I sincerely suggest shorty... that you read/study the various materials that dave and I had suggested in your previous post concerning the afterlife... Not only will this research give you a *better* understanding of the questions that you pose, but it will also give you a better understanding of the questions that you didn't even realize you had.

In a short reply to the question you have about reincarnation:

As far as I have come to understand, we are "free-willed" spirits... We can choose/dictate, if we are understanding/aware enough, the paths that we lead regarding reincarnation as vs. "staying in heaven"... There are guides/helpers/angels that will suggest/counsel us as to what would be most beneficial for our soul's evolution... But, nobody can "force" you to do something that you don't want to do. Sooner or later however, you will come to realize/understand that in order to mature/grow as a soul/creator, you will eventually "choose" to have another go at an incarnation which will help you to achieve that growth... And in growing spiritually we are becoming closer/more understanding/knowledgable of the source from which we came... (never left). I know it seems like a bit of a paradox, but in all truth and honesty, in time, this paradox becomes more natural than anything you could ever come to know... The more spiritual growth that we undergo as souls, the more we come to understand the "naturalness/trueness" of this complex paradox.

Best of luck,
PUL,
Cosmic_Ambitions

Unfortunately, I tend to disagree.  I don't think the answer is absolutely clear.  Firstly, none have settled the paradox of how if there are 5-6 billion souls incarnated now, they all could have had past lives, when there were, say 1 billion a little more than a century ago.  I have heard theories of aliens reincarnating here, or dividing one's essence into five different lives, simultaneously.  This makes the picture quite strange, even confused.

The issue of reincarnation is a highly debated one.  Free will does seem to reign, thus I would normally think it is up to the individual soul.  I can not believe that a spirit won't mature in the spiritual realms if it is dedicated toward love and serving others.  Thus, this notion of being hurled back to earth life against our will rings quite false to me.

One may see enlightenment as a continuing evolution of the soul.  This may be done by voluntarily coming back to earthly life, but one could easily plot a different path.  We allow ourselves to believe that we have more limitations here, on earth than we really do.  Those who propose mandatory incarnation or reincarnation on earth are in a way imposing limitations on our creative and spiritual selves.  I don't buy into it.  Not yet. 

Our whole past live discussion about Michael Newton, and friends, led me to believe that some of those past life regressions were implanted with suggestion.  So one must be careful in weighing the data each way. 

To each his/her own.

Matthew

I differ with Doc M. The question is a good one, but it carries the implication of a closed static system which I resist.

Let's say that I put a gallon of thick cream into a bowl. Then I
put an egg beater into one side and begin to paddle it around. The cream swirls in a circle. If I look at the amount of cream flowing past a point in the side of the bowl I might say that the flow rate is ten gallons per hour. Further, it looks like all of this can't be the same cream as I started with because what I see is not only flowing past, it's getting thicker. Since it seems to be changing and evolving in some manner, I take it to be different. Then I have a paradox of how I can get a flow rate of ten gallons per hour out of one gallon cream.

Round and round it goes. Like the tread on the caterpiller bulldozer,  spinning past at a high rate, always different as it picks up or drops off clods, yet it's still the same tread, nothing needs to be added to explain its passage.

OK - now look at it from a slightly different angle. God dumps a few gallons of creation into the universe and spawns more galaxies than grains of sand on the beach. Each galaxy contains hundreds of billions of stars, about 20% of which support some kind of self-sustaining chemical process that responds to its circumstancesto some degree, like the prions, virii, molds, fungi, bugs, birds and other critters in my garden. Then God stirs the pot, so I see a huge amount of life activity. The very primitive organisms gain a little bit and become more advanced. Prions gain DNA and become virii. The advanced critters and bugs take on features like mammals. The mammals advance to become people, and som eof the people advance to go off into hyperspace and so on.  Meanwhile, it seems that God keeps on pouring in more raw materials to keep the entire process rolling.

The difficulty with this type of question is that it assumes that our world is static. That leaves room for questions about static balance and measures etc. Actually, the world is dynamic. Nothing exists that is truly static. Every comes into existence, interacts uniquely, then in conjunction with other things, and finally is absorbed into the dynamic background as it loses its initial nature by merging and acquiring new properties.

In fact, we cannot even imagine a static object, because it would have to exist at Absolute Zero temperature, give off no radiation, no gravitation etc, and it would have no interaction by which to manifest its presence.  Our sensors, by contrast, sense changes in their states, so that sensation arises solely from dynamics.

If nothing is static, then there is no reason to ask about how many souls there are at any instant, because some are being created and sent forth, others are being received back into the Creator, and the rest are whirling around and around the bowl being whipped into a froth by God's egg beater.

Time to refill my coffee cup - maybe mit schlag this time.

d

Interesting thoughts dave...

I was wondering... Will God/Source/Us/Everything decide that at some point there have been a sufficient amount of probes sent out to explore itself/create within itself, or does the exploration/creation of new probes expand ad infinitum?

Curious thoughts,

PUL,
Cosmic_Ambitions

Cosmic,

In my opinion, it depends on your model of the universe.  If the big bang started as a singularity, pre-time and space, and now expands in a myriad of ways after the bang, then it may continue on, or as some have theorized, contract back into a singularity again, much like an accordion.

I personally do not see an end to evolution, unless it is to reapproach this singularity unity with the divine.


Matthew

Hey Cosmic Ambitions,
you believe spirits must follow the development of the physical universe?
In my view we can just watch how it blows up forever or collapses or whatever from a comfort lounge, if we want we can engage in this development, if not, well let's just watch or go to something completely different and let the Big Bang be big.

Spooky

Hi Cosmic Ambitions,
when I was afraid to get lost in the greatness of the universe, feeling so little, a big entity gave me a golden ball. Returned to physical reality I remembered it, and in my mind I opened it, and I saw clearly, and totally unexpected, a galaxy in it, and I held it in my hands.

Be careful with liquors out there in the lounge, it may be it sucks you right back to another earthy experience! Hmm...is beer liquor?

Spooky