What are your thoughts on

[innerspace_cadet]

I was wondering how the people on this board feel about reincarnation/rebirth. As for me, I am deeply skeptical about it. My reasons:

 

1. The fact that life on Earth is relatively recent. The fact that the population of living beings has increased over the eons.

 

2. The interregnum problem. How does a soul/personality pass through empty space to enter another body?

 

3. Karma. If our actions are so objectively bad/good/neutral, then how is it that there are moral dilemmas in life?

 

After I got turned on to Eastern religions/philosophies, my biggest problem has always been this concept of reincarnation. Personally, I think the only immortality is not being afraid of death.

 

What do you guys think?

[picnic]

1. life on earth is more ancient than we can say, populations have come and gone.

 

2. Space is not real, nor is matter, it is mind that is the root of both of these.

 

3. Karma means action. Karma can relate to the result of past deeds, but that is more properly known as the phalam, or fruit of action. It is a common problem that a word, difficult to translate, then causes problems in comprehension.

 

My view is that there is only one mind, of which we share. Therefore non of the points you raise make me doubt that the mind reincarnates as environment for, and experiencing organisms of, over and over again; in fact, the evidence is all around us

 

A big issue is how English and the sciences have not got words to cover much of the world of the mind, so we have certain translations. The true realisation comes after dropping the words, realising from the root and then re describing the world around us

 

 

 

I was wondering how the people on this board feel about reincarnation/rebirth. As for me, I am deeply skeptical about it. My reasons:

 

1. The fact that life on Earth is relatively recent. The fact that the population of living beings has increased over the eons.

 

2. The interregnum problem. How does a soul/personality pass through empty space to enter another body?

 

3. Karma. If our actions are so objectively bad/good/neutral, then how is it that there are moral dilemmas in life?

 

After I got turned on to Eastern religions/philosophies, my biggest problem has always been this concept of reincarnation. Personally, I think the only immortality is not being afraid of death.

 

What do you guys think?

[Gerard]

[.broken.]

1. The fact that life on Earth is relatively recent. The fact that the population of living beings has increased over the eons.

 

This argument is flawed.

 

Imagine you have two populations. One of which is an unknown population of 'souls' (population A) and another being the unknown population of 'beings' (population . Even if population B increases over time, we have no idea as to what the total of population A is, neither do we know the rules, if any, that are followed with regard to migration from one to another.

 

Also, some teachings tell us that there are multiple planes of existence, so the amount of life on Earth is irrelevent - even more so if one looks at the likelihood of life within other areas of the Universe.

 

2. The interregnum problem. How does a soul/personality pass through empty space to enter another body?

 

There are a number of different approaches to this question... though I think ultimately the question you should ask yourself is do you think it to be truely impossible?

 

3. Karma. If our actions are so objectively bad/good/neutral, then how is it that there are moral dilemmas in life?

 

We still have free will. The situations that arise do so because of our previous actions, whether one believes in past lives or not. It's in the moment that we make a (conscious?) decision that we determine our future.

 

Yours humbly,

James

 

P.S. There's a relatively informative book regarding attempts to scientifically examine past lives call Old Souls by Tom Shroder.

[Apech]

I was wondering how the people on this board feel about reincarnation/rebirth. As for me, I am deeply skeptical about it. My reasons:

 

1. The fact that life on Earth is relatively recent. The fact that the population of living beings has increased over the eons.

 

2. The interregnum problem. How does a soul/personality pass through empty space to enter another body?

 

3. Karma. If our actions are so objectively bad/good/neutral, then how is it that there are moral dilemmas in life?

 

After I got turned on to Eastern religions/philosophies, my biggest problem has always been this concept of reincarnation. Personally, I think the only immortality is not being afraid of death.

 

What do you guys think?

 

 

Its important to distinguish between reincarnation and rebirth. Reincarnation is the Hindu concept of the transmission of the 'self'/'soul' or atman between different incarnations. This does imply that the atman somehow travels from body to body but of course the atman is not a physical entity. The idea that the universe we experience is composed of object separated by empty space is the product of an old fashioned scientific view. Modern physics views space as a continuum which interacts with the objects (mass) within it - see general relativity. There are no gaps in nature, as the philosopher Whitehead put it. So the atman can transmit without the need to jump any perceived gap because that gap is only a projection of perception anyway and the atman is not bound by the limits which the physical world appears to have.

 

Rebirth, the Buddhist view is different because they do not accept that the atman is a real entity. In Buddhism it is the flow of consciousness which is continuous. This is compared to lighting one flame from another. In other words the candles may be different but the fire is transmitted. With this consciousness comes some aggregates including memories and so on. Another analogy would be a stream or river. The water flowing is the same but it appears in different places at different times.

 

Again in Buddhism the world is beginningless. As they say 'Samsara has no beginnning but has an end (Nirvana).' The time measured by modern science is just one cycle or phase. The significant number is the total of sentient beings. This includes animals, insects, bacteria and so on and so is vast. Vast enough to be for practical purposes infinite.

 

Karma - is not really about good or bad which are relative concepts. Karma is cause and effect in action. This means that every act has consequences. Everything you do has some kind of result. To simplify, if you do harmful things to others then this will result in more harm. Helpful things will result in more helpful things. The aim is to liberate yourself from the cycle of existence which results from confused actions. To do this you need benign conditions and these arise from the consequence of 'good' or beneficial acts. Theoretically it would be possible to free oneself even in the conditions resulting from harmful acts but this would be very difficult. The mechanism of karma is not immediately obvious because it is possible to observe harmful or selfish people getting a lot of luck and so on. This is because actions create karmic 'seeds' which only ripen when the right situation arises. Rather like a seed of a plant only grows when the soil, moisture and sunlight is right. If you see a lucky successful person who may still exhibit selfish or harmful behavior you can think that this person during previous births has been generous to others and so on.

[Yoda]

after watching Dr Jill's stroke of insight talk:

 

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bo...of_insight.html

 

I've been pondering how the left brain tries its best to do the job of the right brain, but never quite hits the spot!

[Aetherous]

No one knows.

[innerspace_cadet]

Thanks everyone for clearing up my misconceptions about these things. I think I understand the concepts better.

[dwai]

I was wondering how the people on this board feel about reincarnation/rebirth. As for me, I am deeply skeptical about it. My reasons:

 

1. The fact that life on Earth is relatively recent. The fact that the population of living beings has increased over the eons.

 

2. The interregnum problem. How does a soul/personality pass through empty space to enter another body?

 

3. Karma. If our actions are so objectively bad/good/neutral, then how is it that there are moral dilemmas in life?

 

After I got turned on to Eastern religions/philosophies, my biggest problem has always been this concept of reincarnation. Personally, I think the only immortality is not being afraid of death.

 

What do you guys think?

 

Thought I'd share with you some thoughts on Karma -- The Maya and Karma Conundrum

 

Why is it so implausible to conceive of Re-incarnation? Isn't it equally implausible to consider "Only one chance"?

You are confusing material physics and Consciousness. If you start from the premise that Consicousness is the property of a material object (the Body), then you have this problem.

 

But the question is, Is Consciousness a property of Matter? Or is Matter a property of Consciousness?

If you practice tai chi, you'll know that your energy follows your intent. So is that your consciousness leading your energy to act on matter or vice-versa.

 

Best,

 

Dwai

[Gerard]

This site linked to the University of Virginia gives info about this topic and similar issues:

 

http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/inter...onalitystudies/

[Ya Mu]

All good replies!

 

A person that wants to know something has a hard time listening to facts or conjecture, because they still have not internally experienced what they want to know. In other words the information has not become self-evident.

Everything I teach I tell my students it's not what I say that is important but what you can experience for yourself. So, for the OP to really decide about reincarnation it is needed for him(her) to awaken to who he really is, not what his mind tells him he is. Once he gets in touch with his Higher Level self, then the answer will be obvious.