If you were not offended why did you say you were....
I stated that I am not offended by the Bahai interpretation of reincarnation, but by the way you keep on repeating it in this discussion even though I have replied to it expecting an answer which I did not get.
So when I give my perspective, its based on my conditioning?
Obviously, what you state is in tune with the bahai beliefs, without a hint of agnosticism or without any interest in looking at the other's perspective or viewpoint. You had also not replied to me.
But when you give yours its not conditioning because you are psychologically more advanced and transcended such thoughts?
I had been a nonbeliever in reincarnation earlier but revised my beliefs upon study of facts and case studies of reincarnation of both eastern and western origin.
Psychiatry as a professional body where I live does not endorse reincarnation or any religious belief. You will not find any statements from the RANZCP (Royal Australian and New Zealand college of psychiatrists) that endorse psychiatry. I'm a medical doctor btw who spent seven practicing psychiatry, so what you say is in no way part of the culture of psychological medicine where I live.
Australia and New Zealand are recent nations just a century old, and made up of immigrants and also convicts forcibly and tragically deported from Britain.
India is an ancient civilization many milleniums old where the likes of Krishna, Buddha and Mahavira had taught about rebirth/reincarnation more than 2500 years back and created techniques for deeper study of the mind. We have a well-established body of psychiatrists trained in modern psychiatry as well.
I have also indicated the names of those western psychiatrists and psychologists whose background may not be Australian though.
A cousin of mine is a psychiatrist working in the U.K. and upon conversation with him, found that he was open to the idea of reincarnation and had met Dr. Brian Weiss, one of the leading western proponents of the theory of reincarnation, in a conference in the U.K.
Mindfulness therapy is certainly endorsed as part of cognitive behavioural therapy but not reincarnation. Most Buddhists (I'm married to one) don't believe in reincarnation and understand concepts of rebirth/samsara quite differently from Hindus. Tibetan Buddhists are certainly an exception.
Rebirth (Buddhism) - Wikipedia
Buddhism does not believe in a soul but it maintains that there is a stream of constantly changing consciousness and Sankharas or psychological impresssions and this is what undergoes rebirth.
It is not very different from the Hindu perspective with commonalities of karma and raag-dvesh or craving-aversion.
Reincarnation - Wikipedia
Perhaps in India where belief in reincarnation is the prevalent among a relatively high proportion of the population.
No, I am talking about the west here as indicated by the names I have put forward and growing adherents there.
Here is an article on the growing adherents of reincarnation in the west...
Remembrances of Lives Past (Published 2010)
IN one of his past lives, Dr. Paul DeBell believes, he was a caveman. The gray-haired Cornell-trained psychiatrist has a gentle, serious manner, and his appearance, together with the generic shrink décor of his office leather couch, granite-topped coffee table makes this pronouncement seem particularly jarring.
In that earlier incarnation, “I was going along, going along, going along, and I got eaten,” said Dr. DeBell, who has a private practice on the Upper East Side where he specializes in hypnotizing those hoping to retrieve memories of past lives. Dr. DeBell likes to reflect on how previous lives can alter one’s sense of self. He, for example, is more than a psychiatrist in 21st-century Manhattan; he believes he is an eternal soul who also inhabited the body of a Tibetan monk and a conscientious German who refused to betray his Jewish neighbors in the Holocaust.
Belief in reincarnation, he said, “allows you to experience history as yours. It gives you a different sense of what it means to be human.”
Reincarnation is an attractive theory. Your experience of meditation is proof to you but it is not proof to one who hasn't shared that experience. It is not part of my worldview but I can see how it could be helpful and comforting.
Just because you do not have the experience does not mean that you should reject it completely without benefit of doubt.
There are case studies of this sort which has resulted in regression of knowledge rather than progression in the past even in the world of science.
The
Chandrasekhar Limit is named after the Nobel prize winning Indian scientist
Subramanyam Chandrasekhar which lead to great advancements in astrophysics and understanding of black holes.
However, when he presented his concept of the Chandrasekhar Limit at the Royal Astronomical Society in London in 1935, he was publicly ridiculed by the British physicist Sir Arthur Eddington. Chandrasekhar expressed the view later on, that Eddington's view was racially motivated.
Chandrasekhar was vindicated later on decades later, by more proofs and experimental results that proved that his theory was correct, and he was rewarded the Nobel prize in 1983.
As per academician and scientist Arthur I. Miller, the
blind opposition towards Chandrasekhar put back the world of science and regressed it.
In Miller's view:
Chandra's discovery might well have transformed and accelerated developments in both physics and astrophysics in the 1930s. Instead, Eddington's heavy-handed intervention lent weighty support to the conservative community astrophysicists, who steadfastly refused even to consider the idea that stars might collapse to nothing. As a result, Chandra's work was almost forgotten.
