I’d really like to….

I really like the idea of it. I don’t know if this is what really happens or not, but I like to believe that something happens.

I don’t believe in reincarnation, which is strange, because in a previous existence, I did.

@BoBo1946 LOL! That is VERY strange!! :)

I don’t believe in reincarnation, per se. However, since matter is never technically destroyed, you could say that I believe in a certain form of reincarnation, that is, the fact that the particular stuff that makes all of us up never really dies and moves on to compose something else.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard…. I am stardust.

I like the idea but I don’t believe in it.

@BoBo1946…...That was a good one.

Yes, I do….believe in reincarnation. I was on once on “Flubber” which was the penpal round robin precursor to the Fluther in the late 1900’s. So, the Fluther is technically, “Son of Flubber.”

Seriously…I do believe in reincarnation, I was just being silly. I’ve remembered past lives spontaneously, met people I knew in those lives (which can be unnerving) and just felt at home in most places where I have lived before.

Having said that, time isn’t linear….so really we are living a lot of lives at the same time just in different dimensions of reality. And really if nothing is real not even this life (as some believe) then even reincarnation does not exist. But I still believe in it because I enjoy the holograhic illusion I have created. :)

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard…to finish off what you started….

“We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
back to the Garden…”

from “Woodstock” by my favorite Joni Mitchell (love this song…best songwriter ever.)

The rest of the lyrics here:
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/joni+mitchell/woodstock_20075381.html

I have talked to people that believe that they remember parts of their past lives. I don’t and I don’t believe in anything that is not proven to me. Subjective and anecdotal descriptions are not proof.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Are you talking along the lines of ‘matter can neither be created nor destroyed’?

Nope. This is the only life we have. Make the best of it.

I don’t know. But if this was another go around, I’m pissed that I haven’t figured out a way to be rich yet again.

@Ron_C I agree – it’s hard to take things seriously even if you do believe in them! My boss says that when she was very young she could read heiroglyphics and the teachers couldn’t explain it, then when she went through past life regression, she found out she’d been an ancient Egyptian priestess.
That said – she’s a compulsive liar so it doesn’t hold much weight with me… ha ha!

(Why is it that when we think we’re reincarnated, we’re always a reincarnated Queen or Princess or something! Never just a regular person. I mean, how many reincarnations of Queen Victoria can there be????)

@MissCupid it is probably good practice not to believe anything that a compulsive liar says. I had one working for me. The medical officer caught him in numerous lies and sent him for a psych eval. He was very good, he came back with a note from the psychiatrist telling us not to pick on the guy. I now no longer believe in psychiatrists either.

There is a scientist who has undertaken a study of children all over the world who spontaneously recall lifetimes from before——with very specific details that they could not have known from other sources. Sometimes they speak a language that is different from their family. Some of these cases have been able to be traced back…for example a child might give a description of where they lived and what they did and this can be traced back. There is one case which is quite extraordinary….and whether you are skeptical or not…it is a very interesting read:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1209795/Reincarnated-Our-son-World-War-II-pilot-come-life.html

Further information as to why I asked the question… I went to India in February and was shown around by locals we were visiting. They took us to this church out in rural India, surrounded by monkeys. I’m not religious but I think some places of worship are beautiful and have no problems looking round them. However, after about 10 seconds inside this place, I just had to leave. I’ve never felt so uncomfortable in my life. It gave me the creeps. And talking about it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I have never felt like that before. No-one else was affected…
Someone suggested maybe I’d been there in a past life and something bad had happened…??

@MissCupid, yep. That’s what I was referring to.

I refuse to deny the existence of reincarnation. It cannot be falsified or confirmed at this point.
I would like such a thing to be possible in some manner.

I have thought about this in the past but haven’t worked it out yet. I tend to believe that our sole, essence, spirit, or…..what ever you want to call it, is part of a collective energy. That that energy doesn’t stop existing just because our physical shell does. Do we get to come back as something else?......Hmmmmm. Soooooo I guess I’m going along with Fiddle PCB, and a lurve to my fellow Flutheren

@MissCupid I have been in Indian churches surrounded by monkeys too. I was also creaped out but I think it was the monkeys. I always felt that they were little creapy human wana-a-bes and can’t stand them.

Ha ha – I love monkeys. It definitely wasn’t the monkeys… :)

@DarlingRhadamanthus WOW! Just read that article. Creepy… But I feel sad that I’m so cynical that I’m wondering whether the story was constructed backwards… :(

Life is but a garment of illusion! :-/
Yeah we come back IMO….:-/

The story has been totally authenticated….and there are lots more like this. I think that eventually quantum physics will indeed show that what we think of as just a “myth” is scientifically true.

I believe reincarnation is very likely, there were cases of children speaking languages they had no way of knowing, recalling certain details of people they never knew, there are endless stories, websites and books that talk about this. I personally would not want to have another “incarnation” however. After hearing how great the afterlife realms are I believe it would be very depressing to have to come back to a physical existence again, forget everything you learned while in spirit, having to start another life all over again, ect. From what I have read about reincarnation it seems very likely that most people will have to keep doing it over and over again. Depressing. Still not as bad as the permanent hellfire of “Dante’s Inferno” preached by Christians, Muslims and Jews however.

@Jabe73 Your lack of knowledge about Jewish beliefs is showing.

Sometimes it tickles my fancy to think so, but it involves a lot of retribution—being reborn as a cockroach if you really fuck up.

I agree, I love the concept, hope it IS true!
I also agree that reincarnation might just mean, as a few others have mentioned, the truth of our matter and energy simply reabsorbing back into the cosmos.

Who knows…but…one thing I DO beleive, for whatever reasons, ( old souls? ) is that many of us are simply, undeniably born, INTRINSICALLY programmed to not cause nearly the harm that many others do.

Nature, nurture, old souls…a large part of me just FEELS there is truth in old souldom.

If reincarnation is real, I swear that I’m the latest version of Theodore Roosevelt. It just has to be true

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard

You kinda look like a Teddy!

lol

i think so…...

@Coloma, definitely not the first time I’ve been told that…. I get it all the time. Kindof strange, considering he’s been my hero and role model since I was a child.

I’m pretty certain reincarnation is true as I’ve had clues that I’ve lived other lives. First of all, I’m exhausted.

@AstroChuck and what did you do in those other lives to so tire a six-year-old child?

@MissCupid Sorry to jump in so late in the discussion, but no, I don’t believe in reincarnation as in a soul or spirit going from one living being to the next. If you want to define it as living things going back to the soil of the earth, which then supplies the nutrients for other living things to grow, then I definitely believe in that.

But I do not believe in things there is no sound evidence for, therefore I don’t believe in a soul, or spirit, or whatever word one might wish to attach to the thingy that’s supposed to drift away from one dead body only to inhabit a new baby body of some sort.

I totally believe in it and let me tell you, the next time around I am going to be 5’10” tall, willowy and naturally blond, thick curly locks, hehehehe!

Well, we still haven’t figured out what consciousness really is.

We are pure consciousness in totality with the one consciousness.

Consciousness is what we are beyond the thinking mind.

Consciousness is our being state.

The bottom line up front is that you had better make the most of this life as it is the only one that you will get. Our bodies are made up of atoms that are on loan to us from mother Earth. The very special configuration of the atoms of our bodies allow us to function as living beings and think, have consciousness and or that esoteric thing that they call the sole or spirit. When we die the vast matrix of atoms of our body breaks down and we lose consciousness because there is nothing to support it. Consciousness, sole or spirit can not just float away from our dead bodies all by its self. Therefore it is game over when we die as our atoms are recycled. The atoms of your body may be recycled over and over as part of another life forms such as worms, fungi, plants, bacteria, insect larvae, cannibals, various predators. Over time our atoms may be spread far and wide over the Earth making up parts of all kinds of plants and animals (humans included) Good health!

@gondwanalon but is it possible that our conscoiusness is not made up of atoms as such, or is a structure that doesn’t disintegrate as it isn’t connected to flesh? Which would mean that theoretically our consciousness could remain whole and reattach to another ‘host’? Mmm?

I ( through some of my spiritual and metsphysical studies ) have come to understand and use the word ‘consciousness’ to mean the ethereal presence, energy, that is the ‘hum’ of the totality.

Pure conscousness, as in unity of the total consciousness of the universe.

Not ‘consciousness’ as in being mentally conscious, alert to the life process.

I do beleive that this consciousness does not dissolve upon death but is transmutated back into the totality of source. Whether or not it can be realigned in another physical manifestation is impossible to know, but insofar as energy goes, this energy does not go 6 feet under upon the death of the body but reabsorbs into the cosmos.

What happens after that is the mystery.

I find the idea of reincarnation or life in heaven to be an invented way to subjugate people in this life. If you think that your present circumstances are a punishment for previous life transgressions or that there is a better life after this one, the individual is more likely to accept their current poverty or even slavery.

One of the main reasons that slaves were taught christianity was to keep them under control. If they believed that, as good slaves, they would be rewarded in heaven they became much more pliable. Governments have longed used religion as a useful control for the masses.

Why do you think we have military chaplains? It isn’t because the army is concerned for your soul, it is because the army wants dedicated and brave soldiers. Soldiers convinced that the reward for their bravery is heaven can be inspired to do things that a rational human wouldn’t.