So being a Doper is the lowest form of life there is? Well, I kinda thought so, but I didn’t wanna say.
Not so fast - there’s still 4chan and Free Republic.
Just because science at the moment can’t say it happens doesn’t mean it doesn’t.
I tend to like the idea of reincarnation, that a soul is eternal while the vessel that is the body isn’t. People have tried in the past to measure the weight of a soul.
I don’t believe in heaven or hell, I do tend to favour the idea that souls get recycled. Doesn’t mean there’s a god figure pulling the strings, it could all be part of a big natural cycle our science isn’t advanced enough to figure out yet.
Edit, I don’t like anything tight around my neck. I wear a suit and tie at work but don’t do up the top button on the shirt and leave the tie knot a bit loose. I joked to someone recently that it’s because I was hanged in a past life.
No, but because there is some evidence against it, and absolutely no evidence for it, it isn’t even worth wondering about seriously.
My mom was a reincarnation /regression therapistfor a while. She had clients like you. People would come to her, for a treatment of 2-3 sessions, sometimes even just one session. She would put them in a state of mild hypnosis (there are even self-hypnotic tapes for that available) and then ask them to go back, back, untill they would be in a life relevant to their current problem. Then she would have them tell about that experience, then soothe them like “let it go, that was all then, you don’‘t have problems now, you’'re gonna wake up refreshed…” and then they would wake up.
Most of her clients were happy with the results, I think.
You do know that the scientific method was developed to help remove any “tending to like” from descriptions of how the world actually works, right?
How do you know this? Was there any serious effort on the part of your mother to follow up one or two years later to see what her work has done?
No, but that rarely happens with self-paid therapy, anyway. She was a board member of a professional group who wanted to set standards for that kind of therapy, but I don’'t know if they ever did.
I know most people were happy with what my mom did because they didn’t ask for their money back and because they recommended my mom to others.
Not that that says anything about the effectiveness of the therapy; it only says something about client satisfaction. Maybe people were happy just because it was an interesting experience, a “ride”.
If you follow the link to the wikipedia article I listed, it says that most of the found memories in regression therapy are historically inaccurate and colored (or entirely made up out of) the knowledge of history the subject has. Memories ""found: in regression therapy are very similar to the false memories of sexual abuse some therapists installed with leading questioning.
Still, I think regression therapy is a lot less harmful then that. I sort of believed in reincarnation when my mom was so into it and I was still 17-21 years old. I don’'t anymore, only in the sense **Der Trihs **mentions, that my atoms have been part of other beings and so what.
Still, I think reincarnation is a peaceful belief and one that fosters a sense of holism, empathy and connection to the world around us. Not a bad thing at all.
I have more sympathy for a beleif that says: “do onto others as you would have them do unto you, because you have been those others and you will be those others”. Rather then: “Follow My Rules or you’ll go to hell”.
Well, her parents were doctors and not very religious AFAICT. And her memories of past lives seems to be something that was with her since early childhood and that accompanied her switch to Buddhism later. She was definitely a white person though.
It wasn’t something she raved about. It was like, “I remember past lives. There is milk in the fridge. Tomorrow is Saturday.” Very matter-of-fact. It was odd since she is so wildly successful in so many ways. She is no nutjob, but of course like most people on here I can’t see how such a thing can be possible.
That’s just an appeal to popularity, though. I mean, if we’re abandoning evidence entirely and discussing whether or not this is a fun idea, that’s one thing- but it’s not a reason to treat this as something that might be true.
I don’t understand how you can say you’re not sure past lives are real and then come up with a fairly specific conclusion about who you were in a past life.
John McAfee was wildly successful. By most accounts he is also a nutjob. The two are not mutually exclusive.
How would you determine the distinction between “remembering” and “imagining” a past life?
There is no evidence that any information about our lives (otherwise known as “memory”) is retained when we die and carried over into the life of someone else. Children aren’t born with the memories of a full grown adult. So as I asked before, if you have no memory of a past life, what makes it “yours”?
No, reincarnation can be just as brutal and intolerant, and often has been. “You were born into your present miserable life as a punishment for misdeeds in a previous life, while I live a life of privilege because I was a good person in mine” is a great way to justify indifference and cruelty. And like any belief in an afterlife it makes it easier to justify killing, since you aren’t really killing your victim; just sending them off to the next life.
Did he? The only thing I found on google searches were a few people (mostly reincarnation sites)quoting him where he said “he had been born more times than anybody except Krisna” which is supposed to come from his autobiography. Not sure that was nothing more than humor, and don’t know what context it was being used as. And there are other quotes from him which doesn’t indicate such a belief, particularly when he said, “I do not fear death, in view of the fact that I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
Do you have any inkling on how this information was conveyed to you?
I don’t believe in reincarnation, either. I think your brain generates “who you are,” and since it dies and turns to dust, there’s no way “who you are” could be transferred to another living person’s brain at some later point.
I do wonder what was going on in a couple of cases I heard about.
Parents think boy is reincarnated WWII pilot: Parents Think Boy Is Reincarnated Pilot - ABC News
The parents must have either purposely coached their little boy to say this stuff, I guess. Maybe he just really liked airplanes so they turned it into a reincarnation story for attention, IDK.
Shanti Devi: Shanti Devi - Wikipedia
This one was a long time ago - Shanti Devi was a little girl in the 1930s and supposedly she insisted that she was married and kept trying to run away to her “old” family and husband. She apparently insisted it was true up until she died.
In both of these cases, no one is claiming to have been someone famous or rich (AFAIK). I could see a certain draw to claiming to be Napoleon or Cleopatra but not sure what the motive is to claim to just have been some regular person.
Usually what happens is the kid either reads something or invents something that sounds vaguely like the truth. The parents help fill in the details and then say things like “A kid couldn’t possibly make that up!” Which is just an incredibly stupid thing to say.
OK, but it is your fault to involve consciousness where the subject is knowledge. Steener122 didn’t mention consciousness.
If there is such a thing as consciousness, it is the conscious knowledge. Consequently, there is unconscious knowledge too.
Most people who think they’ve had past lives seem to think it is “them” that survives death and is repackaged into the current life.
In order for “them” to survive death, it needs to not be dependent on the functioning of a brain.
Also, your last two sentences seem to be goofy.
Everybody stop mocking! It’s getting all… Deridey Murphy in here.
Given an infinite amount of time quantum physics predicts that an entity exactly like yourself with all the memories intact will “pop” out of the quantum ooze an infinite amount of times. Of course you may choke to death in the vacuum of space soon afterwards. Pleasant dreams.