This has been on my mind a lot lately, and since this community is one of the only places I go where the conversation sometimes turns spiritual, this is the only place I could really think to have this discussion.

I learned the other day that one of my relatives has a terminal illness and isn't expected to live much longer. While said relative and I were never very close, it got me thinking about death and what happens when we die. As a Christian, the idea of an afterlife is pleasant to me - I really like to believe that someday I will see all my loved ones again. While reading an article about death (I've been tons of fun at parties lately), I stumbled across a reference to reincarnation. I'd never really thought much about it before, but I started to think on it greatly after the article. While I don't personally believe in it, the thought process behind it made sense - all the universe as one energy, and once energy and consciousness leaves one body, it goes to another ("You are what the entire universe is doing right now in the same way a wave is what the entire ocean is doing.").

The more I thought about reincarnation, the more it really scared me. My life isn't perfect, but I love it. I love the people I get to share it with. When I was born, I really won the lottery in terms of people who I would share my life with. The thought of being born again and possibly not having great parents, or loving grandparents, or excellent friends is sort of scary. I don't like thinking that once I die, I won't remember or care about the people I'm with now. I guess the flip side would be that if reincarnation IS real, I've already done this countless times before now - it's still scary to me. I know that for some it might make them feel very comfortable and maybe even optimistic, but I guess it shows the privilege I've come to enjoy in life.

Sorry for rambling - it's just been heavy on my mind the past few days.

I believe that I will reincarnate along with my loving family members. There are other ways to look at it.

yes, there's a popular belief among reincarnationists that we share karma with a certain group of souls that we incarnate with in various relationship combos life after life, as well as associations in the astral (spirit world). Many of these people also believe that when they have evolved beyond incarnations, they will have complete recall of all their past lives and loved ones, as well as continued eternal access to their association.

But there are others who think we incarnate more randomly, and that it is by grace that we are able to detach and even forget about people we have known.

If reincarnation is a real thing, then would you want to go back to who you were before you are who you are today? Perhaps you were a slave owner on the Barbary Coast before you became who you are now. Or, a cowboy or famous painter. Doesn't matter, would you want to go back to that time and relive it again? Knowing what you know now?

In this same line of thought, when you pass away from who you are now, maybe the next life will be totally different and better and you wouldn't want to return to "now" and continue on.

I'm not a believer in reincarnation or anything spiritual in nature. I used to believe that I would see my relatives who have passed on, but I don't believe that anymore. I don't know what to believe so I just don't believe in anything. But the possibilities are possible, I guess.

Nobody knows what will happen after death. And, whatever it is, we can't do one thing about it.

Reincarnation is real! You can experience it through 'guided past life meditations' on utube or hire a hypnotherapist to regress you to a past life or in-between life' ----- although neither would satisfy a 'scientist'.

We (intelligent energy) reincarnate in 'soul groups' so your friends and relatives are very likely in your 'soul group' and you will be able to contact them and/or be with them in the 'in-between life' otherwise called 'heaven'. We are not 'human' and will not be in heaven even though we can appear as 'humans' to other humans or even spirits if there is a need to do that.

As far as your concern. You are currently a human ---- no need to be concerned. Your body will 'die' before you have to be 'concerned' about reincarnation again ----- it is a choice. There are other alternatives.

Yes, the fact you are here as a 'human' indicates you have 'reincarnated' many times before this one. And you chose to reincarnate and to a great extent planned the 'major' issues and pleasantries you have experienced.

Remember we are reincarnating to 'learn and progress' so I wouldn't expect life to flow without problems and opportunities we can learn from. We should all be caring to others experiencing the 'problem side' of life.

You should read 'Journey of Souls' by Newton. He details the process very well from a series of many recorded regressions of different people.

Don't worry about such 'small stuff' it is actually all 'small stuff' to an eternal being.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/04/2017 06:57PM by spiritist.

She grew up in a part of Germany that was near Poland. While she did not speak Polish, she could recognize it.

She told me that as a very small child, many of my early words and even songs were Polish. My mother, on the other hand, said they were nothing more than the typical babblings of any toddler.

I remember feeling intense fear the first time I saw the image of a swastika. I had no idea what it was, but it terrified me. If I look at this fear through the lens my grandmother provided, this fear makes sense.

Grandma believed that I had been a Polish Jew who had died at the hands of the Nazis. I was born in 1947, so this is in line with some of what Mr. Stevenson wrote.

I can't claim to have particular feelings of connection to either Poland or Judaism, but I have always believed that my grandmother, who was well-educated, multi-lingual, and a pretty clear thinker, was not someone whose views could be lightly dismissed.

I don't know if this is still true, but during the time I was converting to Judaism, and for several years afterwards, there were at least a handful of "go to" rabbis in Southern California who people (both non-Jews as well as Jews) could be referred to if those people had reason to believe they were once Jews caught up in the Holocaust, or were reporting things which could logically lead to that conclusion.

Some of these were "converts to Judaism" (either already converts, or they would decide to become converts in the future), many were not.

Although some people reporting Holocaust memories and experiences were born Jews, many were not---but they knew things that only Jews in the Holocaust would reasonably know, and sometimes they were haunted by persistent wisps of what appeared to be "memories." If they were asked to describe or explain certain things [historical facts, but not the kind of "history" that anyone writes down or necessarily even talks about], they could---sometimes in great detail (which would later prove to be factual with research, often research in foreign languages such as Polish, the Baltic languages, etc.).

They usually had learned to be careful about who they talked to with these impressions and memories, but (sometimes at the urgings of therapists) if they ever talked to the "right" people, they would be referred to one of the rabbis who, inadvertently and usually unsought by those rabbis, became sort of "specialists" in what appeared to be reborn, former-Jewish-Holocaust victims.

Mostly the rabbis listened, asking questions where clarifications were needed.

I used to know a woman who was referred to such a rabbi, and when she told her story (which she did not understand), the rabbi said that it appeared that (in her former life) she was a child, probably a male child, who was in the process of learning the Hebrew alphabet (this was the pivotal part of her memories) when her village was exterminated. When she was asked to describe what she remembered of the last day or so of her life, she described a gassing van in great detail (though, at the time this happened to this child, the child was unaware of what was going on in that van because the child was so young). She was describing to the rabbi something that she, as that child, never understood, even while it was happening to "her"/him back then. (She was also gesturing with her hands, as she talked, in ways that are characteristic of small children who learn Hebrew in that part of Europe.)

There are a good many Jews who, informally, accept that at least many of the victims of the Holocaust "are" (in modern/contemporary times) living (or have lived) additional lives, and my sense is that rabbis who are involved in converting non-Jews into Jews often come to accept that at least some of those they "convert" were, in their former lives, Jews who are "now" (sometimes with full awareness), returning to the tribe.

The concept of reincarnation in Judaism is called "gilgul" (and it IS a part of normative Judaism, though many Jews do not believe in it). Although the specifics of the gilgul concept (which is mostly known as a part of mystical Judaism) are not identical to non-Jewish understandings of reincarnation, at base, gilgul is recognizably belief and acceptance of the reincarnation concept.

The details of the different takes on reincarnation may vary...the general philosophical/theological concept is the same.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/06/2017 04:04AM by Tevai.

If the universe operates on the principle of cause and effect, then what will happen after death is the result of what we are doing now (thus spake Buddha).

The physical universe operates on cause and effect (except for that pesky entropy thing that says some of the cause will always be forever lost). Human psychology does not.

Here is a link to a fairly comprehensive article on reincarnation research:

https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/past-life-memories-research-overview

Interesting article!

I have heard that people who die 'prematurely' reincarnate again quicker than normal.

This is the first time I have seen any numbers ------ 16 months!

This is quicker than I would have thought but that's what I get for 'thinking'!

I view life after life with mixed trepidation.

There is no memory of where we came from. Will we remember this life when we're gone from it?

Because if we are reincarnated then this life's memory will be scrubbed like the ones that came before.

Sort of like a computer's hard drive that gets reprogrammed to start fresh again.

There are three people in this lifetime I've met, known, and loved who I had the 'deja vu' sense when we met we had known each other in a previous lifetime.

One of them I dreamt about the night before we met that we were on our third honeymoon. It was a distinctive dream. I saw his personage clearly, and heard his voice clearly (both distinctive features.) We had not met up to that time.

I wondered the next day why I would dream such a vivid dream about someone I hadn't met and didn't know who he was. I saw him for the first time later that same day when I went to my first meeting as a volunteer for Big Brothers/Big Sisters. He was on the board of volunteers, and got up to announce the guest speaker. I was gobsmacked.

He passed away when I was 22 and he was 29. I dreamt about his dying before that happened. After his death his spirit came to me at least once that I was aware of to give me a warning. I had a dream shortly after his death but before I knew he was deceased that he and I were married, in heaven.

He was a never Mo, and a nuclear scientist who'd been raised Presbyterian in Amish country. He moved to the Morridor as a young adult, and that is where we met after I moved back there myself as a young adult. It was meant that we were to meet.

It took me quite a long time before I understood that first dream I had of him. Third honeymoon simply meant third lifetime where we'd known each other (I now believe.) So if that is so, then we'd have to have been reincarnated several times, at least.

The thing that I find disconcerting is the level of control I feel about that. I've determined it to be God's will for my life, here and now, and in the hereafter.

But I still haven't a clue why it's necessary to begin and start over again and again in different lives, different bodies, with different outcomes. His and my meeting in this lifetime was a "hit and miss" for want of a better descriptive. I thought my experience was unique until I found a book written in ancient times (in modern print,) that described similar experiences of other young women that mine was patterned after.

As for a spirit life, I believe there's that too based on personal experiences with loved ones who've crossed over.

All of your memories from all your lives are stored in the Akash, a permanent information structure whose physics currently eludes us. Your brain grows nano-sized structures that are quantum-entangled with the Akash, which allows your brain to access memories while in the body. It can’t form memories to other lives. But the memories are real, and available in fine detail, when you leave this dimension.

The reason you have premonitions and intuition is that the future (a field of probabilities) you are most aligned with pulls on the present the hardest. Our lives orbit these chaotic attractors of our apparent future. The job of intuition is to let them pull you. In a sense, what is supposed to happen has already happened. Otherwise it could not attract itself into existence. That’s not to say that it will go through the formality of actually occurring. But, a positive outlook combined with a willingness to “go with the flow” is the surest path to the best of your possible futures.

Babyloncansuckit,

Are there any books that articulate in greater detail the ideas you have expressed in these two posts?

I believe that we will be transformed into our higher and best selves in the next life. It's part of God's gift of grace for having endured through hell on esrth.

Huh ?

Hah!

Ditto, dta! Lol

I dont believe in it. The numbers don't add up, nor would I choose it if it were real. I think of all those who suffer around the world. In oppressive regimes, third world impoverished countries.

Why would anyone take such a chance. What an incredibly stupid thing to choose.

This life is enough for me. Im not greedy and don't need to do it over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Ugh. That would be hell.

Everyone can believe whatever works best for them. I personally don't think we really have any idea what if anything comes next, which is a good reason to live this life well and to the fullest.