Quote:Spitfire, I've read some material a while back
(don't ask where, I forget where I saw it but
I did read it) suggesting that our "collective
unconscious" holds the entire evolutionary
history of the species (i.e. a woman undergoing
hypnosis, suddenly took on the "point of view"
(subjective "I" point, that is) of a prehistoric
reptile, and she noted that she was attracted to
a reddish patch on the side of the male's head...)
What this *MIGHT* indicate, is that we've all
been "lower life forms" in earlier incarnations...
and that our "subjective/"I" points" are in the
multi-billion year process of "moving up the
evolutionary ladder."
Thusly, evolution and the "continuity of consciousness" (afterlife) would be inextricably
linked with one another..! No "Big Sugar-Daddy in the Sky" necessary.
Sorry if that confuses you, but its the best thing
that came to mind for me at the moment. (But
then, whatever "truth" might be, I imagine it
would be a bit hard to express in late-twentieth
century/early-twenty-first century English...
wouldn't you say so?)
B-man
I hear you chum, and it does sound quite alot like buddists beliefs.
I can see us being lesser animals in the past, and that it is our knowledge which could have forced cells into forced mutation by expanding the knowledge to which the cells have access to.
If you give life - knowledge it is only natural for it to want to expand it, it's curiosity.
This can be bad and good. Depending on the basis in which the knowledge is used.
You never know...the dinosaurs may have been a failure of our attempt to give it knowledge beyond which it had reached a point to which it would prove useful.
But then again..morals etc dont matter to most other life forms - only us.
Either it is our knowlege from previous existances be that animal/cell or human which advance organic beings, and thus allowing us to gain further knowledge which can only be produced by physical reactions.
It would be concivable that our consciousness can only do so much to an organisim during 1 life span, thus almost any form of organic creature is possbile.
Maybe every creature in the world was our own experiments to find a set of cells to which we could manipulate to a point were it could develope into a society which could move beyond the boundaries of it's programming? Thus giving us more knowledge?
But then again...who would want to be a locust when you could be a human?...maybe we draw a lottery, and as the country ( human population) increase's more of us win the lottery because theres more chances of us getting the 6 numbers (aka human body).
Ok my brains dead. See ya tommorow.