Paraprakrti

Where did you get your conception of reincarnation?

The consitution of the soul, according to the Bhagavad-Gita, is that it is eternal. The soul is neither created nor destroyed. There is simply an inconceivable amount of souls that are falling into material existence and some are being liberated from it. According to the Vedas, the spiritual world makes up 3/4th's of God's manifest potency. The remaining 1/4th is the material manifestation that consists of an innumerable amount of universes each with billions of planets and trillions upon trillions of living entities. If that is only 1/4th then imagine the remaining 3/4ths. In the spiritual world there are 3 times as many living entities. For specific reasons unknown to us right now, many souls are falling into the material world. None of them are being created.





na--never; jayate--takes birth; mriyate--never dies; va--either; kadacit--at any time (past, present or future); na--never; ayam--this; bhutva--came into being; bhavita--will come to be; va--or; na--not; bhuyah--or has coming to be; ajah--unborn; nityah--eternal; sasvatah--permanent; ayam--this; puranah--the oldest; na--never; hanyate--is killed; hanyamane--being killed; sarire--by the body.



For the soul there is never birth nor death. Nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain.

Holly

I was a very eclectic person. I had my own beliefs. My beliefs about reincarnation did not necessarily come from any existing organized religion.

crocodile deathroll

My theory speculates that the soul only be the property of an egocentric universe. No more than an observation principle. But rather analogous to be locked up inside a cathedral and your intuition assumes that each stained glass window has it's own individual light source. But when you escape out into the open you discover that there is only one. In this case it was the sun.
In the case of the "soul" our intuition has mislead us again in to believing there are multiple souls.

The human Brain of course would distort this observation principle like the light filtering and refractions distort the light from the sun like those cathedral windows and gives us a highly skewed picture of reality.

CDR

Paraprakrti

I have a few questions...
what is the reason for this one consciousness dividing into many and thus falling into ignorance?
Also, why must the conception of oneness rule out variegatedness? Is it absolutely necessary that it does?

Paraprakrti

I was more or less in the same position some years ago. Personally, I have found perfect reconciliation in the Vedas. I cannot accept that the soul has a beginning because it goes with the line of reasoning that that which has a beginning has also an end. If that is the case then discussions on reincarnation are ultimately meaningless. One way I have seen this reasoned is similar to what CDR believes; that the individual capacity begins and ends, but the constitutional position of the soul is a homogenous oneness with all others and in that sense the soul is eternal. I can only accept that as speculation. Plus it brings up plenty of questions for which I have yet to see satisfying answers.

Paraprakrti

Anyone who is interested should visit this link:

http://www.geocities.com/july9th_77/...t_dialoges.htm


Therein is a very enlightening conversation between an Episcopalian Reverend and a Gaudiya Vaishnava discussing matters pertaining to religion, monotheism, reincarnation, etc, etc.

crocodile deathroll

IMHO this one consciousness dividing into many is an illusion created by compartmentalized memory of individual brains. As soon as your brain dies you will of course junk all those memories as begin from square one and that process would be rebooted automatically but a randomly selected brain somewhere somewhen else in the universe, which could just as equally be possible for you to be reborn in a past period relative to this one as a future.

More than one soul IMO only creates unnecessary complications in keeping the principles of Ockham's Razor. I just prefer to reduce the soul down to no more than a single universal observation principle within an egocentric universe and not the messy complications of millions of individually created souls.
For the lifetime of that randomly selected brain your memory would only be compartmentalized into that one brain. There will also be the scary prospect of you will ultimately personally experiencing the life of everyone or even intelligent animals that has ever lived and ever will live including the great William Ockham himself.

CDR

Paraprakrti

Why the illusion? Why the individual brains? Also, if there is no indivudal soul then what do you mean to say when you write, "...for you to be reborn"? What is this "you"?


We're already violating Ockham's Razor by just accepting one soul. But that doesn't really mean anything. If we use Ockham's Razor then we limit all existence to the purview of the material senses. If we can agree that consciousness is a transcendental quality, be it one or many, then what does Ockham's Razor have to do with it? What mess is made by accepting many souls? It is not that they are created. The souls are eternal. What we usually refer to as God is the Infinite Soul and we are the infinitesimal souls, part and parcel of that Infinite. Oneness does not rule out variegatedness. It is natural and logical to come back to a singular principle in explaining life. The theist says, "spirit". But spirit being a singularity doesn't mean that it must be homogenous. To think that way is materialistic. We wouldn't be violating Ockham's Razor more than we would really just be assuming that "oneness" equates to "homogenous", IMO.

crocodile deathroll

What I mean is the reality orientated around the observer and that reality just happens to be you at the moment. You are as of this moment to primary space time coordinate in the universe you observe.

CDR

Paraprakrti

Understood...

But why? What has caused this One to become many ignorant parts? I assume that this One is constitutionally full in knowledge, but that after dividing it became ignorant of Itself. I often hear two different sides of reasoning from others I have encountered with a similar philosophy. On one hand they will say that the many are ignorant because they are divided from the One, while on the other hand they will say that the one divided due to ignorance. Of course, this is circular reasoning. Would it not be more reconciling to accept that One and many exist simultaneously? Acintya bhedabheda tattva: Inconceivably one and many (or different), simultaneously. That is the philosophy of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. It is actually very reconciling in these matters, not to mention that it is authorized by one of the most ancient Scriptures known to earth, the Vedas.