what can a soul reincarnate into?

[Rainbow Mage]

I picked reincarnate into anything, but it's my personal view. Not all Kemetics believe in reincarnation.

 

[Surya Deva]

The obsenity I see is in the opressiveness of this fatalistic worldview that robs the child of his freedom. Even though I don't really believe it is true, the philosophy itself is still like a demonic possession even if there is no demon.

I think Madhuri is right, you do not have an accurate understanding of reincarnation or the law of karma. The law of karma is not fatalistic, rather it is the middle ground between determinism and free will - free will within determined parameters. Your past actions are determinants of your circumstances, but your current actions are free.

The law of karma is law of manifestation between cause and effect. It operates in the mind as such: every action you do, leaves an impression in your unconscious mind known as samskaras. If you regularly repeat that action those impressions become stronger and stronger and become habit patterns. These habit patterns surface everytime a stimulus is presented that triggers it. However, you can weaken a habit pattern by consciously changing your habits. Thus you are free to design your life as you want. There is a maxim in Yoga which says, "As you think, so you become" You have total freedom through the power of your intention to redesign your life at any moment. However, understand that habit patterns have a certain power and are not easy to break. Hence, while you can consciously change a habit pattern, you still are very much under its power and influence, until you have completely resolved it.

Reincarnation is the result of leaving your body with samkaras still lodged in your soul's memory. As samkaras require a stimulus to be triggered and a vehicle to be expressed through, the soul reincarnates again to deal with its unresolved samskaras. Hence why the physical plane of reality is called the plane of action(karmabhumi) it is only here that the soul can work through its samskaras and nowhere else. It is only in this life alone the soul can achieve liberation(not in the afterlife) and it does this by working through its samskaras. When it reaches a point where it no longer has any samsakaras it is completely free.

 

[Hawkins]

what do you believe, what does your religious tradition preach?

A human body can accomodate perhaps up to 7 spirits other than your own spirit (yet the shape of your own spirit is quite distinguishable). The nature of the spirits remains unknown, perhaps from high end creatures such as the ancient homo erectus or apes or the like (uncertain).

A human soul on the other hand is taking a transparant form by default (they can still be seen by special "angelic means" or "special devices" and can be described as "a worm" (to reflect that the relationship between your body and your soul is like "worm and cocoon". Whey you die your soul will try to get out of your body (transparant to others) just like how worms trying to get out of their cocoons.

That said, some buddhists practised the so-called "heaven eye" which allows them to see things in the spiritual realm. It happened that they saw how those spirits (in a visible form) leaving the dead bodies to re-enter a new body (usually of newly born humans or children) as their new house. The buddists thus mistakenly thought that those spirits are the soul of the dead person. So they philosophically created the "theory" of re-incarnation.

 

[dyanaprajna2011]

In most forms of Buddhism, there are six primary levels that one can be reborn into. The top two layers are the god layers, the devas and asuras. The next two are human and animal. And the last two are the pretas (hungry ghosts), and naraka (the hell realm). Each realm has a corresponding virtue or vice that predominates it. For instance, naraka is dominated by anger, one of the three poisons. Preta is dominated by lust. So, in Buddhism, one can be reborn as a human, animal, demon, or god, depending on one's karma.

 

[Valjean]

I found this on the net last week. Interesting perspective: The Egg

 

[Kathryn]

I don't believe in reincarnation. I DO believe that time is not linear - linear time is just our limited perspective and limited minds trying to make some sense of concepts that are too large for us to grasp well.

I also believe in, for lack of a better phrase, "genetic memory." I believe our ancestor's experiences and lives can impact us genetically, allowing us to feel at times like we "remember" being other people in other places and times in history.

 

[Mr Orange]

As a Buddhist, i don't believe in reincarnation-however i believe in rebirth (to break free and awaken from samsara) Yet can someone please explain how non living creatures such as rocks or a river be part of the karma laws? Thanks

Talking about rocks there is a Buddhist story.... its goes something like this.

One day there was a Monk who lived in the mountains at a Monastery, who fed birds everyday between his meditations. On one perticualar day as he was feeding the birds he noticed a stone on the floor. The Monk picked it up and threw it into the air. Sadley he hit a bird and killed it. The Monk didn't notice. A few days later as the Monk was walking to feed the birds a rock fell on him and killed him. This is a a story to remind us about the laws of karma and how we must becareful.

Yet if rocks are bond to the laws of karma...does this story still have meaning (obviously it was not the stones fault that it was thrown-yet would the rock pay its part in the karmatic laws?)

 

[dyanaprajna2011]

As a Buddhist, i don't believe in reincarnation-however i believe in rebirth (to break free and awaken from samsara) Yet can someone please explain how non living creatures such as rocks or a river be part of the karma laws? Thanks

Talking about rocks there is a Buddhist story.... its goes something like this.

One day there was a Monk who lived in the mountains at a Monastery, who fed birds everyday between his meditations. On one perticualar day as he was feeding the birds he noticed a stone on the floor. The Monk picked it up and threw it into the air. Sadley he hit a bird and killed it. The Monk didn't notice. A few days later as the Monk was walking to feed the birds a rock fell on him and killed him. This is a a story to remind us about the laws of karma and how we must becareful.

Yet if rocks are bond to the laws of karma...does this story still have meaning (obviously it was not the stones fault that it was thrown-yet would the rock pay its part in the karmatic laws?)

From my understanding, in Buddhism karma only affects living, sentient beings, regardless of what realm they are in, to guide us toward the Dharma. It has no effect on things that cannot, nor need, release from samsara. Samsara only affects things that live, die, and are reborn. Rocks do not fit this category. What I wonder is if plants do fit in this idea.

 

[St Giordano Bruno]

I can’t see how a plant or a rock could possess anything like a sense of self or intelligence so I kind of have to rule them out. But it may give some people like Prince Charles a nice fuzzy wuzzie feeling that their plants a listening to them as they are engaging with them in one way conversation. Maybe he likes to think he is talking to his ex as she has become a rose which is named in memory of her.

 

[Madhuri]

You can see it as the limitations of my metaphysics if you like. I don't believe in souls or spirits animating living things so much as living things creating spirits by the choices they make. I see the physical universe as a womb in which we develop and are born from. To go back into a womb in that way makes no sense to me. Reincarnation for me equates with taking away the promise of new life from a child and imposing someone elses sin (or karma if you like) upon them. I find that very repellent.


I am sure I do not understand it like you do at all.


Yes but I prefer the word spirit because the word "soul" seems to have more confused origins to me. The spirit is the actual Self. You are a spirit. I am a spirit. The spirit simply means a non-physical aspect of reality that is what it is by its own nature and choices.

I find meaning and value in religions and philosophies only starting from the scientific worldview and it is difficult for me to see any meaning and value in these from outside of that context.


Yeah I don't believe in that. Life is a physical process that can be described and modeled mathematically. Living organisms are self-organizing dynamic structures and form in a far from equillibrium environment as a consequence of nonlinear mathematics.


The spirit is eternal because as I said it exists and develops by its own nature and choices. Physical things are temporary because they are what they are by the mathematical relationships they have within the whole universe and so external events can come along and erase fragile things like our body and minds.


Not in my belief. In my belief a child is a completely new creation in the world with all the possibilites of the future open to it. What comes from the past is certainly real but is circumstantial only but definitely not the child himself. That is my basic objection. You are saying that the child himself is this old thing with baggage from the past and that is what I find obscene. I will tell the child that that there are no limitations and his life is his to make as he chooses and not something made before he was born and bound by some hopeless karmic destiny. The obsenity I see is in the opressiveness of this fatalistic worldview that robs the child of his freedom. Even though I don't really believe it is true, the philosophy itself is still like a demonic possession even if there is no demon.

I guess I am just too western world in that way.

All I can say is that your perception of this concept is just as subjective (and illusory) as anybody else's. It is only an imagining and presumably influenced by your religious peers who doubtlessly condemn eastern concepts and put a negative light on them.

It is good to note though, that when someone of eastern religion uses the term 'soul' it equates more with the Abrahamic idea of 'spirit'. This is important to be aware of in such discussions.