Do you believe in Reincarnation?

When I die, the elements that I'm made of will return to the Earth to be used again and give life to other organisms. I guess that's...sort of reincarnation. However, I think that when we die, we are simply dead and that's it. We've all been absent from most of human history before we were born. It'll happen again to all of us. 

 

Are you those elements?

 

I'm satisfied with the knowledge that when I die.. everything that makes up me will be returned to the Earth and universe. I don't believe in the soul, so I don't believe I have a soul that will go from me to a new organism.. but the atoms and subatomic particles will.

 

Over my long life I have gradually come to the conclusion that, generally speaking, religious people and those who believe in reincarnation cannot accept the idea that death is final, despite being surrounded by evidence.
 
So these ideas about spirits, etc. are kept alive, and they hang on to this fantasy so they don't have to think about the reality and finality of death.

 

No one knows what happens when we die.

But I think reincarnation makes sense, so I believe in it.

See you assholes and thugs in the Sudanese desert after your First World vacation is over.

 

David Wilcock is an interesting cat, ive listened to him and read one of his books.

Ive heard some reasons to consider reincarnation but i have yet to make up my mind.

It would be nice if worked like that, it could erase peoples fear of death. I think the world would be different if people didnt fear death and they defended their sovereignty with the utmost integrity.

 

Can you clarify what you mean by that, because everything is composed of elements?

 

Even mind? What about your subjective experience of life? We can see the experience of mind reflected outwardly onto the world. We can see the action of mind, ideas, take form outwardly and observably in this world that is composed of elements, but the direct experience of mind itself is not the outward signs of it. You yourself are a collection of moments, a collection of aware moments which you have strung together to define a self that you assume to be yourself. You are not a whole and singular being, you are composed of aggregates. You are flashes of understanding being strung upon the string of time composing this necklace of self-identity and a belief in a whole and tangible self. Your experience may be rooted in the way the external world arranges itself, but that is not really yourself, yourself exists as a result of it. It's an idea, this ego, this self. We think that there is something to hold onto, but there is no single thing you can point at and say "this I am".

 

Right, but everything that you said is irrelevant when I'm talking about what happens after death. Everything that comes together to make me "me," regardless of whether or not we can agree on a starting point, will cease when my heart and brain stops functioning and will return to the Earth to be reused. I'm glad that this will happen even though I'll no longer be aware of it. I might be wrong, but it feels like you are attempting to say that our consciousness is attached to elements and the basic building blocks of life. Maybe you aren't, but if you are, I have to respectfully disagree. 

 

I agree.
 
And I don't really know what's going on here. I've always been sort of a materialist in the sense of viewing this whole deal as an unfolding of patterns of physical energy. But there's one non-trivial caveat.
 
One time (and one time only) I somehow had specific information enter my brain that could not have originated in my own brain. I was shocked! It was as if someone or something planted a specific thought in my head of something of which I had zero previous knowledge. And it happened out of nowhere - right in the middle of an otherwise typical day (was just starting to eat a plate of spaghetti,  ). When I acted on that information it panned out exactly in the manner that was presented to my head.
 
I haven't a clue how that's even possible from a totally physical standpoint. Something affected my neural firing patterns to produce specific knowledge of something I had zero knowledge of before. It wasn't like a revelation. More like a command. Go to such and such a place (that, btw, I'd never been to before) and you will find such and such. Went there and found exactly what was specified. 
 
How is that even possible? God? Aliens? Weird energy? I dunno. But if that experience did anything, it certainly tempered my hard core materialist perspective. There's more going on here than meets the eye - literally.

 

That is very interesting indeed. I havent had any such experiences. You know it makes me wonder, so many people believe in things we might consider ridiculous or off the wall, but perhaps simply believing them makes them real. Like say a animal whisperer, i dont believe in them because i havent experienced it but perhaps its the other way around?

What if what happens when we die is exactly what each of us believes? We like to say an objective something/nothing happens, but how can we be sure?

I suppose i have had deja vu ,where when it began i recognized the scenario and got a very warm odd feeling until the extent of it played out.

Have you listened to or read Rupart Sheldrake?

 

The body is the soul.

When you die your soul/body will decompose into nature. And the atoms that will once have joined together to make "you" will separate and be used for natural processes. This means that you will be tree, a frog, that guy, some dirt, and a whole lot of other stuff. But "you" will be gone, because "you" never really truly existed.

Or you can cling to yourself as a permanent thing that will never cease to end.

 

I'm saying quite the opposite, the experience of mind is limitless, you can go beyond space and time in this mind. Yet you can see the mind to some degree in the external world. The reason we have the consciousness that we do is because of how our bodies are composed. A different creature would have an entirely different experience of mind. The reason is that our physical constitution determines the way we experience the world and consciousness. It's because consciousness and matter is intertwined. Consciousness is the vibration, matter is the confluence of energy attuned to that vibration. The world is entirely connected to itself, meaning you can't separate self from other. Your self isn't constituted by a static form. You can't locate the self in space and time. You were never born and you will never die, because "you" is an idea arising from the confluence of various factors in an interesting system of interaction. It is the formation of a system, that is the body, that causes this idea of a self, but it's an illusion. Do you know about Buddha? He was enlightened and he understood the true nature of self. Science nowadays has done an incredible job at observing the tangible universe on levels beyond what the human eye can. We've deduced the nature of the physical universe, but there is a great problem in science, the hard problem. It doesn't have to be a hard problem, but the approach tonit is wrong. We don't know how to work the idea of consciousness into our scientific models. Wise people understood it without the need for a microscope. They meditated internally and found the well of understanding within ourselves. We could observe the outward world however much we want, but the realm of consciousness exists within our own minds and it is force that overcomes matter.

 

Yeah Yeah I know. Ambiguous stuff. That has nothing to do with the building blocks of life though. There are things in the universe that aren't conscious at all and they are composed of elements. Science is starting to uncover how consciousness works, and we now know how meditation works as well. Without our brains, I don't believe that consciousness exists. Buddha is worm food. 

 

How do you know they arent conscious? Evidence damnit i demand evidence!

Would you say plants (brainless) are not conscious?

 

I'd say rocks aren't conscious and they are composed of elements. Buildings aren't conscious and they are composed of elements. 

 

You would say... why would you say?

How about plants? I didnt ask about buildings and rocks but we can come back to that.

 

I feel like you just want to argue sometimes. Haha. My point was that elements don't have magical properties and it's the arrangement that matters. However, yes plants are conscious. It's often called anoetic consciousness. It's basically a primitive system that our consciousness evolved from. They can't think for themselves and they aren't necessarily self aware, but they can respond to stimuli in the environment.