Gabe the Angel

I just started Stings autobiography and he got onto the subject of reincarnation, this was due to an intake of some natural concoction that was drunk at a religious ceremony. His vision was that he was in a trench with other soldiers, he then concluded that he was seeing part of a previous life. I have thought of this scenario many times, not being in a trench, but the fact that this is not our first visit. I have amongst others have made a fool of myself on this reincarnation subject, however it makes a great deal sense to me than angels and daemons and the such. Has anyone had this type of viewing on a previous life or have you read someone's autobiography where they have gone into this area of thought. I personaly find it totally improbable that this our one and only visit in all the years the Earth has existed. Why would God wait all this time to put us here now when he could have done it before. Im sure my test could have been done long ago what about you.

whichphilosophy

I call it continuous living. Each time we die is like changing one's car.
Just my belief if you like.

I don't however discuss the aspects of what or what I think I remember because I think it is not the way to prove this one way or the other.

Many of us see these things, but feel they must kow tow to their friends etc for this is "Imagination"

If a person sees something in the end possibly only they know whether it is imagination.

Regards

Regards,

Uncle Ants

What's improbable about it?

Of course this presupposes that God exists at all. Interesting image though. God has a store cupboard full of little packets with the words - "Human Souls - best before date .... "

What test that then?

DNAinaGoodway

Interesting, maybe sperm retain some image of stuggling together up the birth canal? Nah!

I don't see how reincarnation would work.

You are the product of your genes and your environment, starting from when your chromozone pairs first hook up.

The trick is to enjoy the moments you've got.

crocodile deathroll

I frequently argue that why stop at one? If any future conscious existence was not possible after any particular point in time after one's death, then wouldn't that negate any possibility of any future conscious existence after any particular point in time before one's birth?

Then there is the concept which I find highly plausible and that is the concept of the "block universe" which posits that time is not an entity that flows from the past to the future but is instead is laid out in its entirety which is coined as a "timescape" which is equivalent to a landscape where all past and future events are equally real are just locations in the landscape.

If the block universe view is correct, it is irrational to fear death. We apparently fear death because we believe that we will no longer exist after we die. But according to the block universe model, it"s not true to say that we exist now, but won"t exist any longer after death. Death is just one of our temporal borders, and should be no more worrisome than birth!

I find it plausible that personal cosnsciousness is the universe reflecting back on its own existence after is achieved a critical level of complexity and that creates some illusion that time is flowing. That is illusion is created by the second law of thermodynamics and not some absolute flow of time that will still flow on inexorably after you die. When your life is switched off at the terminus of your life there will be no reference point for a and past present and future as these dichotomies of time have no absolute singular and universal existence outside one's personal experience of it. I may well just switch on somewhere else in the timescape. The universe will just merely reorientate itself around another observer and they may well be in that past relative to this life and not the future.

CDR

DNAinaGoodway

Yeah, CDR, time is not how we perceive it, and may be as you describe it.

But re-incarnation posits that some part of your consciouness is separate from your body.

Is there any evidence for that?

Current evidence suggests that consciousness is a creation of neural activity only.

DBT

There have been a few attempts to work that little problem out
Theosophy for one tries it with a system of 'subtle' bodies;

Quote;
Of rather greater utility as a valid metaphysical system is the doctrine of distinct planes of consciousness, each with its own corresponding "vehicle". Thus, the idea that we exist simultaneously on many levels or planes, not just the physical. This is a very important concept, and one that appears time and again in various esoteric and emanationsit cosmologies throughout history.

crocodile deathroll

My functionalist theory around this is that your consciousness is analogous to some function of your computer that is separate from your computer hardware. That may be the platform of Mac OS X or Windows XP. That principle that links one life to the next would be more mathematical than physical. So the algorithmic processes that boot your sense of self into existence could just as easily be emulated by another brain it did not have to be just "one" particular brain like it does not have to be just one particular desk top computer that can load Mac OS X.

There is no evidence that there is matter that is truly unique to you. At a subatomic level we are all indistinguishable. So you can we know our place in the universe if all the memories of this life are totally obliterated?

crocodile deathroll

Yes I could not agree more and again that is "activity" - a function - and there is no evidence that is the actual "material" of the neurons. If I snap froze to to absolute zero all the material would still be there but you would not be the slightest bit conscious. So there just has to be a certain level of functionality at around 36°C for your consciousness to exist. I find it perfectly plausible that other brains would emulate that function if the one you have now, defaulted.

CDR

starling

I don't know for sure, but by the accepted laws of Physics, any shape however complex will be permanently disordered some time in the future. The arrangement of molecules that makes us "us" will go to a more disordered macrostate, and we will be lost forever. They claim no information is lost in the universe, but where does a bubble go when it pops?