Reincarnation

Post Reply New Topic

Just curious if anyone belives in this? I know I do, as I have had memory dreams of a past life for many years now. Curiously only of one past life, but maybe thats the only one I need to know about. Does anyone else have any thoughts on the matter?

I don't exactly believe in reincarnation, as I am more of a naturalist. Not to say that I don't like the idea of reincarnation, because it sounds fun to me . Sometimes I imagine myself as the reincarnation of a famous person who is dead now, like Rene Descartes (as you can tell by my username) or Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton. I don't particularly like the idea of coming back as an animal, though. I'd rather come back as another human .

I don't believe in reincarnation . . . I am 99% certain that I have not been here before and if it was, it was as an animal, not a human.

But here's a thought-provoking theory . . . suppose reincarnation was true, that means some of us have been here before and some of us probably haven't, because look at how population has grown. Could it be that the ones who have been here before are the NT's because they somehow instinctively know how to act, and the new ones could be those on the spectrum because we are just learning about the world? And that's why we don't get it? Because we've never been here before.

I definitely believe in reincarnation; always have done. I remember being shocked when I first heard someone use the word for it (reincarnation) and say it was lies... I also remember a couple of past lives. Well, I guess they're past lives as they aren't anywhere I've ever been before in this life!!

As for the 'the population has expanded so we can't all have been on Earth before' thing - that's not exactly true. There's no reason we can't all have been here before; just perhaps we weren't all alive at once. You don't necessarily go straight back into another life when you die, some people hang on in 'heaven' or the afterlife or whatever you want to call it until the time is right for them to go back and learn more.

I have shared my experiences with a few friends and some of them have mentioned a kind of "holding area" between one life and the next, with remarkable similarity in experience actually. I am lucky in that my mother has always been quite "spiritual" and we have a strong history of reeincarnatory experiences in my family on my mothers side.
I think I have never really questioned it as it makes so much more sense to me than the idea of heaven and hell etc.

As to the "new souls" qury...if AS is a sympton of never being here before, how could AS people have memories of past lives?

Everything else in life is cyclical; why should this be any different?

So what kind of experiences have folks had? Mine were quite graphic really, it seems I was in the second world war, and I saw/experienced my death too. This was all on the Eastern front. I also have memories of a wife and children, and a few other little things.

The notion of reincarnation is just as BS as the notion of an afterlife. Dualistic crap. People who claim they remember "past lives" are hallucinating, lying, or it was just part of a dream.

I remember playing on a rocky beach near some cliffs with some other kids. I remember the clothes I was wearing (well, looking down at them), the other children, can picture the setting in extreme detail, etc. Looked out across the sea, then went to sit down and try and dangle my feet in. Fell in somehow, then the dress dragged me under, and I kinda looked up and could see the sunlight in the water and that's about it. So I assume I either drowned or passed out and was rescued. Either way I guess it was an important moment or left a big enough impact on my psyche for me to remember it in the present.

Though I wouldn't write it off as 'twould take a lot of faith to be certain of something after death, it seems illogical.

If the feeling of continuity of consciousness is not preserved then it does not make any difference if we reincarnate at all.

Its just one of life's mysteries, I sort of believe in reincarnation, there are some
vague memories I have of lying in a street in front of a limestone building, possibly
in Paris, it was just getting dark and it was raining, I knew I was dying, but I wasn't
in any pain, then everything went dark. It wasn't a bad memory, it was actually very
pleasant and very peaceful

I think belief in reincarnation is just as valid as belief in jesus, mohammed, or the flying spaghetti monster. The difference is that *I* have first hand experince of it, and it is something within my family too. I have also had other confirmation from more then one medium/spiritualist who have said basically the same thing.

Anyway the idea of this thread was to see if anyone else had such experiences they were willing to share, not to debate if we were hallucination, demented or ret*d or not.

Did you "realise" it was Paris, or did you spot a sign or something saying it was Paris? I had a memory of my house, which I simply "knew" was in southern germany, and likewise with my wifes name. Curiously I have no idea of my own name.

Odin all you had to say was, "I don't believe in reincarnation."

That would have sufficed.

The vitriol wasn't necessary. You say theists are hateful? You're pretty venomous yourself. For all it can do, science can't cure a dodgy character. Science doesn't require anyone to be decent human beings, but it does encourage all the bad stuff with the promise of $$$. And Odin you are proof of that.

i agree that we can have experiences that may seem in some way uncanny, such as memories or notions of events, places and suchlike that could not have been sensorily experienced in our own everyday concious lives.

however, i feel it is necessary to state that the western idea of reincarnation, of a percieved distinct population of "soul selves" that return to earth after death in a new body, seems to me to be a romanticised and over simplified notion whose basis lies solely in a fundamental misunderstanding of eastern spiritual thought in western civilisations. in hinduism, for example, the notion of reincarnation is thought of as nothing other than what one might term the "god essence", or brahman, in the form of atman, ie the manifestation of god in the individual. as the gong song goes, "you are i and i am you". this "god essence" or soul, if you will, exists within all. in the gnostic sense, we are "sparks of divine light", trapped within a body of gross matter, that originates in the godhead and goes back there after death, however there is no individuality that can be attributed to a soul etc....

in simple terms, the soul is not per se an individual.