Reincarnation - "Or One Life Per Customer"

[DannyMc]

I've wondered from time to time about this , how could one person have different lives at different times . Can they be remembered or is every new one seperate with no memory of the previous one . Having so many lives , what can be held dear from this , if there's no memory of any other . ........I felt this question more for GD than P&R ..........

 

[kurchatovium]

I guess I am saying most people tend to remember there past lives as being something very glorious. Like an emperor of China or General from Rome. No one ever remembers being very ordinary. Which seems for me to be a bit odd. As most of us are ordinary. Perhaps I am wrong there as I dont know all the cases of past lives.

(Sorry if the other post was a bit too weird. Hopefully this one says better what I wondered about reincarnation)

 

[asutickler]

I think I was a rhinoceros.

 

[ChosenofMystra]

Perhaps as we make the transition from one life to another, we only retain the most important aspects of our previous lives, the moments we either loved...or hated, or wished to learn from. It certainly would explain moments of deja vu and that unshakable feeling of familiarity; of rememberance.

....I certainly hope I'm making sense folks Quarter to two in the morning and I'm about ready to drop dead.

G'nite

 

[drew70]

I think I was a rhinoceros.

Imposseros!!

 

[911]

fool me once

After this I ain't coming back.

 

[TicklishLurker]

While I mostly believe we have one shot at life, I'd like to think God gives those who never got a chance to live a full life - aborted babies, murder victims, kids who die of cancer, people who were born too mentally handicapped to even register what's going on, accident victims, etc - a 2nd or even 3rd chance to live a full, eventful life. I'd like to think my friend Erin is going to be or already has been born to a new body, a fully healthy one, and this time around will get to experience all those things she wanted to but couldn't because of the cystic fibrosis.

 

[Strider]

I guess I am saying most people tend to remember there past lives as being something very glorious. Like an emperor of China or General from Rome. No one ever remembers being very ordinary. Which seems for me to be a bit odd. As most of us are ordinary. Perhaps I am wrong there as I dont know all the cases of past lives.

It's interesting you say that, because it's not the case with me at all. I have dreams that I'm absolutely convinced are images from a past life, and in them I'm nobody special.

 

[Capnmad]

I don't know if reincarnation is possible, but I figure there are six-billion-plus people living today, with a couple billion before that, each with an average of some 100 billion neurons in their heads. I would be astonished to find that among this great pool of possibility, there were never enough similarity in one neural cascade or another to evoke thoughts, feelings or impressions in a virtually identical way as they have been felt by someone else in history.

That is to say, I think there may be a neurological explanation to reincarnation: We remember things that are not our own, but are configurations of neurons that have happened before, in distant or recent history...

This could explain why there are multiples of claimed reincarnations of the famous, like Marie Antoinette or William Shakespeare. People may indeed share or have shared certain neural cascades (from which arose experiences similar or identical) to those they claim to be "reincarnations" of.

Delusion could also explain it, however.

 

[kurchatovium]

It's interesting you say that, because it's not the case with me at all. I have dreams that I'm absolutely convinced are images from a past life, and in them I'm nobody special.

I actually find that very interesting. That would convince me more that there is a reincarnation for some individuals. I have more confidence in a natural dream state than I would in recovered memories from a hypnotic state.

 

[Mastertank1]

I have had numerous dreams of past lives.

I was never anyone important, but neither was I an ordinary member of society.

I was almost always a loner, outcast or outsider of some kind. NOT a rebel leader or Robin Hood type or anything else romantic or interesting, just a loner who lived apart from society, went his own way, followed his own rules and asked only to be left alone.
In some of those lives, society refused to leave me alone, and I always died fighting rather than submit. Never became a symbol or martyr or anything that affected the lives of others, just cost them more than they gained by killing me.

The exceptions were lives where I was an animal. Once I was a Ural Mountain Cave Bear, once a North American Short Faced Bear, once a Grizzly, once a Kodiak and once a Polar. Then there was one time I was a Mustang stallion, and once a Percheron stallion. The Ural Cave Bear and the NorthAm Short Faced were both in prehistoric times. That would make me what some new age types call 'an old soul'. Maybe that's why I've always felt old, even when I was still a kid.

 

[Deadsea7777]

I've wondered from time to time about this , how could one person have different lives at different times . Can they be remembered or is every new one seperate with no memory of the previous one . Having so many lives , what can be held dear from this , if there's no memory of any other . ........I felt this question more for GD than P&R ..........

I remember when a I was a dinosaur eating ferns in the Jurasic forest and thought that the mammals will never rule the world, those little furry idiots that do not laid eggs!!!!!

 

[zerit2002]

I don't believe in reincarnation , the divine , ghosts etc. ; However , I like to keep an open mind . Because I suppose it is possible that some things exist despite our incapability to perceive them.

I have dreams that I'm absolutely convinced are images from a past life, and in them I'm nobody special.

Really ? I would be interested in hearing more about those dreams . If you don't mind of course .

I don't know if reincarnation is possible, but I figure there are six-billion-plus people living today, with a couple billion before that, each with an average of some 100 billion neurons in their heads. I would be astonished to find that among this great pool of possibility, there were never enough similarity in one neural cascade or another to evoke thoughts, feelings or impressions in a virtually identical way as they have been felt by someone else in history.
...

Interesting theory Capnmad . But how would neurons of today ''connect'' with the neurons of the long dead ? Unless every brain leaves a trace behind ... I don't know ...
Or perhaps time does not flow in one way , as most people believe , an allows brain cells of very similiar configuration to ''share some thoughts '' with other brains which are still alive but on a diferent place of the time stream .
What if it works the other way around ? It would explain how some people appear to be ahead of their time , Leonardo Da Vinci etc.

 

[Capnmad]

Interesting theory Capnmad . But how would neurons of today ''connect'' with the neurons of the long dead ? Unless every brain leaves a trace behind ... I don't know ...
Or perhaps time does not flow in one way , as most people believe , an allows brain cells of very similiar configuration to ''share some thoughts '' with other brains which are still alive but on a diferent place of the time stream .
What if it works the other way around ? It would explain how some people appear to be ahead of their time , Leonardo Da Vinci etc.

"Connection" is unnecessary. The premise takes the brain at the physical level, as essentially an electro-chemical machine... If certain configurations of neural networks (the size of which -- that is, the number of neurons involved -- required to produce effects -- thoughts -- remains unknown) are by chance identical or sufficiently similar, they should yield identical or sufficiently similar results provided they're also fired in identical or sufficiently similar sequence, just as machines with identical or sufficiently similar parts execute the same work.

I'm glad you brought up the time issue. I was using this theory for a story a while back, and left it open. My theory makes no assumptions about time, and in the story I was writing, neither does the fictional theory originator, proposing instead, that thought has some "transcendent quality" that sparks the "echo effect" of deja vu, and that time may very well be irrelevant in the face of the transcendent nature of thought. (It's all just glossy-speak for hiding the flaws of the theory -- a system that works well for screenplays.) So, the window is left open to "remember the future"... It also made for an interesting device of confusion for the plot as it became apparent that the protagonist may not only be having senses of what had happened in a past life, but perhaps a future one, or his very own life in the future...

I could get into other details if you like (there is more to it), but I'll spare you for now...

 

[4Pawz]

I do believe in reincarnation. But that is just me. And it's an idea I guess really. I am open to the concept of other things. All too often I just have the feeling of belonging in a different time period, and doing other things in my life.

I'm one of those who thinks that if you are a good person, you are reincarnated into something pleasant. If you are bad, you get reincarnated into fecal matter.

 

[bellystrokes]

It's interesting you say that, because it's not the case with me at all. I have dreams that I'm absolutely convinced are images from a past life, and in them I'm nobody special.

Rock star, you are always special. Maybe not famous or in history books, but always special.

 

[korovan]

I used to work as a hypnotherapist, and learned how to do past-life regression sessions, as well as having one performed on me duirng my training (I flashed back on being a common Roman soldier in Britain around 100 AD). During the period when I was practicing, I did a number of these sessions on clients.

In my experience, most people flash back to episodes in their previous lives that were vivid and important somehow (to that person anyway) and often it is something that has meaning to the present-person and his life and the regression can present valuable hints or insights that are relevant to the present. . For example, a person might remember being a 16th century Russian farm-girl... but she won't flash back on a boring afternoon of planting potatoes or milking goats or whatever: she'll flash back to her wedding day or the birth of her favorite child or her death at the sabre-edge of a roving Tatar or something. And maybe the person doing the regression (in my office) is thinking about getting engaged, or starting a family, or dealing with a life-threatening illness...

While I do believe in reincarnation, I confess that even I am skeptical of people who claim to remember being famous historica figures: it just seems like fantasy-wish-fulfllment to me. This is perhaps unfaiir. I mean, Cleopatra is bound to be walking around in SOMEBODY'S skin right now... but sorting out from the other 10,000 women (and men) who just wish they were her is daunting...

However, another theory about why multiple-Cleos or Shakespeares or Lincolns or Napoleons might actually exist at once is that souls are basically returned to a common source (sometimes called The Well Of Souls) and basically melted down and recycled into new souls: each new sould being made of a mixture of many previous souls. For example, my soul might have 1% Julius Caesar, 2% Mae West, .5% Robert The Bruce, 1.5% Confucius, and 95% various obscure peasants and tradesfolk from all times and places... under a hypnotic regression I might flash back on crossing the Rubicon at the head of my legions, or mugging for the camera with W,C Fields, or whatever... meanwhile down the hall in the next padded cel-- er, consulting room, someone else is flashing back on being stabbed by Brutus and Cassius, or whatever: the other person was also Caesar, just as I was.

This might explain why spontaneously recovered memories or past lives are so rare: they might onlyhappen when a certain person has an unusually high percentage of one particular soul "in the mix" and if that soul was of an unusually powerful/dynamic person with vivid memories of intense experiences...

OK, just rambling now... but certainly a fun topic to think about.

 

[zerit2002]

Capnmad :

The only way I was able to make your theory work was assuming there would be some sort of non-material connection between brains with very similiar neural configuration . Without that , it doesn't make sense . I will explain :

In the first paragraph of your 1st post , you basicaly said that brains with very similiar neural configuration would draw similiar conclusions to problems , have similiar feelings and so on .

Capnmad - '' ... enough similarity in one neural cascade or another to evoke thoughts, feelings or impressions in a virtually identical way as they have been felt by someone else in history.''

On your second paragraph , you talk about remembering '' ... things that are not our own, but are configurations of neurons that have happened before, in distant or recent history '' .

How could one remember things that are not his own without some sort of telepathy between both brains ? It makes no sense.

In the first paragraph of your second post , you explain basicaly the same you told us before , but in a much more complicated (confusing) way ... and without explaining the holes in the theory . I'm not sure what to make of this ...

 

[kis123]

Amen to that!!!

After this I ain't coming back.

I'm not sure what to believe, but if I lived a past life, it must have been really great because it's now time for karma payback! If I ever come back here like this again I might throw myself into traffic to make it stop!

Yes, I am having a crappy day if you haven't noticed.

 

[Capnmad]

In the first paragraph of your second post , you explain basicaly the same you told us before , but in a much more complicated (confusing) way ... and without explaining the holes in the theory . I'm not sure what to make of this ...

Um... Well, you don't need to make anything out of it, Zerit, if you don't want to -- that's my job -- and I had been making a story of it (see reference to "screenplay") until my data got destroyed.

It was something that came up when I was grieving the loss of an atheist friend. People do strange things in their grief, and I, perhaps, stranger than most... I sought to find some plausible premise for some form of immortality that required no God -- such that my late friend could be right, and I could still feel there was a piece of him around that I could get in touch with. ...and later, it seemed suited to storyline fodder.

There's not much to it, in fact. It is not a "real" theory as it is not scientific. It relies largely on the proposed (and undefined for the sake of glossing over troublesome details) "transcendental quality" of thought. This presumption of a "transcendant quality" of thought is the "out" for the theory, just like "faith" is often the "out" for theists struggling with things like "The Problem of Evil" (If God is omnibenevolent and omnipotent, why is there evil?) or wrestling with the origin of God (What came before Him? Saying He exists "outside of time" seems stretching when we can't even understand what time is, let alone whether or not one could be in fact "outside" it.).

I could go on and try to mend the gaps, like say that the feeling of deja vu we get happens only when these "sufficiently similar" firings link to and trigger something in the temporal lobe that tells you these things have happened before, or something (temporal lobe epileptics sometimes have extraordinary and consistent reports of deja vu)... But that's less parsimonious than saying that any old thing could trigger that certain section of the temporal lobe that emits the deja vu response...

So for the sake of a good story and leaving open possibilities, I leave it with "transcendental qualities" of thought for the most part, because that's the thing necessary to explain how we recognize one thought as having been thought before... That somehow the brain recognizes this thought has been thought before, as though there were some marker (some "identity") of thoughts that the brain picks up on.

Maybe that's what you would consider "telepathy"... The idea that thoughts are things in and of themselves beyond the machinery of the brain, but which the brain can pick up on and recognize as possessing distinct characteristics, among these being thought "identity". I guess I always think of "telepathy" being a directed, intentional thing, whereas when dealing with the minutiae of specific neural networks, you're really just relying on chance to strike upon a sufficiently similar network -- so I didn't really think of this as any effective explanation of telepathy, nor was it trying to be.

Interestingly -- and trying to get this back on topic -- despite all the proclamations of this or that person being the reincarnation of a historically significant figure, deja vu tends to occur during utterly mundane events, as reason would suggest, since mundane experiences are events most commonly shared by just about everyone.

Also, deja vu happens to I think around 2/3 of people sometime or another, but is most frequent between early teens and about 25 years of age -- an age bracket identified by the combination of increased mental awareness, increased social experience, and still significant brain plasticity.

This is already too long, so if you don't understand why I've brought these points up, please PM me, and I'll explain their significance -- but please be patient. I've fallen far, far behind in my responding to PMs and there are several people ahead of you... This is lengthier than i would have wanted, and I hope it didn't just lose you more, but that's a distinct possibility... But mind you, you need take nothing from it but that it might be useful, properly encapsulated, for a story. I'm not starting a cult or advocating this as something to consider integrating into one's belief system. It was just me playing with thoughts as I need and am like to do, and see what possibilities and doors open in my own mind for explaining things like immortality, reincarnation, deja vu and the lot...

All the best!