Pre-existence, Reincarnation & Christianity

reply to post by Agree2Disagree

I don't know where Elijah has been all this time....but we see that they actually searched for him...and also we know that no man has ascended to heaven except Christ....This leads me to believe that he was taken "somewhere"

There are a few possibilities.
1) Fiery chariot could very well mean brass, copper, or bronze chariot. They're called "Chariots of Israel". Elijah was down in Judean territory at the time, just across the Jordan. Northern Kingdom copper chariots could have arrived in a cloud of dust, the drivers grab Elijah, strip him naked, and wisk him off to a dungeon. Elisha picks up his clothes and crosses back over the Jordan. The king gets a letter from Elijah while he's in prison.

2) Elisha killed Elijah and burned the body as a holocaust offering.

3) Elijah killed Elisha, shaved his hair off and pretended to be Elisha. When he got closer to his usual haunts in Northern Kingdom, some children weren't fooled by the ruse and made fun of bald Elijah pretending to be someone else. Bear killed the children as part of cover up.

reply to post by FriedBabelBroccoli


Because for one I think I would have been told by my parents that I had been burned at some point and two, something as traumatic as being burned would have been burned (pun intended) into my memory or would have left some kind of scar I would think.

I've been afraid of heights my whole life, yet I have never really fallen that far off of anything.

What about animals instincts? Where does their fight or flight mechanism come from?

How do turtles, after traveling thousands of miles away, know exactly where to go to get back to their birth place in order to lay eggs later in life?

How do dolphins know how to swim and antelopes/giraffes know how to walk right after being born?

I believe past life experiences are the only answer to these questions.

reply to post by 3NL1GHT3N3D1


Maybe your PARENTS told you fire burns . . .

As for the turtles;
Orientation and Navigation of Sea Turtles
www.unc.edu...

How can young sea turtles with no prior migratory experience guide themselves across an entire ocean and back? Considerable progress has been made toward understanding how young loggerheads in the Atlantic Ocean navigate. To learn about how baby loggerheads guide themselves during their first migration, follow the hatchling links.

Hatchlings embark on an impressive transoceanic migration, but they do not navigate to targets more specific than broad oceanic regions. In contrast, older turtles acquire an ability to pinpoint specific geographic locations such as feeding areas and nesting beaches.

Recent experiments have demonstrated that sea turtles possess a remarkable ability to exploit positional information in the Earth's magnetic field as a kind of navigational map that can be used to guide movements toward specific goals.

How Sea Turtles Find Their Way
abcnews.go.com...

So I have answered your question, now will you answer mine?

Have you ever had a past life experience?
If so you did you come to it?

EDIT
As to instinctual behaviors that is a debatable subject that can lend itself to both the spirit guiding matter as well as complex neurological pathways found in all species, that is it can actually be hard wired in the brain.

reply to post by FriedBabelBroccoli


Yes I have had past life experiences, even if I cannot remember the details of them. I came to them from insight and deep thought and contemplation.

All we ever experience is life, there are no gaps from any one persons perspective of life. You cannot be aware of non-awareness. Since the only thing we can experience is life, then why should I think I never existed before this life?

Can you remember all of your childhood? Of course not, but you still know you had a childhood. The same goes for past lives, just because you can't remember them doesn't mean they weren't real. You only keep what you need, and all the tiny details are not needed, only life lessons.

reply to post by 3NL1GHT3N3D1


So you believe in past life because you can't remember anything before this life?

Were you not just the one saying that belief of a guy living 3000 years is a pretty large stretch of logic?

reply to post by 3NL1GHT3N3D1

What about animals instincts?

Personally, I think that DNA is aware, and is sort of an oversoul in nature. But I think that instincts are a genetic memory.

Yes I have had past life experiences, even if I cannot remember the details of them. I came to them from insight and deep thought and contemplation.

All we ever experience is life, there are no gaps from any one persons perspective of life. You cannot be aware of non-awareness. Since the only thing we can experience is life, then why should I think I never existed before this life?

Can you remember all of your childhood? Of course not, but you still know you had a childhood. The same goes for past lives, just because you can't remember them doesn't mean they weren't real. You only keep what you need, and all the tiny details are not needed, only life lessons.

I think forgetting can be a blessing, in that everyone is able to start with a clean slate, free of guilt and personal regrets, trauma and loss. It can also be a curse, leaving us to repeat our own mistakes, and like Sisyphus, we have to push that rock back up the hill, all over again.

I think that if reincarnation was a more acceptable notion, and people hadn't been mocked or threatened to be burned at the stake for sharing their fleeting memories, more people would be having vivid and credible experiences.

reply to post by windword


Ummm how many people do you think were ever burned at the stake in the first place?

How many of those do you think were for believing in reincarnation?

Ever hear of India? How about the Union of Myanmar?

reply to post by FriedBabelBroccoli


Every one knows that some guy lived 3000 years ago, but do we have to believe that he have supernatural abilities?

Originally posted by windword
reply to post by 3NL1GHT3N3D1

 

What about animals instincts?

Personally, I think that DNA is aware, and is sort of an oversoul in nature. But I think that instincts are a genetic memory.

Yes I have had past life experiences, even if I cannot remember the details of them. I came to them from insight and deep thought and contemplation.

All we ever experience is life, there are no gaps from any one persons perspective of life. You cannot be aware of non-awareness. Since the only thing we can experience is life, then why should I think I never existed before this life?

Can you remember all of your childhood? Of course not, but you still know you had a childhood. The same goes for past lives, just because you can't remember them doesn't mean they weren't real. You only keep what you need, and all the tiny details are not needed, only life lessons.

I think forgetting can be a blessing, in that everyone is able to start with a clean slate, free of guilt and personal regrets, trauma and loss. It can also be a curse, leaving us to repeat our own mistakes, and like Sisyphus, we have to push that rock back up the hill, all over again.

I think that if reincarnation was a more acceptable notion, and people hadn't been mocked or threatened to be burned at the stake for sharing their fleeting memories, more people would be having vivid and credible experiences.

large parts of the world believe it with out ridicule, India for example. I can sorta agree in principle, but like you mention with a "clean state" of the sole, all clean slates for all intents an purpose are the same thing. I believe that conscious is immaterial an energy for lack of a better description, but also that individual awareness and experience are a unique thing to this life. ie if you reincarnate as different individuals, with different life and experience, then you are not really an individual. Maybe self is the illusion?

reply to post by FriedBabelBroccoli


Too many to count.

People are still being murdered for the perceived notion of witchcraft and sorcery today. St. Jerome declared that the concept of reincarnation was akin to witchcraft and sorcery. The Catholic church banned it in the mid 5th century and anyone who spoke of it was treated as a heretic. You know what the they did to the heretics and witches , right?

reply to post by Redarguo

I believe that conscious is immaterial an energy for lack of a better description, but also that individual awareness and experience are a unique thing to this life. ie if you reincarnate as different individuals, with different life and experience, then you are not really an individual. Maybe self is the illusion?

The ego is an illusion.

I remember many of my past lives, and I'm the same person as I was, except then, I was a little "less me". It's like loosing back on my childhood. I was still me, but with less experience.

reply to post by FriedBabelBroccoli


There is no leap in logic. As I said, all we ever experience is life, meaning there are no gaps in between because you cannot be aware of non-awareness. Since all we have ever experienced is life, it is not illogical to believe we existed before this incarnation.

I think believing a guy has been alive for 3,000 years a little less logical than sticking to what we know to be true. Life is all we know, so there is no such thing as death, only transformation.

Originally posted by windword
reply to post by FriedBabelBroccoli

 

Too many to count.

People are still being murdered for the perceived notion of witchcraft and sorcery today. St. Jerome declared that the concept of reincarnation was akin to witchcraft and sorcery. The Catholic church banned it in the mid 5th century and anyone who spoke of it was treated as a heretic. You know what the they did to the heretics and witches , right?

I am not a fan of the RCC, but your lack of providing any sort of evidence or even a means with which to test theories or provide proofs of anything is getting old.

I get it you prefer emotional arguments that agree with your opinion as opposed to any historical research . . .

According to public news reports the book's editor, Prof. Agostino Borromeo, stated that about 125,000 persons were investigated by the Spanish Inquisition, of which 1.8% were executed (2,250 people). Most of these deaths occurred in the first decade and a half of the Inquisition's 350 year history. In Portugal of the 13,000 tried in the 16th and early 17th century 5.7% were said to have been condemned to death. News articles did not report if Portugal's higher percentage included those sentenced to death in effigy (i.e. an image burnt instead of the actual person). For example, historian Gustav Henningsen reported that statistical tabulations of 50,000 recorded cases tried by nineteen Spanish tribunals between 1540-1700 found 775 people (1.7%) were actually executed while another 700 (1.4%) were sentenced to death in effigy ("El 'banco de datos' del Santo Oficio: Las relaciones de causas de la Inquisición española, 1550-1700", BRAH, 174, 1977). Jewish historian Steven Katz remarked on the Medieval Inquisition that "in its entirety, the thirteenth and fourteenth century Inquisition put very few people to death and sent few people to prison; 90 percent of its sentences were canonical penances"

(The Holocaust in Historical Context, 1994).

LoL at how you ignore the massive holocausts that have been exacted by non-Christian beliefs systems only to focus on anti-Christian rhetoric which is really about Catholics who many don't think even practice Christianity.


So the evidence so far for past life is meditating and what . . . ?

As I have asked many others in this thread prior after they spout some secretive 'mystic' dogma how they came to their past life experience or spoke to their 'ascended masters' or if they asked them any questions and have not gotten an answer yet.

The closest I have gotten was 'I had an experience but the only proof I need is that I can't remember anything before my childhood so it must be true' . . . .

Sorry but that boat don't float.

reply to post by FriedBabelBroccoli


Are you a Christian? If so, where is YOUR proof that Jesus rose from the dead? You seem to set a high double standard when it comes to "proof" of something.

You demand everything in the world for something you don't agree with, yet when it comes to your belief, all you need is hearsay written in a book put together by corrupt men.

reply to post by pthena

In an atomic self teaching . . . self after collapsing disperses into the surroundings and is eventually reintegrated . . . as the stuff . . . of which souls grow from . . . living within . . . , . . . spiritual evolution becomes possible from generation to generation . . .

a shortened version of what you posted earlier, which seems to be your latest on soul theory, and makes it a bit easier to understand for someone like me.
(for the more detailed version, follow the link above the edited by me quote)

Originally posted by FriedBabelBroccoli

Originally posted by windword
reply to post by FriedBabelBroccoli

 

Too many to count.

People are still being murdered for the perceived notion of witchcraft and sorcery today. St. Jerome declared that the concept of reincarnation was akin to witchcraft and sorcery. The Catholic church banned it in the mid 5th century and anyone who spoke of it was treated as a heretic. You know what the they did to the heretics and witches , right?

I am not a fan of the RCC, but your lack of providing any sort of evidence or even a means with which to test theories or provide proofs of anything is getting old.

Evidence to what? That people were killed for heresy?

I get it you prefer emotional arguments that agree with your opinion as opposed to any historical research . . .

What emotional arguments?

According to public news reports the book's editor, Prof. Agostino Borromeo, stated that about 125,000 persons were investigated by the Spanish Inquisition, of which 1.8% were executed (2,250 people). Most of these deaths occurred in the first decade and a half of the Inquisition's 350 year history. In Portugal of the 13,000 tried in the 16th and early 17th century 5.7% were said to have been condemned to death. News articles did not report if Portugal's higher percentage included those sentenced to death in effigy (i.e. an image burnt instead of the actual person). For example, historian Gustav Henningsen reported that statistical tabulations of 50,000 recorded cases tried by nineteen Spanish tribunals between 1540-1700 found 775 people (1.7%) were actually executed while another 700 (1.4%) were sentenced to death in effigy ("El 'banco de datos' del Santo Oficio: Las relaciones de causas de la Inquisición española, 1550-1700", BRAH, 174, 1977). Jewish historian Steven Katz remarked on the Medieval Inquisition that "in its entirety, the thirteenth and fourteenth century Inquisition put very few people to death and sent few people to prison; 90 percent of its sentences were canonical penances"

(The Holocaust in Historical Context, 1994).

LoL at how you ignore the massive holocausts that have been exacted by non-Christian beliefs systems only to focus on anti-Christian rhetoric which is really about Catholics who many don't think even practice Christianity.

So? What's your point?

So the evidence so far for past life is meditating and what . . . ?

As I have asked many others in this thread prior after they spout some secretive 'mystic' dogma how they came to their past life experience or spoke to their 'ascended masters' or if they asked them any questions and have not gotten an answer yet.

The closest I have gotten was 'I had an experience but the only proof I need is that I can't remember anything before my childhood so it must be true' . . . .

I've not said anything like that. If you want to hear about peoples memories and experiences of past lives, go look it up. There's even plenty of threads right here on ATS for that.

Where is the proof of the "voice of God" telling people what to do and what such? Where is the proof that the soul even exists?

Originally posted by 3NL1GHT3N3D1
reply to post by FriedBabelBroccoli

 

Are you a Christian? If so, where is YOUR proof that Jesus rose from the dead? You seem to set a high double standard when it comes to "proof" of something.

You demand everything in the world for something you don't agree with, yet when it comes to your belief, all you need is hearsay written in a book put together by corrupt men.

Pot

meet

kettle.

Have you ever tried to meditate honestly asking Jesus questions?

The reason I don't agree with certain other posters and demand evidence is because I have delved deep into their practices, history, and literature to find understanding. If you want to call me a Christian I would take that as a compliment. You notice when I speak their "mystic" language they find themselves disappearing from the thread with no answer. From my own meditations, astral travels, and participation in past life regressions I disagree and ask questions because I noticed a trend that everyone just believed everything they were told WITHOUT QUESTION.

Well in seeking answers learned to question and everything changed.

Note: Questioning and merely mocking are two separate things, I use them accordingly as I identify blatant BS'ers and legit seekers.

reply to post by FriedBabelBroccoli


Pot meet kettle? The life we have right now is proof enough that life doesn't end. That's like you saying sleep doesn't exist just because you don't remember ever experiencing it.

All you have to believe that Jesus died for our sins then rose from the dead is a book written 2,000 years ago. I think life itself trumps a book as proof of something.

I remember, I'm sorry that you refuse to or can't do the same.

ETA: I ask "Jesus" questions by asking my spirit/soul for answers. His spirit is no different from mine or yours. His spirit/soul is the same energy that gives everything life. He wasn't part of some exclusive club that he's the only member of, that's what religion wants you to think.

reply to post by FriedBabelBroccoli

You notice when I speak their "mystic" language they find themselves disappearing from the thread with no answer.

LOL

Don't flatter yourself, my dear. If people are fleeing you, it's because of your insipid attitude.

Originally posted by windword
reply to post by Redarguo

 

I believe that conscious is immaterial an energy for lack of a better description, but also that individual awareness and experience are a unique thing to this life. ie if you reincarnate as different individuals, with different life and experience, then you are not really an individual. Maybe self is the illusion?

The ego is an illusion.

I remember many of my past lives, and I'm the same person as I was, except then, I was a little "less me". It's like loosing back on my childhood. I was still me, but with less experience.

edit on 2-7-2013 by windword because: (no reason given)

Fair point, I guess this is something that must be personally experienced to know one way or another.