have answers to all questions, there must be good and evil, perceived or otherwise. Life and death, an element of unknowing.

Remembering undoes all these things and your world becomes very different. So different in fact, if all the other students had such hindsight, the world wouldn't be what it is, therefore not serving the purpose it serves.

Seeking spiritual enlightenment is not a requirement to progress on a soul level, it's only an available choice. In terms of evidence, I would suggest becoming practised in something like remote viewing or mind/body seperation. These skills are usually perception altering.

Make sense? or 2 cents of nonsense.

reply to post by Prote


nah i think you summed it up quite clearly


If we all knew what was going on, that is... if we percieved everything... then we wouldn't learn nothing, the world would be a LOT different, you're asbolutely right in that regard.



Another point I wanted to make was.... at the end of your life... see yourself in your death bed... Do you think that by the end of your life, that you have become a better person? Have learned to accept new ideas, have accomplished some difficult things? Or do you see yourself as a worse person, who has become more bitter and ignorant, who hadn't accomplished anything and infact is less wise then you were 60 years ago?

I think most people have bettered themself in one way or another by the end of their life, or have exposed themselves to new situations they were unable to sort out and understand before death. I think given the pattern I could support the idea of re-incarnation on that alone. If we only live once... then why do anything? why try to better ourselves? I think we all subconciously know the truth, just some are more aware of it then others.

I think we probably remember everyday in the actions and thoughts we have. For example when your young you either are kind to animals or your not. This depends on the age of the soul and what you have lernt. People will say it is down to parenting and it is to some degree, but you know what is right and wrong, and you choose. Is it even important to remember past lives? I think we bring an element into what we lernt in every life. When we die it could be centries untill we are reincarnated, it's a long time to remember, give your self a break.

There are people you can meet, and they help to make you remember your past lives, they act a bit like a medium. Everything is about free will, and we choose to be reincarnated anyway, because we know we still have lots to learn, maybe it is easier and more pure starting from scratch again. Who knows, i know my true thoughts on the matter but find it to hard to word.

"There is one real birth and one real death. You are born once, and you really die only once.

All the so-called births and deaths are only sleeps and awakenings. The difference between sleep and death is that when you sleep, you awake and find yourself in the same body. But after death, you awake in a different body. You never die; only the blessed ones die and become One with God."
Meher Baba

Google Video Link

Quote:
All memories about our past and future lives are stored in the subconscious mind. This subconscious mind functions independently of the conscious mind proper. Since your conscious mind proper died along with the body when your last life ended, you start each new life with a virgin conscious mind proper. This conscisous mind proper cannot recall any of it's past lives simply becasue it has no memory of them.

It is only your subconscious or superconscious mind that can remember your past or future lives. This mechanism is actually quite protective. Because the mind is exposed to more than one million pieces of new information every day of our lives, think of what it would be like to consciously recall all of this information from our present as well as our past and future lives at any one moment.

There are certain clues to our past lives that we do experience consciously. We all have certain natural talents, likes and dislikes. Certain intuitive tendencies are remnants from past lives. When we dream we often see scenes from past lives. Spontaneous regressions occur to many people in their dreams. Even though we do not consciously remember our past or future lives, there are experiences that give us the knowledge that we have lived before and will live again.

*Excerpt from Chapter 26: 'Questions and Answers About Past and Future Lives Hypnotherapy' - Past Lives, Future Lives by Bruce Goldberg.



[edit on 5-4-2008 by corusso]

[edit on 5-4-2008 by corusso]

reply to post by TheDuckster


" Then why does 99% of the population NOT REMEMBER their past lives? "

Because it's a lie! It's [ reincarnation ] just another sales pitch, a set-up, for the coming of the NEW AGE religion. There are many of them.

People, including myself, have bought into this crap because they've heard it so much, but none of us really understand the occult origins of this stuff.

"The Secret" is another NEW AGE piece of garbage that sells lucifer dressed up / disguised as "the way things are" to unsuspecting gullible and uninformed regular folks to snare them in a "feel good" trap.

Originally posted by toasted
reply to post by TheDuckster

 

" Then why does 99% of the population NOT REMEMBER their past lives? "

Because it's a lie! It's [ reincarnation ] just another sales pitch, a set-up, for the coming of the NEW AGE religion. There are many of them.

People, including myself, have bought into this crap because they've heard it so much, but none of us really understand the occult origins of this stuff.

"The Secret" is another NEW AGE piece of garbage that sells lucifer dressed up / disguised as "the way things are" to unsuspecting gullible and uninformed regular folks to snare them in a "feel good" trap.

Actually, the belief in reincarnation is thousands of years old originating from the hindu and Buddhist traditions. The "new agers" did not think of this first. So technically, reincarnation had nothing to do with the occult.

if reincarnation is true could it be possible for a starving kid in africa be reborn to become a CEO? wow that would be cool. Or the other way around.

reply to post by Prote

I agree Prote.. I believe that our souls are progressing in an attempt to return to the Godhead. Free will is the crux to it. As we made a conscious choice to remove our soul selfs from the creator and in a sense "devolved" by entering human consciousness, we must also make the conscious choice to return to the godhead. however, cosmic laws can't be broken, and therefore we must return to the physical plane to work out our various Karmic imbalances. The soul does not remember on a conscious level because it chooses not to remember in order to perfect the karma necessary to break the physical plane. As we become more spiritual "re-evolved" we are able to remember more of our past life experiences and apply them without penalty to our present physical incarnations. Just my 2 cents worth.

Hi Duckster,

Reincarnation is just a procedure we as Souls agree to for the having of experience. From my personal experience (over 30 years) journeying the realms as a modern Shaman, I have come to a few simplified understandings.

The veil of forgetting is one of the things we agreed to before incarnating so that we are more able to have awareness on what we are doing now and who we are in this life. But this does not prevent anyone from gaining the memories of other incarnations.

More importantly, incarnation is not for the betterment of our souls. There's a big statement!

As a Soul you are already perfect. Just because you have no inkling of your 'higher awareness' as a soul does not make you any less perfect. In fact, you are massive and powerful.

The old control mechanisms of having humans believe we are small, insignificant, basically evil things in the sight of a Creator is now obsolete.

Remembering your other incarnations serve us in one way... it brings us to a level of self-knowledge where we can clearly see everything that has brought us to this point Now. In so doing, we are better able to perceive the 'flow' around us so that we can make more effective choices for ourselves and every other living thing we effect.

Basically, awakening into our higher-self awareness is what we are here to do and to be that awesome being here in this 3D. We aren't here to gain the 'ascension ticket home'; what a complete waste of experience that would be!

Lastly, because we are creatures of comfort, and we therefore choose to follow known paths, we are mostly mis-directed and controlled by the boundaries of those paths so that we cannot experience anything outside of them. This is the result of attaching to a belief-system and not having our own direct experiences to awakening.

I hope this was some help for you.

Sometimes I think of it this way. I'm a slow third grader and I've flunked and I'm going to have to repeat the third grade.

I come back for a second time to the third grade and I've just had the summer off so I'm still starting new like the others but I have an advantage. I've already been in the third grade once. I have a new teacher and I'll be studying the same things but in a new way with possibly new books, new lessons. They are still third grade lessons but until I get them right I won't move up to the fourth grade.

If life is a school then it is the most perfect educational system ever devised. You are given free will and placed into a system with unlimited possibilities. Any and every choice you make will lead you to a lesson you need to learn.

When you learn enough of those lessons you get to move to the next level.

Time for recess, I call dibs on the swings

Bettering one's self is like putting gold on a piece of dung. We are not hear to better ourselves, but polish off our imperfections. What has been exhausted in a previous life is of no great value to the exhausting the karmas of the current life. Undoubtedly we retain a kernel of the previous wisdom obtained and at least carry that forward subconsciously.

reply to post by Dances With Angels


Well, I'm not surprised, I didn't know it myself until recently because it was very well hidden from history. But all those religions you think have some merit, came out of the mystery religions from babylon.

Even the Egyptian pharoahs names told the people which god was worshiped during his reign. And there were plenty of wars between believers which was cleverly covered up and not mentioned in "popular" books.

Be careful Dances, you're playing with fire with that seemingly reasonable NEW AGE thinking you have. I see this attitude all over ATS. The people who don't know any better hear it over and over and over again, and poof, before you know it you're inside the lie, and don't even know it got you!

[ 2nd video won't take properly... ]

I can only point you to a book, The Curse of Canaan and a cpl videos to get you to think,but you probaly won't.


Best wishes.

bones



[edit on 7-4-2008 by toasted]

[edit on 7-4-2008 by toasted]

Now....here's the kicker?

If people would want to better ourselves...it stands to reason, that we would learn from our mistakes, if we can RECALL them (past lives), then use these experiences as a base-line to further better ourselves.

Absolutely!

If you ask me, that just shows the lack of coherence in that particular line of thought.

Personally - and I am used to getting blasted over this one (although, it must be said, I am yet to hear a convincing argument against it) - I find it somewhat disturbing that this idea was so widespread in a culture - India - that had (partially still has) a caste system. In other words, a culture where there was no way out of your alloted "station in life" other than death - and, hopefully, rebirth in a more kindly environment...

Most of the cases that I've heard or read about are based on specific personal information that could be explained by access to "morphogenetic fields", as Sheldrake would call them (or Jung's slightly more vague "collective unconscious", if you prefer): all the information there is is accessible to any individual. (After all, we already know that such access is definitely possible: think telepathy, etc.)

However, I do believe that one can carry other people's memories, aspirations, yearnings.

How and why?

I have no idea.
But reincarnation surely isn't the only explanation.






[edit on 8-4-2008 by Vanitas]

Think of a 'Matrix" type virtual reality. Imagine that you have set the game to put you face to face with a dragon to help you learn courage. How much actual courage would be needed to confront a danger if you knew it was only a game?
If you meet the potential spouse who you think of as your 'soulmate' that you will love forever, what will be the effect on your feelings if you remember experiencing the exact same feelings hundreds of other times in other lives?
How special will your child be if you remember thousands of your other children?
Will you live a normal life, grow, marry and have children or will you be too busy trying to find your loves from past lives?
As for forgetting the lessons learned in each life....If in this life you are Bob, the next Joe, and then maybe Mary, these are only personalities. The real you is the one who was present in all three lives. Your Atman who remembers all these lives and all the lessons learned.
Not to mention all the joy involved in a small child discovering the world that will be lost.
Like the man said, just my two cents

Perhaps we "forget" about our past lives precisely in order to give us a better chance to "learn" whatever lesson, issue, etc. we have to learn. You bring up a good point (Ducky) by asking if learning a lesson was the point, wouldnt it be easier to learn it if we could remember the mistakes we made before, but think about people who date the same person over and over again in this life. They "know" what happened in prior relationships, but for some reason they still pick someone who ends up doing the exact same things.

If we remembered our past lives, wouldnt we also remember all the conditioning that led us to make the "mistakes?" And wouldnt the risk be that we might, with that remembered conditioning and experience, make the same sort of choices in this life?

Maybe starting off with a clean slate by remembering nothing is meant to give us the opportunity to choose freshly and cleanly without, as someone else pointed out, all the baggage, opinions, prejudices, etc., that led us down the wrong path the last time around. Maybe, just maybe, it wouldnt be easier at all to make better decisions if we had the remembrance. It sure seems to me that lots of people in their current life, me included, seem to repeat mistakes over and over again, even when we do remember what happened before.

reply to post by TheDuckster


Reincarnation is an eastern concept, and it is not (at least not necessarily) the personality that transgress to the next life, but the soul.
As for what the soul is, that's a completely different thread.

Originally posted by Vanitas
Personally - and I am used to getting blasted over this one (although, it must be said, I am yet to hear a convincing argument against it) - I find it somewhat disturbing that this idea was so widespread in a culture - India - that had (partially still has) a caste system. In other words, a culture where there was no way out of your alloted "station in life" other than death - and, hopefully, rebirth in a more kindly environment...

Although I am not 100% sure which aspect of being born in a lower caste disturbs you, the fact that some are born there, or the fact that once there only death can "reset" your caste, I will tell you what someone from India, (an astrologer) explained to me.

What we think of as "good" in the West, wealth, power, fame, etc., are considered great dangers in their spirituality. A simple life, even a life of great suffering, is considered to be a life that offers a chance for great spiritual advancement, as you have less opportunity to fall prey to the material temptations and the seductions and corrupting influence of power. This doesnt mean that everyone who is born in a high caste would choose to lose access to their power and wealth, of course many of them would not. However, not every one born into a high caste, or even the priestly class, is exceptionally spiritual. Once given access to material wealth and all the pleasurable things it can provide, most are loathe to be deprived of that.

In certain religions, they consider the material "life" and the "spiritual" life of an individual two very separate things. Consider, for instance, the path the Buddha took in search of enlightenment. Before he found the "middle path" he left a life of great power and luxury and subjected himself to great suffering as an ascetic, starving himself, etc. Today in many places, the giving up of all comfort and asceticism is fairly frequently pursued as a path to greater spirituality.

Our culture operates under a wholly different baseline assumption, that being that if you are doing good in God's eyes, you will be rewarded with material blessings. A very Protestant assumption, and one that I have always found rather odd when considering how Jesus himself, who should have been thought quite highly of by God according to that tradition, lived and died. (Not because I want to glamorize suffering personally, but because it simply does not conform to logic when considering what Jesus said and did)

Maybe that will help a little. It did for me. Once I understood that they considered the material and spiritual journeys of the individual very separately, and that they considered "doing without" a "fast track" to spiritual growth, it made more sense to me. Although I personally do not prefer to suffer, I have to admit that my biggest mistakes, and the most painful episodes of my life have also resulted in the great growth. I would, like most I assume, prefer not to suffer. However I do think that suffering, while not necessary for learning, certainly provides motivation to master a specific set of circumstances.

How many of us were told not to touch a hot stove, fire, etc., and that it was "hot" and still had to put out little finger in the fire anyway, and get burned, (suffer) before that concept "hot" had any meaning and the lesson was learned? Even if suffering is not a requirement for learning, and I do not think it is, it certainly seems to motivate some of those who are not learning any other way. Unfortunately.

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander



Oh, I get that - the relativity of values, I mean.
(In fact, I remember musing with a friend of mine - not quite seriously, as you will no doubt gather yourself - that one of the pitfalls of the reincarnation proposition was just that: 'What if it turns out that becoming a fly is the good thing for your soul?' As I said, it was obviously a joke - but the point is I am well aware of that premise.)

Still, the perception of misery seems to be more or less uniform in all parts of the world.
There can be huge differences between perceptions of certain human experiences, of course (I remember reading in NG about two neighbouring tribes in Africa that have diametrically opposed perceptions of childbirth "labour": the women of one tribe give birth in no time at all and apparently know no pain, while the women of the other tribe scream and toil because they perceive childbirth as unbearably painful), but the basic ones: hunger, thirst, debilitating illness, etc. are experienced and perceived almost identically. All those poor old women in India who have "outlived their purpose" and are literally dumped off to die of exposure or whatever - it's a HUGE problem, but this is no place to discuss it - do suffer. There can be no doubt about that.

One can only imagine how much worse it was centuries ago. True, the threshold of awareness of "social problems" may have been much different than it is today, but the pain wasn't.

And so, I can easily imagine why being born in a caste that does not guarantee a tranquil life - I think that's what most people want (not necessarily "luxury") - enough sustenance to enjoy the NOW without constant discomfort and pain (for most people simply aren't "philosophical" enough to endure that on a permanent basis), and from which there was no exit other than death, would offer as its only comfort the thought that maybe, by being "good", one could be reborn in more comfortable circumstances. It's perfectly natural, human.

(Mind you: I am not saying that this perception is necessarily "philosophically" accurate. What's important is the actual human perception and interpretation of its "rules". And there is enough historical evidence, including classical texts, to confirm the validity of this assumption: that indeed the majority of people - in India and in other places - perceived a comfortable life as "good" and discomfort as "bad", hence wishing for a comfortable life and trying to avoid an uncomfortable one.)

Anyway, I seriously think that there may be a very good possibility that one's "paradise" or "afterlife" really is what one makes out of it.
That it is, literally, a construct - and a very real one!
Only, it's not a rational construct (nor could it be, if you ask me). Instead, it is constructed by one's deepest yearnings and "thoughts", imagery, based in the subtle heart.


P.S. And - obviously - the above does not imply that I think this absolutely is so.





[edit on 9-4-2008 by Vanitas]

Like so many of these topics I make a reply and have nothing to back up what I say so accept or not, I do not personally care. If you do listen, you may be closer to the truth, or not.

This is written.
The master Teacher told us that reincarnation was to be expected. He asked who the crowds 'thought he was'. He said 'if you will accept it, this is Elias" of (John the baptist being the reincarnation of Elijah.)

This is not written.
If you have any memory at all of your previous existence(s) and are not on a directed journey from above, you are fallen. You will be judged for your awol status and must do great good to be accepted again fully. It is expected since you have additional insight.

accept that or not, I don't much care. you all have your own journeys.

OK, I am going to play the devil's advocate here.
(I mention this explicitly, so there are no words wasted on lecturing ME personally - I have no dog in this race, not really - but rather just addressing the question itself. )

We are here (and born again) to learn.
We are here (and born again) to perfect ourselves - or, alternatively, to realise certain aspects that were hidden from us before.
We are here (and born again) to gain wisdom.

Where and WHEN exactly are we going to use that wisdom, perfection, our bettered selves?

If we are already a part of G-d, or in G-d's image, or G-d's face(t)s - and we're supposed to ascend (back?) to that godly state... what would be the purpose of that, since G-d is by definition perfect and all-encompassing (at least it was so the last time I looked ; ))?

And let's not even mention Nirvana...
Apparently many people confuse it with "bliss".
It is not.
It actually (not literally) means absence: absence of pain, absence of joy, absence of Self (which is what gives us pain - but also joy, the very thing that makes us yearn for life).

So, what is the final, the ultimate purpose of this lengthy "schooling"?


(And please, remember: it's the "devil" who's asking. )












[edit on 9-4-2008 by Vanitas]