Keep memories after death?

[Sloppy Zhang]

I've heard conflicting reports when it comes to the "universality" of near death experiences.

 

In many cases, the near death experience is culturally defined- you see what you think a near death experience is "supposed to be like".

 

But taking a step further back, it's still the event itself, a near death experience, which is shared, so maybe there's something to that.

 

A couple months ago I read a little snippet article that some hospitals had placed various images or symbols on shelves higher up along the walls in rooms that typically held patients that were at risk of, well, dying, in the hopes that if they did have a near death experience, they might take a look around the room (as some people report having out of body experiences, seeing the room and people operating on them), and when they are successfully revived, report what images they saw.

 

But I'm not sure how widespread that was (how many hospitals were involved) and I don't know the time frame for their experiments, so I don't know when to be on the look out for it but.... it's out there!

 

I for one don't see why anything spiritual should be apart from science. If spirituality is real and we can all experience it, then that's that. The dichotomy between "science" and "religion" is outdated and quite immature, in my humble opinion.

[Ninpo-me-this-ninjutsu-me-that]

Chunyi Lin of SFQ, John Chang, and Wang Liping all seem to acknowledge rebirth.

 

I don't know anything for certain. I don't know if rebirth occurs or death is a finality, or something else altogether. I do know that reality supersedes any ism, daoism included. So whatever happens after death, does so irregardless of whatever ism we cling to.

 

I'm inclined to want to agree with you. Obviously.

 

 

 

 

We had a thread about that here: here

 

I took this excerpt from B.K. Frantzis' book "The Great Stillness" on the subject:

 

Thanks, that quote was really interesting. Gonna have to wait til i got more time to read the thread...

[Seth Ananda]

Hey Seth - I believe the researcher you are referring to is Dr Ian Stevenson.

 

Btw, the Bardos are not the monopoly of lamas, and its understanding is actually more relevant to living than dying. For those who wish to grasp the fundamental significance of the Bardo, simply pay attention to the breath... notice the intermediate point, that gap between the in-breath and the out-breath? That is a bardo. In plain language, 'Bardo' means 'transition', the cognizant yet empty phase when one moment ends and before the next moment arises. It is this, and only this phase where the potential for transformation is at its peak. Why else would cultivators and seekers from across all traditions and cultures place such astoundingly heavy emphasis on 'stillness'? What is this 'stillness'? In which bodily function can one begin to familiarise oneself with this 'stillness', if not the breath?

 

When i first learnt about the bardos and how it relates to the breath, it dawned on me then that the intervals between inhalations(yang) and exhalations(yin) are nothing but 'little opportunities' to experience the Absolute. As time passed, these intervals have stretched a bit, so its quite nice like this...

Ahh yes, Dr Ian stevenson... thanks CowTao

That might be an Inner meaning (don't know, not my tradition), but there is still plenty of Stuff in the Bardo Thodal, on what supposedly happens to you after death, and I have heard many Lama's give Talks (one being Lama Yeshe's successor) on how terrified lost and confused you will be and the Hell realms or hungry ghost or animal realm you will get dragged into once dead, if you don't...

Pure Fear manipulation and nothing like what people actually experience...

 

Sloppy Zhang, I didn't mention the mild cultural conditioning that is often apparent in the early stage of NDE. along with meeting dead Family members, people often meet Religious figures figures from their tradition, such as Jesus, saints, Mohammed bodhisattva's, and so on. The other thing many people experience is the Being eventually dissolving its 'Jesus' appearance and just remaining the Loving Warm presence that 'Jesus' or whoever represented for them.

 

Dr Ian's research has 6 year old African kids living in tribal shamanistic culture right through to Christian monks, Hindu's, atheists, from many different country's and different demographics, and the underlying structure is pretty much the same.

I have read a number of books that just compile peoples NDE's and they are all pretty much the same underneath - Except for the people who for some reason avoid the tunnel of Light- thats when it often starts to get weird, or Nasty...

I have read of some people who are so Negative that they find the light painful or even terrifying and run from it.

I guess that may be an example of extreme attachment and fear of change holding you back?

 

Love and Blessings!

[goldisheavy]

Opinions? Possible?

 

It's definitely possible, but unlikely. Death, as an event, for most people, is a tragedy and a trauma. Ever heard of post-trauma amnesia? Why does that happen? People forget what they don't enjoy. But knowledge doesn't exist as an series of islands. Everything is connected. So let's say you got into a car wreck that you'd like to forget. You can't just forget the wreck. You must forget sitting in the car 2 seconds ago before the wreck as well. What about 5 seconds? Yes, this has to go too. What about even entering the car? What about everything that happened on that day? In other words, you must forget not just the traumatic event, but some amount of context associated with it, so that there is no nagging hint left in the mind.

 

Furthermore, intention has different levels. Most things we do proceeds from the most superficial level of intent. But at a deep level we actually want things different from what we would admit to ourselves. From our level right here, it looks like all the memories of life events are precious. But at a deep level, we might know that lives are endless and life events are countless, and to try to hang on to those memories is like hanging on to the grains of sand in a vast desert filled with sand -- it makes no sense at all. So what seems to make sense to us on a superficial level, doesn't necessarily make any sense to same us on a deeper level.

 

So here you have at least two reasons for why we shouldn't remember much, if anything, from past lives. Is it possible? Sure it is. Is it possible to remember the contents of your dreams when you wake up? Yes. But do you remember every dream and every detail therein?

 

You'll remember more if you specifically intend to remember, and this is also true with dreams. Once you intend to remember dreams more, you do remember them more.

Edited June 13, 2010 by goldisheavy

[goldisheavy]

We came out of nothingness (death) and then were born into this world and life at least once that we know of, I'd be willing to bet it will happen again in some similar way.

 

I really appreciate this point. Thanks More Pie.

 

If you think about it, memory has to have a limit. Even if you remember 10,000,000 years worth of material, you can't remember 10,000,000+1. Or if you remember +1, then not +2, and so on. At some point remembering more stuff will seem to have no meaning. It seems to me that with that much memory, the situation approaches simply not remembering anything at all, due to the dilution of the specificity of context. The more you remember, the less specific your operating context is. Also, memory is an object of awareness. So remembering an infinite amount seems impossible from that perspective, since objects can't be infinite. Objects are known by their boundaries, by finitude. Another way to look at this, is suppose we start to have a perfect recall from now on. We still can't remember what happened before this life. So even if we could gain the ability of a perfect recall starting now, still have a memory with a starting point, and thus not an infinite one. But suppose it's possible to unlock past memories. In this case you must wonder how is remembering different from constructing new memories? At some point, remembering becomes no different from making new memories out of thin air. And in fact, that's how consciousness operates in dreams. In dreams you seem to remember dream-related context out of thin air. You don't set out to set up your dreams before you go to bed. You shut your eyes and in a moment an entire new context appear, with its own history, with it's own past. So just from 10 minutes of shut eye you can have a dream with a 100 year worth of past events represented in it.

 

So memory is both visionary, empty, and finite because it's only an object of awareness. While memories can be arbitrarily many, and of arbitrarily high quality, they are still finite.

 

Thus no matter how much you remembered, there would still be a point beyond which you couldn't remember. And thus if you only use your memory as a guide and not other higher principle, you'd call yourself a "mortal" based on the limited memory.

 

I guess I've said too much.

Edited June 13, 2010 by goldisheavy

[Apech]

I would suggest turning this question on its head. What are memories? If they are recorded imprints of experience then do they persist. If they do then if we forget them then why would we forget? Memory at least in part is a constituent of identity, we have a collection of specific memories which consciously and unconsciously go toward forming our unique personalities. If we accept some form of existence after death then the memory loss could be to do with a kind of loosening of this collection.

[Ya Mu]

Greetings..

 

There is some emerging research/evidence that short-term memories exist in the body's Connective Tissue System (CTS) and are only 'processed' into thinking/analysis by the brain/mind.. all memories appear to be permanantly existent in the "Zero Point Field" as 'vibrational consistencies', that is ALL memories of ALL that has ever occurred.. for us, as individual unique Energetic Signatures, the 'recall' is a matter of resonance or coherence with the 'vibrational consistencies' those generated by 'our' experiences are the most readily available, and proximate by attraction to their source.. Interestingly, those people that claim 'past lives' or 'channeling', may very well be accessing those 'other' memories by their own expanded resonance or coherence.. and, further enhancing or embellishing those memories of others according to their own preferences or beliefs..

 

It is the 'stilled mind' that creates the least 'energetic resistence' in the accessing of memories, the coherence and resonance encounter no 'interference' by thought patterns.. in this condition the memories emerge as 'Whole-Being' recollections in the CTS, a nearly instantaneous 'Body-Mind' "Knowing", sometimes described as our 'Nature'..

 

Anyway, some interesting contributions from our friends dabbling in the 'Sciences'..

 

Be well..

 

I like this. Because I do know this is how most things work - vibrational access.

 

But tend towards a different perspective.

 

"Destiny of Souls" by Michael Newton has case studies of patients he took back to the point of death in previous lives. Very consistent material.

 

I know I have had memories and experiences of past lives. I know that ascended masters can appear in any form - usually in a preferred past life form.

 

I think one reason for what I call "the great amnesia" is that so we ourselves have a clean slate so that we can learn particular lessons in a particular life. If we retained all memory, then it would be very difficult to learn or overcome a particular thing. That said, I have adamantly argued against this need for "the great amnesia". Never have won the argument - still think it sucks.

[devoid]

> ...I just so want to be dead when im dead.

 

hehe - well, IMHO you're in for a surprise: I base that on my own experience from meditation where I have been in contact with deceased friends and relatives: The most recent encounter was one of my grandfathers who was really down about the fact that death as we know it was not the end. Another, much more surprising experience turned out to be of a great grandmother of mine who died in the early fifties (i.e. about 20 years before I was even born) - I knew pretty much nothing about her before the encounter, but when I started probing relatives still alive after the initial encounter, they were startled at what I was able to tell them about her personality and how well it fit.

 

Here's what I did during the initial encounters: I showed them a bit around in the planes I have so far had privilege to and then explained to them that they were no longer necessarily bound to the physical plane - that they could go and explore, research a passion or even become reborn if they so chose. One of them is currently pursuing a passion in knowledge and may yet choose what to do next, some day. The other decided to head for the tao and has now become an immortal soul in the taoist sense with no intent on rebirth. As an observed side-effect: Since then, people with chronic borderline psychological issues in the family also seem to have improved greatly.

 

What all this has taught me is that: yes, memories after death are kept quite intact and without great effort - but over time, frustration with being "stuck somewhere in between" can lead to dispersion of the thoughts and thereby the soul.

 

Based on the fact that I have a nearly impossible time recalling memories from beyond my current physical form, my guess is that the hardest thing is letting ones current thoughts survive rebirth - we've heard some experiences in previous posts to this thread, so it seems that even in the cases where some thoughts do survive rebirth, our new environment is likely to wash it out of us. This said, some basic thoughts and ideas do survive: in my case that of the tao, which I always knew inertly existed, but which I didn't hear of till a few years ago. Before that I can guarantee you I wouldn't have believed a word of what I just told you above

 

About any soul being immortal (as also suggested on other posts in this thread) I can tell you (also from encounters similar to the above) that some souls will choose to attach to a physical, yet non-human life form, such as e.g. a flower, a bud or a branch on a tree - my gut feeling is that this a sure way of eventually dispersing back into the tao without immortality to the individual soul (but of this I am not sure). I also have no experiences telling which other possibilities may exit (i.e. rebirth in animal form, etc. but I wouldn't rule it out) nor what else might be possible.

[3bob]

Opinions? Possible?

 

well besides after death it's not easy keeping memories (as in true and clear) during life!

[NeiChuan]

well besides after death it's not easy keeping memories (as in true and clear) during life!

 

Hahah great point

[suninmyeyes]

.

Edited November 6, 2010 by suninmyeyes

[devoid]

Hi suninmyeyes,

 

Re. where your memories come from: generally speaking I would think they come from you as well as the input you receive - both via your mind/body (as it exists in this very physical, tangible, 3D world that we all live in as human being of flesh and blood) as well as the parts of you that co-exist simultaneously in other places (dimensions, planes - whatever we choose to label it) which are not directly sensible to our common physical senses such as e.g. eye vision, scents, sounds, taste, touch, etc.

 

Thus, I guess I am suggesting to try to accept that with you (as with anything) there is more than meets the eye - the same goes for your personality and thoughts: you cannot isolate them or put them on a pedestal for careful analysis.

 

Re. the input you receive (i.e. what I think you refer to as vibrations) - they can come from you, your higher self or from others - it is important to not accept all input uncritically - i.e. you need to analyse the input and decide which belong to you and which do not belong to you (of the latter, i.e. thoughts that you decide are not yours: Simply let them go and allow them to recycle into the tao).

[Sloppy Zhang]

One of the things I do is keep a pretty detailed dream journal. Occasionally I'll go back and read old dream entries. At the beginning of an entry, I'll remember the dream, then as I go through it in my head, I think, "then this happened, then this other thing."

 

But as I read I notice that those "memories" are completely wrong. I write these entries as soon as I wake up so the events are fresh in my mind. So I know that what I have on paper is what really happened. But my "memories" of the event still tell me something else.

 

Hm.

[suninmyeyes]

.

Edited November 6, 2010 by suninmyeyes

[TzuJanLi]

Greetings..

 

I like this. Because I do know this is how most things work - vibrational access.

Hi Ya Mu: Yes, it's ALL 'energy', behaving in a 'Universe' of manifestations.. coherence, resonance, interference, disonance, are qualities that our Unique Independently Functioning Versions of Oneness (Selfs) identify as 'Awareness'.. whether applied to the traditional 5 physical senses, or the other senses of insight, intuition, and Creativity, those qualities are our Individual 'tactile' relationship with Cosmic Energy..

I know I have had memories and experiences of past lives. I know that ascended masters can appear in any form - usually in a preferred past life form.

Our individual understandings and our Life experiences are resident in our physical Being's Connective Tissue System as a 'symphony of vibrations', and this comprises our Unique Energetic Signature.. a dear friend refers to this as our "Soul Song", which i really like as a poetic reference, but.. i avoid the term due to the inherent ambiguities which will be exploited by the analytical skeptics among us.. anyway, this Unique Energetic Signature interacts with the Universal Energies and 'senses' the fundamental qualities through 'resonance, disonance, coherence and interference'..

 

It is when we 'still the mind' that the 'structure' of mind ceases to distort the 'Universe of Energy' and we can most easily access the 'Cosmic Memory'.. When we sleep, awareness is released from external physical input 'duties', and finds opportunity to reconnect with the Cosmic Memory, the ALL of it ALL.. every past event, life, everything, in vivid 3D tangible detail.. as our 'Awareness' Entrains a particular past memory's vibrations, it is relived, re-experienced through the 'being' whose memory we accessed.. very powerful stuff. Upon waking or re-engaging the 'thinking' process it is very likely that we will interpret the 'recollections' of the Cosmic Memory Experiences as it 'resonates' with our current understandings and beliefs, i.e.: past lives, channeling, etc.. but, yes, we can experience being in the presence of 'past masters', or we can actually 'experience' being that past master'.. or.... we can experience memories of events and beings so removed from our 'human' understandings that there is no frame of reference for any recollections.. this is the 'deep dreamless sleep' or the meditations we can't recall..

 

oops.. i'm rambling again, sorry.. BE Well..

[devoid]

Hi suninmyeyes,

 

You ask who stores the memories and where. I don't think that any entity is responsible for storing your memories (nor for processing them either - only you can do that). As for where they are stored (apart from your brain) I don't know. Many new-agers refer to your presence on other planes as structures made of 'energy' - I would guess that this would be where they are stored - i.e. in you (or rather: within various parts of you).

[C T]

Opinions? Possible?

In my view, its not possible.

 

If we reflect on the initial formation(at birth) and subsequent dissolution of the persona at the point of death, we can at least understand why it is not seen as a possibility. I am hedging that the personality dissolves at death, and since memories are inextricably linked with personhood, i cannot fathom how memories that obviously belong in one plane of existence can be carried over to another more mysterious and subtle plane. I have no wish to get into some sort of metaphysical tangle over this - suffice to say that in my opinion, memories are not stored in some external locale, hence it ends at the point of the physical dissolution of the body.

 

What happens after death can at best be only speculations and conjectures. I am prone to believe that one enters death, like birth, with a sense of not knowing anything. As the new journey unfolds, we pick things up along the way, and with these new 'memories' the deathscapes are traversed - eventually these 'new' imprints then determine the sort of rebirth we take. However, i am almost certain that what is picked up during the death phase is wholly determined by what has been discarded and renounced in the previous phase (this life). While we cannot bring the gross memories with us, it is plausible that what gets to overflow into death are the energetic traces that are predominant while the person was alive. This is why learning and practicing the right methods and meditations are so crucial, and so is having a general wholesome outlook and compassionate attitude. Just as we sleep better after having a good day, doing all the wholesome things, likewise, we tend to die better after we have had a gentle, integrated, honest and noble life, having done all things wholesome.

 

Concluding with this quote:

 

"Searching all directions

with one's awareness,

one finds no one dearer

than oneself.

In the same way,

others are fiercely dear

to themselves.

So one should not hurt others

if one loves oneself."

(Raja Sutta - translation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu)

Edited June 14, 2010 by CowTao

[suninmyeyes]

Hi suninmyeyes,

 

You ask who stores the memories and where. I don't think that any entity is responsible for storing your memories (nor for processing them either - only you can do that). As for where they are stored (apart from your brain) I don't know. Many new-agers refer to your presence on other planes as structures made of 'energy' - I would guess that this would be where they are stored - i.e. in you (or rather: within various parts of you).

 

I was asking you to ask yourself and look deeply behind "structures and energies"and you are right everyone can do it for themselves.

Are you sure that memories are stored in the brain though?Maybe the memories and thoughts are what you call me.

[lotus-d-ananda]

How can we explain where all these extra souls are coming from…?

 

World Population Growth

 

Year Population

 

1 200 million

1000 275 million

1500 450 million

1650 500 million

1750 700 million

1804 1 billion

1850 1.2 billion

1900 1.6 billion

1927 2 billion

1950 2.55 billion

1955 2.8 billion

1960 3 billion

1965 3.3 billion

1970 3.7 billion

1975 4 billion

1980 4.5 billion

1985 4.85 billion

1990 5.3 billion

1995 5.7 billion

1999 6 billion

2006 6.5 billion

2009 6.8 billion

2011 7 billion

2025 8 billion

2050 9.4 billion

 

 

I think that there is one cosmic conscience that sort of loans us a soul

for the duration of our time as a human…

 

And past life experiences are us reading into that cosmic conscience,

and the past that some experience are not even necessarily our own…

 

If our souls are eternal then a “life” is like a one nights dream…

to probably as quickly forgotten, it’s probably are egos at work

giving importants to our lives needing to believe what we did here

was special and meriting remembering…

 

One soul said to another soul after a looong life here on earth…

hey I just had the funniest dream, but I can’t quite remember all of it…

Edited June 14, 2010 by lotus-d-ananda

[goldisheavy]

In my view, its not possible.

 

I am hedging that the personality dissolves at death

 

So I take it, the implicit assumption here that's necessary for what you are saying to make any sense, is that personality is non-dissolving while we are alive. So in other words, the personality is permanent up until death and only at death does impermanence make a show. In this manner you see death as a special event, instead of as business as usual. If personality is always dissolving, then how would the death events be any different from any other ordinary and constantly ongoing dissolution?

 

If I understand correctly, that's not the Buddhist view.

 

The Buddhist view is that change is constant and at death, there is no more and no less impermanence than right now. This means a few things. First, you are dying right now. As they say, "You die with each breath." Not just something special that's saved up for the death bed. Dying is an everyday process. It's not something rare. Second, when you lie on a deathbed dying, the change that occurs then is in no way different from any other kind of change. The impermanence is the same. The four marks of phenomena are exactly the same. The 8-fold path is the same. All the transcendent truths are the same.

 

Of course in real life we do think that while moving your hands around right now is a change, and lying on your deathbed is also a change, we take one change to be a sign of life continuing, while another change to be a sign of life discontinuing, even though they are both simply changes and the discrimination is not in the change itself, but nowhere else but in our own mind. Who makes one change a sign of life and another change a sign of death? Why can't change be simply a sign of change? It's the mind that makes that happen.

 

Another way to say this: Delimiting your personality as something that starts with birth and ends with death is nothing other than a kind of self-delineation, and Buddha has constantly spoken against self-delineations. If you take this message to heart, you don't get born at birth and you don't die at death. What's not born does not die.

 

Straight from Pali Canon:

 

I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was staying near Savatthi, in Jeta's Grove, Anathapindika's monastery. Now at that time the Blessed One was instructing urging, rousing, and encouraging the monks with Dhamma-talk concerned with Unbinding. The monks — receptive, attentive, focusing their entire awareness, lending ear — listened to the Dhamma.

 

Then, on realizing the significance of that, the Blessed One on that occasion exclaimed:

 

There is, monks, an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated. If there were not that unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, there would not be the case that emancipation from the born — become — made — fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, emancipation from the born — become — made — fabricated is discerned.

 

I do prefer Mahayana, so here's Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra:

 

Manjusri asked, "Noble sir, how should a sick bodhisattva control his own mind?"

 

Vimalakirti replied, "Manjusri, a sick bodhisattva should control his own mind with the following consideration: Sickness arises from total involvement in the process of misunderstanding from beginningless time. It arises from the passions that result from unreal mental constructions, and hence ultimately nothing is perceived which can be said to be sick. Why? The body is the issue of the four main elements, and in these elements there is no owner and no agent. There is no self in this body, and except for arbitrary insistence on self, ultimately no "I" which can be said to be sick can be apprehended. Therefore, thinking "I" should not adhere to any self, and "I" should rest in the knowledge of the root of illness,' he should abandon the conception of himself as a personality and produce the conception of himself as a thing, thinking, 'This body is an aggregate of many things; when it is born, only things are born; when it ceases, only things cease; these things have no awareness or feeling of each other; when they are born, they do not think, "I am born." When they cease, they do not think, "I cease."'

 

"Furthermore, he should understand thoroughly the conception of himself as a thing by cultivating the following consideration: 'Just as in the case of the conception of "self," so the conception of "thing" is also a misunderstanding, and this misunderstanding is also a grave sickness; I should free myself from this sickness and should strive to abandon it.'

 

"What is the elimination of this sickness? It is the elimination of egoism and possessiveness. What is the elimination of egoism and possessiveness? It is the freedom from dualism. What is freedom from dualism? It is the absence of involvement with either the external or the internal. What is absence of involvement with either external or internal? It is nondeviation, nonfluctuation, and nondistraction from equanimity. What is equanimity? It is the equality of everything from self to liberation. Why? Because both self and liberation are void. How can both be void? As verbal designations, they both are void, and neither is established in reality. Therefore, one who sees such equality makes no difference between sickness and voidness; his sickness is itself voidness, and that sickness as voidness is itself void.

 

"The sick bodhisattva should recognize that sensation is ultimately nonsensation, but he should not realize the cessation of sensation. Although both pleasure and pain are abandoned when the buddha-qualities are fully accomplished, there is then no sacrifice of the great compassion for all living beings living in the bad migrations. Thus, recognizing in his own suffering the infinite sufferings of these living beings, the bodhisattva correctly contemplates these living beings and resolves to cure all sicknesses. As for these living beings, there is nothing to be applied, and there is nothing to be removed; one has only to teach them the Dharma for them to realize the basis from which sicknesses arise. What is this basis? It is object-perception. Insofar as apparent objects are perceived, they are the basis of sickness. What things are perceived as objects? The three realms of existence are perceived as objects. What is the thorough understanding of the basic, apparent object? It is its nonperception, as no objects exist ultimately. What is nonperception? The internal subject and the external object are not perceived dualistically. Therefore, it is called nonperception.

Edited June 14, 2010 by goldisheavy

[Sloppy Zhang]

How can we explain where all these extra souls are coming from…?

 

World Population Growth

 

Year Population

 

1 200 million

1000 275 million

1500 450 million

1650 500 million

1750 700 million

1804 1 billion

1850 1.2 billion

1900 1.6 billion

1927 2 billion

1950 2.55 billion

1955 2.8 billion

1960 3 billion

1965 3.3 billion

1970 3.7 billion

1975 4 billion

1980 4.5 billion

1985 4.85 billion

1990 5.3 billion

1995 5.7 billion

1999 6 billion

2006 6.5 billion

2009 6.8 billion

2011 7 billion

2025 8 billion

2050 9.4 billion

 

 

I think that there is one cosmic conscience that sort of loans us a soul

for the duration of our time as a human…

 

And past life experiences are us reading into that cosmic conscience,

and the past that some experience are not even necessarily our own…

 

If our souls are eternal then a “life” is like a one nights dream…

to probably as quickly forgotten, it’s probably are egos at work

giving importants to our lives needing to believe what we did here

was special and meriting remembering…

 

One soul said to another soul after a looong life here on earth…

hey I just had the funniest dream, but I can’t quite remember all of it…

 

This is assuming that souls are bound by time and space.

 

Rawn Clark, a high level practitioner of Franz Bardon's system (his website here: http://www.abardoncompanion.com/index.html) has an "eight temples meditation project". Basically, he has constructed eight different temples for different sections of the kabbalah in an astral/mental sphere, and he and students travel there to conduct lessons and rituals. You can read the details of it on the website, but one thing he noted was this:

 

When he and his students did the meditation project, other people arrived at the project from the future.

 

Basically what he did was each month they focused on a different temple. He'd send out a packet of info, then two weeks later they'd do the ritual and write back to him of their experience, he would compile that, send it out to all his students with info on the next ritual, and by that time they'd have a couple weeks to reflect upon the material for the next meditation. Then Rawn Clark put up the meditations online, so anyone visiting the site wishing to do the meditations could do so.

 

And if you read the meditations at a later date, decided to try them out, and showed up for the meditation, you would not be there alone, you would be there with everyone else as they were going through it the first time.

 

Trippy, right?

 

There is a two part video about imagining the 10th dimension:

 

Part 1

 

Part 2

 

In explaining the fourth dimension, he talks about how humans would be one long snake type thing, where our whole lives, from infancy to adulthood to death, would all be seen at one time. But since we are third dimensional beings, we are only able to perceive cross sections of the dimension above us. Thus, we experience our lives sequentially. But that's an illusion, because really we're already there.

 

Let's extrapolate that out, and assume that past lives and reincarnations are real. There is no separation. We are our past incarnations and future incarnations simultaneously, but since we are limited in our perceptions we view them sequentially. Furthermore, since various astral/mental dimensions are not bound by time, we experience things when we experience them.

 

So why do we have to come up with an explanation for a higher population? More souls? Maybe more souls are incarnated. Or maybe people are incarnated into multiple bodies simultaneously, but we perceive only one at a time due to our limited senses.

 

Robert Bruce talks about some very mind bending things in his book "Astral Dynamics" when it comes to making a double that you can project and running into it. I won't go into it because my post is already pretty far out, but it's just another example of how, well, the universe is really a mind flip.

Edited June 14, 2010 by Sloppy Zhang

[Ya Mu]

Greetings..

 

 

Hi Ya Mu: Yes, it's ALL 'energy', behaving in a 'Universe' of manifestations.. coherence, resonance, interference, disonance, are qualities that our Unique Independently Functioning Versions of Oneness (Selfs) identify as 'Awareness'.. whether applied to the traditional 5 physical senses, or the other senses of insight, intuition, and Creativity, those qualities are our Individual 'tactile' relationship with Cosmic Energy..

 

Our individual understandings and our Life experiences are resident in our physical Being's Connective Tissue System as a 'symphony of vibrations', and this comprises our Unique Energetic Signature.. a dear friend refers to this as our "Soul Song", which i really like as a poetic reference, but.. i avoid the term due to the inherent ambiguities which will be exploited by the analytical skeptics among us.. anyway, this Unique Energetic Signature interacts with the Universal Energies and 'senses' the fundamental qualities through 'resonance, disonance, coherence and interference'..

 

It is when we 'still the mind' that the 'structure' of mind ceases to distort the 'Universe of Energy' and we can most easily access the 'Cosmic Memory'.. When we sleep, awareness is released from external physical input 'duties', and finds opportunity to reconnect with the Cosmic Memory, the ALL of it ALL.. every past event, life, everything, in vivid 3D tangible detail.. as our 'Awareness' Entrains a particular past memory's vibrations, it is relived, re-experienced through the 'being' whose memory we accessed.. very powerful stuff. Upon waking or re-engaging the 'thinking' process it is very likely that we will interpret the 'recollections' of the Cosmic Memory Experiences as it 'resonates' with our current understandings and beliefs, i.e.: past lives, channeling, etc.. but, yes, we can experience being in the presence of 'past masters', or we can actually 'experience' being that past master'.. or.... we can experience memories of events and beings so removed from our 'human' understandings that there is no frame of reference for any recollections.. this is the 'deep dreamless sleep' or the meditations we can't recall..

 

oops.. i'm rambling again, sorry.. BE Well..

 

An interesting viewpoint.

 

we can experience memories of events and beings so removed from our 'human' understandings that there is no frame of reference for any recollections.. this is the 'deep dreamless sleep' or the meditations we can't recall..

 

I believe that this is because the brain is incapable of interpreting the actual thing itself and I also believe that quite often it gives alternative (more to its liking) interpretations.

[C T]

So I take it, the implicit assumption here that's necessary for what you are saying to make any sense, is that personality is non-dissolving while we are alive. So in other words, the personality is permanent up until death and only at death does impermanence make a show. In this manner you see death as a special event, instead of as business as usual. If personality is always dissolving, then how would the death events be any different from any other ordinary and constantly ongoing dissolution?

 

If I understand correctly, that's not the Buddhist view.

 

The Buddhist view is that change is constant and at death, there is no more and no less impermanence than right now. This means a few things. First, you are dying right now. As they say, "You die with each breath." Not just something special that's saved up for the death bed. Dying is an everyday process. It's not something rare. Second, when you lie on a deathbed dying, the change that occurs then is in no way different from any other kind of change. The impermanence is the same. The four marks of phenomena are exactly the same. The 8-fold path is the same. All the transcendent truths are the same.

 

Of course in real life we do think that while moving your hands around right now is a change, and lying on your deathbed is also a change, we take one change to be a sign of life continuing, while another change to be a sign of life discontinuing, even though they are both simply changes and the discrimination is not in the change itself, but nowhere else but in our own mind. Who makes one change a sign of life and another change a sign of death? Why can't change be simply a sign of change? It's the mind that makes that happen.

 

Another way to say this: Delimiting your personality as something that starts with birth and ends with death is nothing other than a kind of self-delineation, and Buddha has constantly spoken against self-delineations. If you take this message to heart, you don't get born at birth and you don't die at death. What's not born does not die.

 

You are correct Gold - its only an assumption. I could well be as far off the mark as 99.99% of the people who attempt to unravel this humongous enigma.

 

It was not my intention to promote the idea that the personality is permanent. I could not see where in my post did that idea present itself. Must be quite blind, again. Of course i agree that there is always only evolvement - in life, as in at death, and beyond. But these very terms used in the post, ie personality, persona, and personhood, implicitly denotes evolutionary change of the 'self'. After all, these are all acquired formations of the self, dependent on multi-faceted stimulations of the 6 senses, and as such will carry on changing and evolving at the grosser physical levels until the very last exhalation.

 

Perhaps a better rephrasing of "One dies with each breath" would be "One changes with each breath" - how is that? I agree that dying is an every-moment thing, but then, as we all know, so is living. I keep having to remind myself not to fixate on these matters too much. Its been years since i overcame the illusion of how defeating it can be to view life and death as a personal luxury afforded only to those who choose to overvalue the self. Inflation/recession can happen on a personal, micro scale too!

 

In my mind, there are 2 ways to look at memories - one, they are to be cherished, and two, they are to be buried. The tendency is to focus on the cherishable ones and ignore those that are rather unpleasant. Being a bit Buddhish, i try to see through to the underlying causes of both, and reach some kind of middle ground where pleasant and unpleasant memories are herded. In this regard, the need to chase after one and fumble around with the other becomes less fundamental and weighty.

Edited June 14, 2010 by CowTao

[goldisheavy]

Perhaps a better rephrasing of "One dies with each breath" would be "One changes with each breath" - how is that?

 

 

I like it. I would also say that we are constantly reborn. Just as we are reborn now, at death we will also be continue to be reborn, because rebirth is just another side of the impermanence coin. If impermanence is a transcendent truth, meaning it is always true, then rebirth is also a transcendent truth, simply by extension. Rebirth is a logical complement of perishing just like left is a logical complement of right. You can't have a right shoulder unless you also have a left shoulder. There is no way for a thing to perish without simultaneously create a new thing. So if you are quite certain that inconstancy is a transcendent truth, then you can be equally certain about rebirth.

 

Rebirth is such that the two extremes are avoided: the extreme of complete and perfect discontinuation and another extreme of complete and perfect continuation. In practical terms it means that the you of today is not completely the same as the you of 10 years ago. At the same time, the you of today is not completely different from the you of 10 years ago. Is that a transcendent truth? Does this truth change with circumstances? I don't think so. So for me, rebirth is certain. What's not certain is the exact degree of similarity. I might be very different, but I'll never be fundamentally different. There is still an unbroken line of ongoing causality and conditioning that affects the mindstream.

 

Consider this. We accept that things that we take to exist "out there" in the world change in such ways that new things are causally born from them. For example, if I heat up the water, it becomes vapor. If I then cool this vapor, once again it becomes water. So simply heating the vapor is not sufficient to annihilate it. In fact, if you consider every means we have to affect water, you can't annihilate it. All we can do is convert water into something else, be it vapor or "pure" energy, but whatever it is, there is definitely a way to convert it back to water. So if we accept this for ordinary material objects, why then do we believe that mind is a special case?

 

If mind is a thing, it must be like any other thing -- it can change it's state but it can't simply vanish. And all the changes are ultimately reversible. There is nothing that fundamentally prohibits reversal. And if mind is not a thing, it is obviously immortal. Only things are subject to birth and death. Non-things are not born and nor do they die. So if mind is a thing, it can transform at best and it can't vanish. If it's not a thing, it doesn't even make sense to talk in terms of appearing and vanishing, which are terms that only make sense with regard to things.

 

All these are pretty damn good reasons to believe in rebirth. If you don't agree, I'd appreciate a counter-argument. But I won't insist on one.

[Birch]

Oh cool thread! I figured a while back that it was my ego that was doing a lot of the "killing" from a conceptual standpoint (really I'm doing it to myself and other people and the world) and I figured myself and other people and the world simultaneously alive and dead all at the same time. Yes I know it seems weird but it's a sort of another version of the above, which I like a lot better. So paradoxically if you can drop the ego off itself faster then you get to be more "alive" or maybe just less "dead" ;-) Ok, I'm rambling