But I don't want to believe in reincarnation

[Magical Realist]

I just can't. On the surface it means our destiny is an endless crapshoot of good lives and shitty lives for what possible purpose if you can't remember any of them? I'd rather go to some afterlife where things are radically different. I'm tired of this plane. But maybe it's how we rise beyond it. I don't know. I have a pretty good life now. But my next one? Will I be a psychic scavenger fighting for my life in some post nuclear dystopia? Great! lol! Anyway, here's a case that may raise an eyebrow or two:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQAIL7Uikas

I may actually have to buy this book to swallow this bitter pill:

https://www.amazon.com/Born-Again-Reinca...886&sr=1-2

[Syne]

While I have no specific reason to believe in reincarnation, I do lend it some small degree of credence because it seems to fit within ontological dualism. There are several schema of how the following life is determined by the previous. In some, it is a teaching mechanism, with the next life including the lessons you are next prepared to accept and learn. In others, it is opposite your current life's motivation, having proven that motivation a failure in death. And yet in others, it could be considered a mindless sum-of-histories, where each individual will eventually have lived every kind of life imaginable.

[C C]

I just can't. On the surface it means our destiny is an endless crapshoot of good lives and shitty lives for what possible purpose if you can't remember any of them? I'd rather go to some afterlife where things are radically different. I'm tired of this plane. But maybe it's how we rise beyond it. I don't know. I have a pretty good life now. But my next one?

"Remembering" would be key. Or acquiring the equivalent of karma points for how the life was lived, contributing to a determination of the next life's quality (a kind of substitute for memory). Perhaps it can be explored, after the next two paragraphs, as to why it might have to be necessary for even a generic conception of reincarnation to feature information retention. So as to avoid transmigration being an otiose sprocket-wheel in the clockwork of a mythos (merely appearing to serve a function or to be a working component).

The generic subjectivity that some naturalists advocate has a vague semblance to reincarnation. But which arguably doesn't qualify since no "soul" or personal ego is literally migrating from one body to another. Only the basic template or general characteristics of a conscious agent (like its capacity for experiences) will repeat hither and thither in space and time, serving as the underlying identity / archetype for the many particular instances of conscious agents. Even its continuance being interrupted for short or lengthy intervals is no problem for it.

Thomas W. Clark: "This thesis implies that even if all centers of awareness were extinguished and the next conscious creature appeared millions of years hence (perhaps in a galaxy far, far away) there would still be no subjective interregnum. Subjectivity would jump that (objective) gap just as easily as it jumps the gap from our last experience before sleep to the first upon awakening. All the boring eons that pass without the existence of a subject will be irrelevant for the subject that comes into being. Nor will they count as "nothingness" for all the conscious entities which ceased to exist. Subjectivity, awareness, consciousness, experience – whatever we call it – never stops arising as far as it is concerned." --Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity

In the everyday world, memory at least normally survives the transition between one moment of experience and the next. Due to its correlation to a body whose organization is similarly replicated / modified throughout those temporal relationships. This maintains the personal identity or belief that "I'm still persisting" despite the changes.

However, with reincarnation or an overarching definition of it lacking specific details, there is neither internal nor any external evidence, of a radical connection from a deceased life to a wholly different one. There are no particular attributes of the former identity / person being transferred (including memory); and the generic attributes of the new human body and its own sequence of experiences arise by means of local developments, rather than migrating from the old.

Thus even the possibility of reincarnation seems inutile, unless there was an intermediate stage that did retain and have access to memory (which is superordinate to the introspections and extrospections of both of the human bodies involved in a reincarnation process).

I guess there are some New Age beliefs which posit a transcendent version of the subject that does hold memory of all the past lives (perhaps even future ones). So apparently a generic concept of reincarnation actually must entail that out of necessity, too (not leave it to the special definitions of particular belief ideologies). If the concept is to sport a practical value in mythos, as well as reincarnation being verifiable or realizable at any level at all in the context of mythos. Even if it must be delegated to a level that is superordinate to both the private and public dichotomy of everyday life experiences.

[Magical Realist]

Past life regression therapists seem to think there is a higher self in a timeless state that remains separate from our embodied self thru each lifetime. The information of each life gets dowloaded into this consciousness over time. I guess it's also a fully realized enlightened being that each life is meant to teach us how to more and more become aware as. That's part of Buddhism as well as Hinduism in the form of your atman. I wish I could skip this long school of hard knocks and advance to the enlightened stage. But the suffering may be what makes us enlightened over time. I just read Whitley Strieber's account of us evolving into plasma energy beings of a less dense kind of matter. Maybe we already are that and that's what ufos are waking us up to.

[Carol]

"In the everyday world, memory at least normally survives the transition between one moment of experience and the next. "

Plenty of people lose their memories for one reason or another, but they still have a sense of "I" even if they do not have a memory of their lives and who is important to them. Also, people may not be aware of why they have a phobia, and that does not mean there never was a cause of the phobia. On the other hand, my grandmother with Alzheimer's disease who lost her memory, remembered I had a water bed! She didn't know who I was, or that she took milk of magnesia until she gave herself the runs, but she remembered I had a water bed. So if our memories can be unpredictable in this lifetime, why would we make a predictable memory of past lives a criteria for confirming reincarnation?

Is there a simpler way of saying "posit a transcendent version of the subject"? Like, can you give me some common words to help me understand what that means?

I think referring to reincarnation as mythos, is disrespectful to those who question the possibility of reincarnation for reasons other than being familiar with the mythology. It is like calling people hypochondriacs when the doctor can not find the cause of the symptoms.

And exactly what are the mythos? Who wrote them? Perhaps we should examine them to be sure we have a good understanding of them before we judge them? I have heard something about clearing our karmas, so I looked for information, to respond to Magical Realist. I could find many opinions but none of those opinions were written by someone I would consider an authority on the subject. CC you seem to have super excellent skills in finding good links. Can you find a trusted authoritative link on karma?

[Syne]

Past life regression therapists seem to think there is a higher self in a timeless state that remains separate from our embodied self thru each lifetime. The information of each life gets dowloaded into this consciousness over time.  I guess it's also a fully realized enlightened being that each life is meant to teach us how to more and more become aware as. That's part of Buddhism as well as Hinduism in the form of your atman. I wish I could skip this long school of hard knocks and advance to the enlightened stage. But the suffering may be what makes us enlightened over time. I just read Whitley Strieber's account of us evolving into plasma energy beings of a less dense kind of matter. Maybe we already are that and that's what ufos are waking us up to.

Some would say that wishing to avoid the lessons of life is indicative of one of the lessons you have yet to learn. Avoidance leads to a great deal of suffering. At its extreme, escapism often leads to the hell of addiction and dependence. Wishful thinking is a milder avoidance. One of the first lessons is to realize that you are capable of withstanding anything. Then you can enjoy the journey, without being unduly preoccupied with suffering. Everything is just a challenge. It is meant to be overcome, and the only thing that keeps us from seeing it as such is our faulty, subjective perception of things.

[Carol]

I just can't. On the surface it means our destiny is an endless crapshoot of good lives and shitty lives for what possible purpose if you can't remember any of them? I'd rather go to some afterlife where things are radically different. I'm tired of this plane. But maybe it's how we rise beyond it. I don't know. I have a pretty good life now. But my next one? Will I be a psychic scavenger fighting for my life in some post nuclear dystopia? Great! lol! Anyway, here's a case that may raise an eyebrow or two:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQAIL7Uikas

I may actually have to buy this book to swallow this bitter pill:

https://www.amazon.com/Born-Again-Reincarnation-Xenoglossy-ebook/dp/B006ID6T8K/ref=sr_1_2_title_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335729886&sr=1-2

I very much like the you tube.  

I think you can be whatever you want to be in your next life if our consciousness continues when our brains no longer function.   I am not sure that is possible, but I have been preparing for my next life just in case it is possible.   That preparation makes my life meaningful in the present, and that is what matters now.   

For sure there is a lot said about reincarnation that I do not find agreeable.  I may have run with outlaws in a past incarnation?  In a regression that was not intended to go past this life, I spontaneously became aware of fleeing from a prison and being shot in the back.  I really don't know what that was all about, my mind distorting memories of my present life with movies I saw, or what.  I do know I got rid of a pain in my back, where the bullet may have entered, by repeatedly acknowledging the event and making peace with it.  

I would not make the same decisions in this life because this life has been so much better.  Modern women have choices women did not have the past.  Large, modern cities give us a freedom that women did not have in the past.  The point I am getting to is it does not make sense to punish someone for a past, when the wrongs done then were the result of wrongs done to the wrong doer.   When the whole town rejected someone for something like having been taken by native Americans and then returned to the white community, and the only way for such a woman to meet her needs is to be a prostitute, how wrong is she for going with people who treated well?   How wrong would she be for justifying criminal actions on the grounds that those who were wronged had themselves wronged her and others?   what is the higher morality and how is it gained?

[Syne]

The point I am getting to is it does not make sense to punish someone for a past, when the wrongs done then were the result of wrongs done to the wrong doer.   When the whole town rejected someone for something like having been taken by native Americans and then returned to the white community, and the only way for such a woman to meet her needs is to be a prostitute, how wrong is she for going with people who treated well?   How wrong would she be for justifying criminal actions on the grounds that those who were wronged had themselves wronged her and others?   what is the higher morality and how is it gained?

The wrongs we do ultimately hurt us more than they hurt others. The wrong actions of others never justify what we know to be wrong. If you must justify what you know to be wrong as retaliation for those who've hurt you, then you have become the effect of their wrong doing. There's truth in the saying "two wrongs do not make a right". Retaliation is not a lesson for those retaliating. It's just an avoidance of the real lesson by drowning in blaming others.

[C C]

So if our memories can be unpredictable in this lifetime, why would we make a predictable memory of past lives a criteria for confirming reincarnation?

Little or nothing to do with confirmation, since the memories could just be the hallucinations of mental illness. IOW, before one even got to such an issue there must be grounds for entertaining a notion like reincarnation to begin with. Where they would play a role is in regard to that.

If John doesn't have the body of Napolean, and he does not remember being Napolean, and there is no evidence in John's body or the surrounding cosmos of anything about him ever having been Napolean, then for what reason(s) would it be considered that John ever was Napolean? (That reincarnation took place?)

Compare that to a more ordinary situation:

Jane can assert that she is a continuation of the person she was 5 minutes ago because she seems to more or less have the same body as 5 minutes ago. The current version of her body can physically trace its origin to the older version. That is, it didn't pop out of thin air, it has a developmental history. [Label that a physiological justification.]

Jane can assert that she is a continuation of the person she was 5 minutes ago because she remembers being that person, she retains those memories. [Label that a psychological justification.]

In addition, there may be environmental "records" which attest to current Jane being a continuation of a past Jane from 5 minutes ago. Perhaps there is video camera footage of her walking around in a lobby during that five minutes. Other patrons of the establishment may recollect seeing her. Current Jane is carrying the driver's license and other ID artifacts of the past Jane.

Now back to John: What would we have available as evidence that he was a reincarnation of Napolean? The latter's body is not handed down to him to occupy. There is no environmental evidence of him being Napolean. The one option which reincarnation might potentially offer in terms of the everyday world is memory. Claims of the latter wouldn't be "proof". They would provide entry-level grounds for a proposal of John being Napolean.

Yet John running about proclaiming that he had the memories of Napolean wouldn't get anywhere outside a circle of gullible people (i.e., "He's crazy!" or He's lying!"). Those memories wouldn't count much as threadbare evidence. Instead they would be what seems the only relationship between John and Napolean that is available for construing reincarnation at all. That relationship may be essential to the concept itself.

Similarly, current Jane has physiological, psychological, and environmental relationships between herself and past Jane to constitute their sharing the same identity, or being part of a broader identity which they can be subsumed under. IOW, they're more than just justifications, they're necessary for making such possible, for making the very idea of current Jane and past Jane "amounting to the same person" as being tenable.

What about the definition of transmigration as "the passing of a soul into another body after death"? There's no test for "soul" in the everyday world. So it's back to what is available as a reason for why John or anyone else would be construing him as a case of reincarnation: His having the memories of Napolean. Setting aside how absurd the proposal would nevertheless be to many.

Is there a simpler way of saying "posit a transcendent version of the subject"? Like, can you give me some common words to help me understand what that means?

transcendent - beyond and outside the ordinary range of human experience or understanding.

subject - a being that has subjective experiences, subjective consciousness, or a relationship with another entity.

As a metaphor, trying to apprehend one's "transcendent subject, self, ego, whatever" would be vaguely akin to a character in a computer game's virtual reality trying to apprehend her ultimate source in the software data of the game's program stored on the hard drive of the computer. Or trying to apprehend the super-external player who was manipulating her character -- even though it seemed like everything she did was the result of her own will and decision-making, due to the manipulations of the "player" being converted into and blended into the rules of how the game worked.

What she would be experiencing and have access to is the game world displayed from her POV on the computer monitor. Not the prior in rank "world" of electronic circuitry which made her extrospective experiences of a physical environment possible. She would have doctors showing her scans of a brain inside her skull like everyone else, and all kinds of scientific evidence that the brain and the body's sensory system was the cause of her perceptions and thoughts. All of which would actually be appearances -- the virtual reality's own "internal story" of how it operated in terms of its contents being their own inter-dependent causes and effects for each other.

Remember that this is a contemporary metaphor for something dating back at least to Plato. Literally construing the situation as a "Matrix" scenario is wrong-headed in respect to that computer simulation approach monotonously repeating the same situation at the next level and the next and next... (Russian doll syndrome). A stratum that is superordinate to this one should consist of something completely different (avoid explaining _X_ with another _X_, stop the regress). Due to the constraining forms of thought and sense which human imagination is limited to, however, that "...and now for something completely different.." will often be kept an empty Kantian placeholder or a general set of candidates.

I think referring to reincarnation as mythos, is disrespectful to those who question the possibility of reincarnation for reasons other than being familiar with the mythology. It is like calling people hypochondriacs when the doctor can not find the cause of the symptoms. And exactly what are the mythos? Who wrote them? Perhaps we should examine them to be sure we have a good understanding of them before we judge them?

mythos - the body of stories associated with a culture, institution or person.

Referring to "reincarnation" in the context of mythos is a way of saying that there's an attempt to address / examine an idea in its native framework (though the latter might be inaccurate or a very meager attempt sometimes). Without concern over the fact that it might be garbage, say, in a science context. IOW, it is an effort to respect a concept by placing it in a circumstance that permits such, rather than in a circumstance where otherwise it would be dissed.

Metaphysics along the line of transcendent speculation is recreation. You work to make such concepts hang together better or be more internally coherent. And not engage in the futility of trying to verify that they correspond to something that you might empirically encounter or validate someday. By definition they often can't be something which one might empirically encounter. The recreation turns into "belief" when people get hung-up over reification, truth, falsity, etc, rather than "How can we make Monopoly better?"

I have heard something about clearing our karmas, so I looked for information, to respond to Magical Realist. I could find many opinions but none of those opinions were written by someone I would consider an authority on the subject. CC you seem to have super excellent skills in finding good links. Can you find a trusted authoritative link on karma?

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics...-buddhism/

In terms of "more", Yazata is the one to ask.

[Carol]

CC I would bet you score high into the genius range on IQ test. I do not think I can keep up with you, but I will reply anyway.

Jane can assert that she is a continuation of the person she was 5 minutes ago because she remembers being that person, she retains those memories.

But the point is, she does not remember. A woman who specializes in brain function had a stroke and as she explained it, she was given a new life. Her memory was gone and she didn't remember who she was angry with, so she now had a chance of life without anger towards anyone. Fortunately for her, her very positive personality was in tact, but this is not so for all brain damaged people. Sometimes brain damage can so change a person's life, no one wants to have anything to do with them. They can go from gentle and refined people, to someone who cusses and is violent.

This gives us a reason to pause and ask, who are we? Exactly what is it that makes each of us who we are? Are we our bodies? I really don't think so. To anyone who looks at me, I am obviously a very old woman, but I am actually a 30-year-old trapped in this age body. Thirty because that is when our personalities solidify. However, there are normal and neuron reasons for us changing as we age, but we when think of who we are, we kind of fall back on the 30-year-old blueprint. Hopefully with some improvements. Oh dear, this isn't easy. Bottom line though, we are not exactly our bodies.

Back to John- "There is no environmental evidence of him being Napolean". But that is exactly what the video has proven does exist. Did you watch the video? It is like archeology finding evidence of past lives. We are talking about people knowing things and having no explanation for why they would know these things, unless they were there in the past. However, there is the research into memories being transmitted genetically. This could also explain why some people know of past lives.

Now here is why I say you must be a genius-

"As a metaphor, trying to apprehend one's "transcendent subject, self, ego, whatever" would be vaguely akin to a character in a computer game's virtual reality trying to apprehend her ultimate source in the software data of the game's program stored on the hard drive of the computer. Or trying to apprehend the super-external player who was manipulating her character -- even though it seemed like everything she did was the result of her own will and decision-making, due to the manipulations of the "player" being converted into and blended into the rules of how the game worked.

What she would be experiencing and have access to is the game world displayed from her POV on the computer monitor. Not the prior in rank "world" of electronic circuitry which made her extrospective experiences of a physical environment possible. She would have doctors showing her scans of a brain inside her skull like everyone else, and all kinds of scientific evidence that the brain and the body's sensory system was the cause of her perceptions and thoughts. All of which would actually be appearances -- the virtual reality's own "internal story" of how it operated in terms of its contents being their own inter-dependent causes and effects for each other."

Wow, I can not wrap my head around that yet. That is absolutely wild! And that might be an excellent explanation of our reality! Because of these threads, I am investigating the possibilities and some of the science is totally bazaar and puts our free will in question. I am struggling with making sense of this information and it gets into quantum physics and my poor brain does into meltdown. You will have to give me a pass on this, because I really do not grasp the concepts. Sorry.

Awe, the explanation of mythos, is back in my field of comprehension. We have Jung telling us the symbolism of mythology is universal, and Joseph Campbell who takes this a step further and says when we do not have a shared mythology we must invent our personal mythology, using the people who are familiar to us as the monsters and gods and demons in our private mythology.

Now I think we need to take care. When we discredit someone's notion of reincarnation, of which mythos do we speaking? Might it be possible that our culture makes us blind to some of our reality? This is what I believe is so. I think not only do we need to determine the source of the operating mythology, but also we should have a good understanding of that mythology before making judgments.

I will PM Yazata