Reincarnations

[River Sea]

@Bharat Jhunjhunwala and @tornbetweentwoworlds

I believe people can reincarnate.

What are your thoughts about reincarnation?

What purposes do you think reincarnation helps with?

 

[Bharat Jhunjhunwala]

We evolve through reincarnation. Like going to higher class every year.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

reincarnate.

Not again!

(forgive the pun ...)

 

[Spice]

We evolve through reincarnation. Like going to higher class every year.

I totally agree and from a Christian "based" perspective. Yep, I'm one of the weird kids. LOL

 

[sun rise]

What purposes do you think reincarnation helps with?

The short answer is "learning". We learn to be balanced humans by experiencing all sorts of different temporary identities: rich/poor, male/female and so forth. We also get to experience on the human level the scientific principle of action and reaction. If we're kind, then we experience kindness. If we're nasty, well, we learn what nasty feels like as a recipient.

 

[Quintessence]

If there is one constant of reality and the universe, that constant is change. Everything undergoes change and transformation, restructuring and recycling into something else. Everything. Reincarnation, if you will. Everything always gets disassembled and stuffed into something else. As far as I'm concerned, reincarnation is a fact of how reality and the universe operates. It's the water cycle, the soil cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the web of life, all of it - all reused and recycled in the constantly, eternally changing reality.

Half the point of the classical monotheist conception of god is to stand in stark contrast to the ephemeral and constantly changing nature of everything - it is the beyond everything and the blueprint or mathematical equation maker that is eternal and unchanging. Not really my thing as far as god-concepts go, but I get the appeal. Eastern religions have a similar concept in moksha, or liberation from that one constant of reality that is constant change and being endlessly recycled. Also not really my thing, but I get the appeal.

 

[SalixIncendium]

Reincarnation is bondage in samsara. It is a result of attachment to transactional reality and desire for the world. Reincarnation is a product of ignorance of one's true nature...avidya. I see it as more of an opportunity for Self-realization than I do having any purpose to help anything.

 

[☆Dreamwind☆]

I believe in reincarnation, I just haven't met anyone who I believe really reincarnated yet. Because everyone who has told me so, have all been fabulous. I've met two different people claiming to be Cleopatra, one Marilyn Monroe, one Abraham Lincoln, and one mythological dragon. Now when someone tells me their prior reincarnation was some person who lived an average life, or was a tree or something that I'll believe.

 

[JustGeorge]

I believe in reincarnation, I just haven't met anyone who I believe really reincarnated yet. Because everyone who has told me so, have all been fabulous. I've met two different people claiming to be Cleopatra, one Marilyn Monroe, one Abraham Lincoln, and one mythological dragon. Now when someone tells me their prior reincarnation was some person who lived an average life, or was a tree or something that I'll believe.

I don't remember it, but I get a strong feeling I was sitting in a jail cell a time or two ago.

And I don't even think I was a politician. I think I was just the run of the mill sort.

 

[Vinayaka]

I don't remember it, but I get a strong feeling I was sitting in a jail cell a time or two ago.

And I don't even think I was a politician. I think I was just the run of the mill sort.

I coulda swore you were Queen Victoria.

 

[SalixIncendium]

I coulda swore you were Queen Victoria.

That was me.

 

[JustGeorge]

That was me.

Is that where you got your dressing sense from?

 

[Vinayaka]

I believe in reincarnation, I just haven't met anyone who I believe really reincarnated yet. Because everyone who has told me so, have all been fabulous. I've met two different people claiming to be Cleopatra, one Marilyn Monroe, one Abraham Lincoln, and one mythological dragon. Now when someone tells me their prior reincarnation was some person who lived an average life, or was a tree or something that I'll believe.

Those claimants, more often than not, keep the same gender too. I'm with you on this. Personally, I'm pretty confident I was a worker in Calcutta, but associated somehow with foreign (WW2) soldiers. Perhaps a helper, or friend, or servant.

 

[SalixIncendium]

Is that where you got your dressing sense from?

No...that's from my Marie Antoinette days.

 

[George-ananda]

@Bharat Jhunjhunwala and @tornbetweentwoworlds

I believe people can reincarnate.

What are your thoughts about reincarnation?

What purposes do you think reincarnation helps with?

I am a believer myself from the evidence and teachings of many spiritual types for reincarnation.

The purpose as I understand it is for our soul to grow in wisdom and spirituality through the challenges of the physical plane. The ultimate goal is to understand our spark of consciousness is One with all consciousness. Selfishness should shrink and lovingness should grow each lifetime.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

I believe in reincarnation, I just haven't met anyone who I believe really reincarnated yet. Because everyone who has told me so, have all been fabulous. I've met two different people claiming to be Cleopatra, one Marilyn Monroe, one Abraham Lincoln, and one mythological dragon. Now when someone tells me their prior reincarnation was some person who lived an average life, or was a tree or something that I'll believe.

Interesting...I've never met anyone who claims to have been any famous person from history, although I have heard/read some such stories...

As for my own experiences/memories, I have been no one famous or powerful or influential:

* A Spanish-speaking woman name Maria, who had a daughter and died in the middle 1950s, a few years before I was born...
* A mixed-race Australian man who was a merchant marine and died in the early to middle 1920s during a shipwreck...
* Several lifetimes before, I was an English gentry who as a youth had an affair with an Irish maid, who was sent away to America where she died after giving birth to our daughter. I spent the rest of that life drinking myself senseless because I didn't have the nerve to go with my love...

Edit to correct date of death as merchant marine...

 

[☆Dreamwind☆]

I don't remember it, but I get a strong feeling I was sitting in a jail cell a time or two ago.

And I don't even think I was a politician. I think I was just the run of the mill sort.

I thought we were discussing past lives, not your super shady, double-life.

 

[JustGeorge]

I thought we were discussing past lives, not your super shady, double-life.

If only I had energy for that...

 

[Aed-Maroc]

God is the Most Great, all praise and glory belongs to God, there is no god worthy of worship except God.

A mighty celestial spirit from the heavens once told me, "I have always loved you", a spirit I had never seen or known before, and that's how I know, or at least how I cognize it, that I have lived before this life.

Or at least my soul have (assuming I'm not the soul itself), since what answered the spirit with "I have always loved you too" was the soul (clearly it knew the spirit from before).

But I observed the soul saying this, so can I be the soul itself? It's complicated.

But either way, I will exist after death.

And the Meeting with God is True.

Everything seems to point to it, while nothing seem to point to the opposite (non-existence), since atheism and materialisme (belief in body and brain and matter) is falsehood.

 

[Bharat Jhunjhunwala]

If there is one constant of reality and the universe, that constant is change. Everything undergoes change and transformation, restructuring and recycling into something else. Everything. Reincarnation, if you will. Everything always gets disassembled and stuffed into something else. As far as I'm concerned, reincarnation is a fact of how reality and the universe operates. It's the water cycle, the soil cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the web of life, all of it - all reused and recycled in the constantly, eternally changing reality.

Half the point of the classical monotheist conception of god is to stand in stark contrast to the ephemeral and constantly changing nature of everything - it is the beyond everything and the blueprint or mathematical equation maker that is eternal and unchanging. Not really my thing as far as god-concepts go, but I get the appeal. Eastern religions have a similar concept in moksha, or liberation from that one constant of reality that is constant change and being endlessly recycled. Also not really my thing, but I get the appeal.

A problem I am grappling with is the nature of moksha. Is it dynamic with brahman. Or is it static. Hindu texts say both things. 1. That brahman DESIRED to become many. 2. He is CONSTANT.