I have no bias against the notion or concept of reincarnation, as I believe that spirit is never destroyed.  However, I believe the current paradigm as espoused through personal explorations, modern society and interwoven with ancient spiritual beliefs should be examined in depth.  This is important for several reasons:

The first stems from our purpose as incarnated beings on the planet.  If we have a purpose, other than to simply exist and gather experience, we all want to know what it is.  Modern reincarnation theorists (RTs as I will call them), believe that we are here, as it were, to be in school, to work out old karma (negative actions), and to learn to be more loving and join with God.  The RTs believe that learning is much quicker in the earth school where, after death at some point we all agree to have our memory wiped (after planning our future life, with teachers, spiritual advisors and loved ones), and start out from scratch as a baby with our old "soul," but no memory (except perhaps those buried deep in the subconscious).  The idea is that our souls recognize the unloving things that we've done, and wish to incarnate again in order to not make the same mistakes, and be more loving.  A "do over," if you will.  Bruce has likened the learning here, and the need to wipe our memories to seeing a movie; if you knew the ending, if you didn't live your life from scratch and knew that you were involved in this karmic game, you might not be as sincere in your efforts to live life.  Inherent in this theory is the notion that it is somehow better to fool ourselves by wiping our memories in order to hopefully become more loving spontaneously.  That would make us more worthy to be in the presence of God.  So if modern reincarnation theory is correct, it leads us to the meaning of our earthly lives.

The second reason I believe we should re-examine the RTs is the notion of free will.  Free will is a much talked about topic.  In many modern (New Age) paradigms, it is agreed that while certain things are planned, we all ultimately have free will, and can choose our own paths.  The world's major religions tend to agree with this notion.  However, in a sense, if reincarnation theory holds true, than most of us may be stripped of our free will.  It could be said that we all will choose, willingly to come back to work out these karmic issues.  Yet, I believe that an informal poll on the board might show more than 1/3 of us would currently not desire to have our memories wiped and start over from scratch.  Chumley wishes to be exterminated altogether (to hear him tell it).  If free will reigns, it must be reconciled with reincarnation.  Dave-MBS might say that when confronted with the reality of God and PUL we all feel so unworthy that we choose to go back rather than go on in our unworthy state.  I'm not sure I believe that for everyone.  Many sources (Christian and pagan) stress that God/the divine accepts us as we are.  Why then this overwhelming guilt driven need to reincarnate?

Another reason to re-examine the RTs view is that of memory and our own identity.  We learn through experience; this is how we define ourselves.  Our likes, dislikes, personalities are, our own.  If we wipe our memories or sublimate them completely, are we still ourselves?  Much of what makes me "me" is the synthesis of past and current experiences.  But never forget that wise old phrase George Santayana said: "Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it." The RTs believe that after we die, our past life memories are immediately restored and reintegrated.  So we say "ah hah," I was that Roman soldier, Asian emperor, etc. aside from being Shirley Maclaine!"  Now I understand my life lessons!  One can se the reincarnation theorists paradigm in a negative way here, as if one were born (as it is said few/rare buddhists are, remembering all previous past lives) with the memory of all our past lives, we would make fewer mistakes and have vast knowledge available from the beginning. 

I would like to hear the ideas of others before I present my own theory on reincarnation, as I think this is a great place to share information.  Suffice it to say, that I've laid the groundwork for the reasons I do not accept the current paradigm on reincarnation as it is commonly known.  In a future post I will hearken back to these three reasons for examining our beliefs, and why I think that true reincarnation is much more rare than is commonly believed.

Matthew

Hi Doc. I decided, or intuited one reason I wanted to come for this life was for the anguish of having done my mother in, in another life, I came to make it up to her because it was me being out of control in my passions. (I was shown this, so we could call it a memory.)
it also explained her dislike of me from the start and outright rejection from the time I was a baby. quite understandable in those terms, that she had intuition also.
yet karma was only a part of it. I had been strung up for what I did. therefore the eye for an eye was performed. yet I choose to come to show my love, to make up for my crime. both of us managed to forgive each other this life for anything that went before.I wonder how many of us have killed before..I'm surely not the only one who has done this, for humanity has ceaseless wars and the killing is done by all of us, singlurly or jointly, it's still that we kill. I came back this time to be a healer and to heal myself first. it is time for all to never justify a killing. when we get there, we will have arrived at a very high plateau in our evolvement.

but thats only one facet of my life. I came back to turn a man away from perversion. I was able to do this with divine help. he is a major accomplishment for my soul that he no longer molests children.
this is my last life. I choose not to return. not to this planet. not because I'm not having a good time, theres just nothing here I want. it appears I've done everything there is to do.

having memory wiped out is necessary. if any of us start recalling just how free and easy and loving it is on the other side, not one of us would volunteer to come here and get a job and pay rent and raise children with an absent parent and have to shelter and feed ourselves and take this body to the doctor and vote for a president who takes us into war...ect....if you only knew...you wouldn't want to bring memories of a better place with you to the fullest extent...you'd just chicken out.

but we can get off the wheel...it takes persistent thought control and focus and constant attendance on what is being felt and intuited and choosing our thoughts and focus on the highest good. then you don't make karma and you're off the wheel for good.
DP says it's prayer without ceasing. I tend to agree with him on that point.

these memories come in like a transmission. they are not dreams nor obes, but transmissions unto the screen of my brain. they would not come in unless I was ready and had asked and I did.
each life though is their own person but me at the same time. so we have to go with the disc idea to understand for now.

love, alysia

The disc theory has been proposed and further divided by some sources to simultaneous incarnations vs. sequential incarnations.  Sequential being like the Tibetan buddhists who retain past life memories one after another, bringing that vast amount of knowledge with them each lifetime.  The Simultaneious division is what Dude mentioned, where a disc, in order to gain immediate experience may send out thousands of probes to incarnate simultaneously.

The disc theory is very different than the standard notion of reincarnation.  I am more comfortable with the disc theory, than with saying that each of us as spirits/souls is inserted into a new earthly body. 

Alysia, you have experienced past lives, so you must know if you and DP are the same or two different souls in the same soul group or disc.  The distinction may seem artificial, but it is important.  The implications are very different.

One of my main objections to the notion of pure reincarnation is the notion of wiping our memory, and self-created hells.  The vast majority of humanity is not convinced about the afterlife, and many can and will create afterlife experiences that are not heavenly.  If we wipe out past memories and dive back in, there may be an equal chance or better chance in some cases that after starting to appreciate PUL and the universe, the circumstances of a new life might then lead us into "mistakes," and ultimately a self-created hell.   Take a troubled youth today (I know this one well - has nothing to do with members of the board).  One who gets involved with drugs, violence, self degradation.  He/she ultimately dies and enters a self-created hell.  What did this person do in a previous life?  If they were spiritually more aware in their previous life, they then took two steps backward.  Why?  Kyo has said in the past that we are free to explore our dark sides.  I would postulate however, that once the genie is out of the bag - once we advance toward PUL and the love of God, we would not choose to backtrack and then enter a hell (for the most part).  Yet in wiping our memory, given all the uncertainties of life in the physical world, inevitably many of us would be moving backward on the karmic wheel.  Let us not forget that a baby, a child knows nothing of Karma.  Few adults understand the golden rule.  So inevitably, coming back to earth life means wrapping yourself up in negative and positive karma/actions, and hoping that circumstances and your inner guidance don't conspire to make you lose your spiritual quest and take a step backwards (or an eon in a belief system ridden hell).

Let us say, in this life, I hae freed myself of some hindering belief systems now.  If I were reborn as a baby, I would be loaded down with a whole new set of hindering belief systems.  Seems a bit unnecessary and redundant, doesn't it?  We search, quest and meditate.  Try to free our minds and spirits only to be reborn and pick up belief systems from which we then must try to free our minds yet again?

No, I believe for the most part in the disc theory - with one caveat.  At some point there is no disc, and we merge with God.  Before that, we may see those we love and travel with (our disc, group soul) as a collection of spirits that is unique.  Ultimately this distinction will fade away as our experience with PUL becomes greater, however. 

I also believe that many who access past lives are merging experiences and knowledge of others within their soul group or disc and seeing out of their eyes, so to speak.  When this is happening, it seems that the past experience must have been you, but it is really a close union of two souls, rather than a past life.


M

I would like to append my previous post with the following experience:  Currently, I feel drawn to the Latin Language subtlely.  I do not know if it is because I am part Italian, but Latin phrases seem to ring certain bells to me.  "Memento Mori" (Roughly "Remember that you are mortal") seems to be a hit with me.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_Mori

I see a lot of depth in this phrase.  No overall conclusion yet.

""
Steve

I agree with what you have written Matthew. I've considered the same issues regarding reincarnation and various notions of karma. In addition, it seems as though weighted karma is a definitive for any lifeforce engaging in any type of physical existence at all. If given the definition of karma: the effects of a person's actions that determine his destiny in his next incarnation; the total effect of a person's actions and conduct during the successive phases of the person's existence, regarded as determining the person's destiny. Fate; destiny. the cosmic principle according to which each person is rewarded or punished in one incarnation according to that person's deeds in the previous incarnation. action, seen as bringing upon oneself inevitable results, good or bad, either in this life or in a reincarnation. Given these descriptions of karma, it would seem as though weighted karma is an inescapable if one is to partake in any physical life of any kind. It is almost as though we are born with this unbalanced karma even if it is our first incarnation into the physical realms. For instance, if it was our first incarnation into a physical world what would we have to work out?... what would our mission be if we didn't have any previous physical karma from past physical incarnations to correct, to work through? Or is it rather, our first incarnation is set up for us to "build" weighted karma per se... As such, we now have as a result of our very first action, some form of karma from which we can base our next physical incarnations and karmic missions upon? Seems like bit of a paradox when considering the "RT's" perspective. Also, is there a scale to karma? What karmic "things" would warrant reincarnation over others? Are there specified degrees of karma? Or is karma only in the eye of the beholder with regards to the severity of the action? How much negative karma can be worked out in the spiritual realms and how much requires another physical incarnation in order for the correction to be made? What's the deciding factor in whether or not karma has been corrected? Will physically reincarnating in order to fix past negative karma only lead to the creation of new negative karma? I know that self reflection/meditation/etc. can allow one to see past the cycle... but, as has been mentioned, if the theory held that we reincarnate with memories wiped clean and only a vague intuition to guide us through karmic action... this seems like a recipe for an endless cycle despite the best efforts made.

PUL,
Cosmic_Ambitions

I'm picking on Don's post because he's got it laid out so nice and neat, and addresses a lot of questions I've addressed with people in the past, but tidier...

I have 6 main issues about reincarnation.
(1)  For me, the group soul concept is a key issue.  Bruce Moen's soul disk concept seems very close to the group soul concept experienced by sources as diverse as Swedenborg and Classical Channeling.  But both ES and Classical Channeling experience this group soul as an aggregate of distinct souls with shared core desires rather than as a fusion of separate selves from the same soul, whether we think in terms of linear or parallel incarnations. 

I think it may be that there is a lot more variety in how these things work than we tend to think.  I think of soul groups as potentially anything from a drill team or choir that is so blended together it's almost one, to a collection of friends who send Christmas cards once a year.  Some may be so close they practically are "one soul", others could be much less homogeneous.  There are both drill teams and loosely tied groups on earth, no reason to think that sort of variety isn't possibly elsewhere.  Not to mention how differnet groups can overlap, be part of each other, etc., Of course, being pagan, the whole "as above so below" concept is pretty standard for me.

(2) During his astral travels, ES initally experienced past lives on the lower planes.  But as he ascended to higher realms, he learned that reincarnation is an illusion created by unconsicous mergers with distinct souls.  These more evolved souls accompanied ES down to reincarnational planes to demonstrate this illusion.  But the"lower" inhabitants reportedly refused to witness this demonstration.   

Could be.  Could be ES was shown one way it works, for some folks, some times.  And it leaves the question, if you feel like a distinct soul, what's the difference?  Or is "soul" like "crowd"...a singular noun describing a group of single entities...who are in turn made of up multiple molecules...single entities made up of a group of atoms...
 
(3) The best evidence stems from the alleged memories of young children. The best research on this has been conducted by Dr. Ian Stevenson of the U. of Virginia.  But in a couple of his cases, it was proven that the "remembered personality" was still alive at the time of the child's recall.  This glitch suggests some other explanation for the memories other than reincarnation (e. g. temporary possession, unwittingly tapping into universal mind, etc.). 

No reason it can't be both...if I get information from someone talking in the next room, I have no way of knowing if they're in there, or talking over a speaker, or reading someone else's thoughts and words from a paper.  If I repeat the knowledge I received, and it's pr oven accurate, it still doesn't prove how it got here.  Proving how it got here doesn't prove any of the other possible methods aren't possible at other times.

(4) If one reads karmic law and spiritual lessons into reincarnation, then one might expect the world to be a more moral "school" than in prior centuries.  Such moral improvement is debatable. Also, I find the implication offensive that 6 million Jews were gassed because they had bad karma and in a sense had this ghastly fate coming to them!  Also, I object to the centuries of neglect of the lower caste in India simply because helping these poor souls might interfere with their bad karma.   

Could be a valid point.  Could be that we don't see a big enough picture, and that all this suffering is like the grief they give you in basic training, in order to make you a better (and therefore, hopefully live) soldier later on.  I have my doubts about the idea that we're no more moral than people were thousands of years ago...just the fact of being appalled by the Holocaust implies that.

I don't think "bad karma" is the point so much, at least not for everyone.  I see it as like Outward Bound, where they used to (maybe still do?) haul a bunch of people who've never faced dirt, difficulty, or even the remote possibility of death, out somewhere in the wilderness and scare the crap out of them.  They pay good money for this...and while they may be miserable while it's going on, almost all of them say it was a learning experience, very worthwhile, etc., later on.  We have no perspective while we're here...it may be that even the worst imaginable suffering on this plane is like have a bad sunburn for a few days, once we're back on the other side...painful, but worth that day surfing off Maui and communing with the ocean gods.

(5) The overwhelming majority of past life recall occur in cultures sympathetic to reincarnation.  Why aren't there more American cases?  The reply that parents discourage such reports from their children seems unsatisfactory.  Why don't chlld psychologists at least report more child fantasies about past lives?

Well, you'd expect that, wouldn't you?  I've never known a little kid that I talked with much at all that didn't come up with some sort of "I did this" stuff.  A lot of it bears a suspicious resemblance to what they saw on Disney last night...most of it probably is.  How very hard it would be to figure out which was which, even if you were open to it.  I don't know...sheesh, really, any parents who'd be open the the idea that their kids were reincarnated.  Even if the kid said something they positively couldn't brush off as made up, heard on TV, picked up from friends, or whatever, they sure aren't going to tell anyone about it.

I don't know the answer to the child psychologist question, other than the standard American cultural assumption that those things would be picked up from TV, etc.  Unless it's very blatant, you don't see what you aren't looking for.  Really, how many people have lives sufficiently unusual that, without names, one person's account of a past life would seem sufficiently specific to ring any bells, be something they couldn't have gotten from TV?  I'm a farrier, not a usual job for a woman, so if a kid claimed to have been a woman farrier before, someone might think it was me come back.  But if I was a house-wife living in a subdivision and driving an SUV, who's going to think the kid got that from a past life rather than reruns of "Leave it to Beaver" - or at least a more modern version of it? 

(6) Consider the world's population explosion over the centuries.   What did all these modern souls do for bodies centuries ago?  To claim that  they incarnated on other planets just seems to push the population problem back a step.  If we reincarnate, then it seems plausible to suppose that many new souls are born who have not yet reincarnated.   

I've never understood this argument.  Maybe they just hang around.  Maybe our souls split like amoeba and become two that are differentiated from the point of split...same memories up to that point, different after...would explain all those Napoleons, anyway!  Maybe they come back every 100 years now instead of every 10,000.  Maybe new souls are "born".  That would explain some of the slow spiritual improvement, like the Holocaust, mentioned previously...new, still bratty baby souls thrown into the mix.  Maybe that's a learning experience for the older souls...to learn to cope with that.  If our souls really are "splits" off souls groups or whatever, could be they just split into more "bits".  Way too many "could be"s to write the idea off over numbers.

Still, during his NDE Howard Storm learns from Jesus that some souls might reincarnate on earth.  So perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between the pro-and anti-reincarnation camps.

This has always made the most sense to me...you can, but you don't have to.  Also mentioned by some folks on here in the past was the theory that not everyone is a "normal" (whatever that is) human soul.  Some could be "drones", as it were, ringers for others to react off of.  Not sure if I buy that theory, but it's another possibility.  None of this is "either/or" stuff.

Don

Lucy wrote on Jan 14^th, 2007 at 11:16am:


god I love u Lucy! you just summed it up.  wow, we are rocking on this thread and it just occured to me I could take this one thread and turn it into a book as communicating is what we are doing, and thats the important thing for each of us, not just me and my books that are all unwritten but dying to be written.

perception is just perception, something we see, for example that we perceive with one of the 5 senses in C1. we all know perception is determined by the underlying belief systems we accept as conclusionary.
the definition of a belief system is that it is a box. a limitation, a structure with which to perceive something "out there."
that is not to say to throw away all perception. its just a tool to move towards our greater selves that living a life gives us.

Doc, the way I experience DP, it is like looking at someone else's life. long ago at age 19 I visited a trusted mentor who as it turned out had human failings. she had no concept of disc members. she basically called it past lives. at the time I was hoping I had been somebody else of more esteem than what she was revealing. she just gave me a list of common type lives of common type people. I recorded them and put the tape in the closet. there was maybe 12 lives influencing this one. A study of Elias calls the disc members essence spirit (if Dora wants to come correct me, be my guest!) its what I now believe. essence or disc will contain as many as 800 lives in general. so you see we are drops in the bucket of humanity as an individual personality in C1. no need to have a big ego then to get corrected as its so inconsequential when you know you're just a drop in the ocean, or a sound wailing in the grid.

try to imagine the sound of the grid, 6 billion voices making one sound..not quite a choir that's for sure. you've got all your harmonies and disharmonies in that sound together.

whatever, back to DP. its like theres yin and yang in each of us as energy. he would represent the polarity energy inside me, while LR expresses the body's affiliation of female, therefore as energy, which we all are without a body, we can achieve balanced polarity within one life by embracing such thoughts of who and what we are.
we are not given the whole chunk of where we've been and done as we can't handle that, it's simply too much. we need to make ourselves anew in each life without baggage, but we still carry just enough baggage so we can work that out in this life, in agreement with those we came in with.
then when we realize we can become responsible for the creation of our own reality we join up with others who think the same way, that taking responsibility is what's it about, then we proceed to a civilization which is self governing and does not ask Bush to create peace for us. we do it ourselves from within and then it starts to catch on.

(50 years? hey! maybe sooner!)

anyone can get in touch with essence, other selves, disc members by holding that thought for two minutes to know thyself, then releasing and trusting and waiting.
but u have to be ready to accept maybe you won't see what you want to see. so then you just ask for help. we are not alone, there is assistance. just ask to be shown what you can handle. curiosity and a sense of adventure, or courage to look at the total self is what we all need.

we are all perceiving from our own little perches..you have to fly away from the cages of perception, either doing obes, or meditating or self examination daily. once you fly, you get the overview from on high and it's looking mighty fine once you do. because its "just" a life. it's just experience gathering.
and its the people you loved, who loved you, thats all that gets sifted out and distilled. so live each day like it's your first, or your last, and you'll never experience being at the bottom again..u just get a sense everything is swinging like a pendulum until it rests in the middle.

theres is a level we can call the 7th. folks called it 7th heaven. its a perfect suspension between death and life, as a spirit completed in its experiences. it is blissful nirvana and they can remain there as long as they want. even independent of their disc members.
but they still have their individualized mind. if for one second they begin to entertain a curiousity about having another life, being with others, thinking if there is something more than this wonderful blissfulness they do enjoy, their curiousity takes them into one more adventure and away from nirvana and back into their disc members locale where schemes and plans get cooked up, each one contributing what they would like to experience next.

thats makes drug addicts experience look quite different. many are wanting to attain inner strength by conquering drug habits.

this picture is us; we are in essence love. we all reach for one another for without  one another we can be nothing.

blow me down Tim, you summed up my thoughts in a sentence while I did it 8x10 page.

Tim said:  And.... it's understood that a seperate self is an illusion. So... what reincarnates?

I think I'll take up buddism shortly!