bruto
Penultimate Amazing
Space is generally considered a property of the material world. If souls are not material, why would they occupy any space, or need a place to collect?
I don't think this fricasee is fully baked.
Reincarnation: Soul Evolution?
- Thread starter PartSkeptic
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Space is generally considered a property of the material world. If souls are not material, why would they occupy any space, or need a place to collect?
I don't think this fricasee is fully baked.
PartSkeptic
Illuminator
I will look for and buy the book (or download the Kindle version). My initial reaction is that hypnotic past-life regression is a limited area of research, and has it's drawbacks and critics.
I learned hypnotism at the age of 16 in the 1960's and did some psychic experimentation at that time. But I stopped using it after some of the results made me realize I did not fully know what I was dealing with. I did not do past-life regression.
Perhaps you should follow this thread and tell me (us) what you (and Dr Newton) differ with, and why.
PartSkeptic
Illuminator
This is not a scientific discussion. It is intimately tied to my personal experiences, and the books and opinions of others that came my way at opportune times. It ties into man's spiritual beliefs, and why it seems (to me) to be a logical explanation as to how it functions. It works for me.
PartSkeptic
Illuminator
A long story which I wrote about in another thread. I learned about the suicide and in order to stop all the things going wrong, I decided to see if I could communicate with the spirit. I sat in a dark room, relaxed and invited it to chat.
There were no voices inside or outside my head. It was as if I was having a debate with myself, except that the "other person" was not quite me. The spirit explained how, after he died, he saw his body decay (maggots and all) in the heat of the Karoo in a pickup truck before being found. He saw the distress he caused, and wanted to apologize to his friend
It seemed a series of events were facilitated that made this happen quickly, and things were okay after that. Coincidentally the ex-girlfriend attended. She afterwards said he stopped haunting her and her mother.
It made me wonder what spirits were and what they could or couldn't do. I happened to visit a spiritual couple in the village, and they loaned me a book (1976, Johannesburg author, out of print) which had it's own theories, but gave me some clues.
Side note: While feedback is appreciated, and so is some humor, there are posts which are simply negative and irrelevant.
This may all be my imagination, but repeatedly telling all of us that contributes little.
SusanB-M1
Incurable Optimist
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Part Skeptic
I do not believe in any kind of reincarnation, regressions etc, and as I am old, I know that I haven't got a long stretch of life ahead, and have absolutely no wish at all to be reincarnated. In your opinionm, can I prevent it? What happens to what you think is my soul/spirit after I die - will my wish not to be reincarnated be respected?
I do not believe in any kind of reincarnation, regressions etc, and as I am old, I know that I haven't got a long stretch of life ahead, and have absolutely no wish at all to be reincarnated. In your opinionm, can I prevent it? What happens to what you think is my soul/spirit after I die - will my wish not to be reincarnated be respected?
Ladewig
I lost an avatar bet.
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It is not yet a discussion of your views on reincarnation. We are still waiting for a summary of how you think reincarnation works.
Thor 2
Philosopher
Interesting - so you learned about the suicide. Do I take it from this that you did not know the victim before? If so how did you recognize the entity you communicated with given that?
PartSkeptic
Illuminator
Good constructive question.
This was one problem that I thought about. And now you just forced me to research what is on the internet about souls, and what religions think. Obviously I had done some reading already.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/afterlife.html
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2970/jewish/Do-Jews-Believe-in-an-Afterlife.htm
Comparative Religion for Dummies.
Early Humans: Buried with food and hunting equipment for the afterlife.
Egyptians: In the afterlife sinners got punished
Socrates and Plato: Souls think and are reborn
Early Christianity: Augustine had a trichotomic view – body and spirit and soul (my viewpoint).
Later Christianity: dichotomic view – body and spirt/soul (spirit and soul are two words for the same thing)
Christianity: Soul created at conception by God.
Judaism: The Torah is silent on the afterlife. Some say “life” does not die with the body .
Islam: Soul goes to Heaven or Hell. More pleasures in Heaven.
Hinduism: Soul has always been eternal, and gets instantly reborn after death.
Buddhism: Somewhat agnostic about it.
Animism: Our ancestor live in the spirit world
Jainism: Every living thing has a soul. Reborn until liberation achieved.
Taoism: Multiple souls.
Science: Still seeking.
New Age: Various.
I believe in the Big Bang and evolution. These are recent discoveries and religions have not properly addressed this with regard to souls and spirit.
What about the ancestors of man? How far back does one go before saying that “pre-man” did not have a soul? If they did, did they also go to Heaven or Hell (and stay there eternally!)?
It is for this reason that I think souls evolve, and are reborn. For logical consistency, all life might have a soul, however elemental or simple. These would form the origin of our souls, and the source material is a dimension (for want of a better word) that is much like the underlying “fields” of our physical world. An elemental soul can “pop” into existence much like a physical particle can.
PartSkeptic
Illuminator
Not with any physical equipment, or it would be available to science to examine. I had an experience where I think I met my late wife in the soul-dimension. It could be my imagination, or it could be a way to get information.
It seems that God decides that a soul should enter a new and separate life form. When and who. Probably at the moment of conception. I concede this is conjecture on my part.
It seems to me that some important recent memories are retained but these fade (are discarded) with time (or reincarnations) as being irrelevant.
What is important are attributes like personality, moral principles, instincts, and the blueprints to assist the programming of the embryonic/growing brain (together with the genetic codes).
Which genes are chosen for conception and which ones mutate might be guided by the soul (instructed/informed by God).
PartSkeptic
Illuminator
I heard about the suicide before I moved in. They downplayed it. I did not know the person (victim of his own hand?) before. I found out more just before the "contact".
The long sequence of events for this whole thing was unusual and serendipitous. It is this that makes me think that the spirit explanation is valid.
Why is anyone talking about this, if this is all we've got?
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PartSkeptic
Illuminator
If your soul stills feel that way in the afterlife, I suppose you might get your wish. You might feel quite differently. Or God might feel that you are just the "soul" he needs to be reborn to fulfill a purpose.
Why worry about it now? Just as I accept suffering is part of life, I accept that death is what it is. It may also be there is nothing at all, in which case you get your wish, and you and I just become a memory in the minds of the living for a short while.
PartSkeptic
Illuminator
Actually a good question. I cannot prove anything about the supernatural. "Seem" is a neutral way way of saying what I think I experienced and what I think the explanations are. You have free will to reject, and free will not to follow the thread. (Or do you feel compelled?
)If I am an illusion, I only "seem" real. However, I think therefore I am.
PartSkeptic
Illuminator
MikeG: Another good question.
I was asked this question by a person a few years ago. If the spirit is the "interface" the soul uses to interact with the body/physical world, then it has the same form. Cut off the hand, and both the hand and that part of the spirit decay. "Dust to dust" and "spirit mist to spirit mist."
The soul, being formless, remains until there is no life left.
I offer my experiences and my analysis/thinking to explain things that many people already believe or have experiences of. I have a few "ghost" events - personal and people I met.
It is likely that the soul of Jesus used a spirit form to come back and meet the disciples. God allowed the spirit in the disciples to perceive the spirit form that Jesus took.
If spirit is needed to detect spirit, and only if God wishes, then science is not going to be able to prove the existence of spirit. However, science can only make conjectures about what is going in peoples minds.
Scientists are not present at the supernatural events that some people think they experience. Some people are absolutely positive their experience was real. Scientists have no explanation other than some strange mental chemistry which is still not defined.
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No-one is suggesting you are an illusion. I am suggesting that the world works perfectly well without souls, and that the idea of souls is illogical and inconsistent.
I wasn't being fatuous when I asked where the soul resided, and talked about amputating the hand. If you cut off an arm, have you lost your soul (or part of it)? What about both arms? Both arms and both legs? Do you still have a soul? You lose both arms, both legs, and have a heart and lung transplant..........do you still have a soul? All of the above, and you have a liver and kidney transplant? Do you still have a soul? See where this is going? So, in all seriousness, if you postulate the existence of a soul, you tell me where it is.
ETA........our posts crossed.
So, brain death? Except that fingernails and hair cells remain alive after the brain dies. So, at that stage, is the soul just in ones fingernails and hair?
That would be a view that comes from a way of thinking that makes Earth the only place in the universe inhabited by souls.
There is no reason to believe that there has to ever be an increase in souls.
The easiest explanation for where souls come from is that the universe came into being just to be a place for already existing souls to inhabit.
So, the souls never "came" from anywhere, but the "where" happened for the sake of the souls' desire to have places within a physical existence.
What? So at some stage there were souls without place? The souls willed the universe into existence?
Why do you religious types twist yourself up in knots with such nonsense? You get to redefine words such as "universe" to suit your own ends, whereas the reality is that the concept of souls is a human invention, probably an attempt by people thousands of years ago, who didn't have access to science, to explain the world around them. It was their best stab at an explanation, along with gods, for a world they didn't understand. Now that we do understand it, you really have no excuse for clinging on to primitive notions like "souls" and "spirits".
The fact is, trying to justify the existence of souls, without a shred of evidence, is in the same intellectual waste bin as trying to justify magic and miracles.
Andy_Ross
Penultimate Amazing
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Why can't souls be measured and detected?
We can detect and measure very subtle and fleeting phenomena thousands of light years away but never a soul in the lab.
We must be living in a sea of souls busy entering new bodies and leaving old bodies but the only way they can be detected is by psychics, mediums and hypnotists.
Not very persuasive
We can detect and measure very subtle and fleeting phenomena thousands of light years away but never a soul in the lab.
We must be living in a sea of souls busy entering new bodies and leaving old bodies but the only way they can be detected is by psychics, mediums and hypnotists.
Not very persuasive
Roger Ramjets
Philosopher
Nobody is present at those supernatural events, because they don't happen! The supernatural does not exist by definition.
Delusional thoughts are not evidence.
Just because you can imagine something doesn't make it real. Reincarnation and souls are silly ideas that have no basis in fact. They are nothing more than wishful thinking.