reincarnation

[pantherhound]

since theres been a few deep thinking threads recently, i would like to start another. im not religious or a hippy or anything , but I believe in reincarnation. I think everyone has been someone or something else since the beginning of time, and this raises the issue of what 'existence' means. what does it mean to exist? i cant remember when 'I' was a tree or a lizard or whatever, because it wasn't 'me' as an entity in relation to my current state, but it will be 'me' in the next life as 'I' will be existing as a conscious entity as someone or something else.

So what is 'conscience' - and why is there any link between the two 'me's' in different forms? i think the answer is hard to fathom.

id appreciate any serious contributions

[spoonitnow]

lol

[BigBadBull]

google Hinduism and read abut their religion, most of it will be on incarnation.

We do analysis on different religions in my cultures class and if there is one thing i learned there- is that all religions are actually the same thing(for example the Holy Trinity is translated as three divisions of Gods in Hinduism- Brahma=GodFather, Vishnu=HolySpirit, and Shiva=GodSon who incarnates just like Jesus, but ten times, and last one is still to come)

[will641]

i thought this was going to be about you getting rid of your zombie dog avatar.

[wesrman]

google Hinduism and read abut their religion, most of it will be on incarnation.

We do analysis on different religions in my cultures class and if there is one thing i learned there- is that all religions are actually the same thing(for example the Holy Trinity is translated as three divisions of Gods in Hinduism- Brahma=GodFather, Vishnu=HolySpirit, and Shiva=GodSon who incarnates just like Jesus, but ten times, and last one is still to come)

This would be a cool class imo.

[Warpe]

lol

spoon will come back as fat chick

[will641]

lol

spoon will come back as a baptist minister

fyp

[wesrman]

lol

spoon will come back as a baptist minister with a daughter that goes out with a smart ass poker player that loves fat chicks and pushing peoples buttons.

fyp

FYP

[wufwugy]

since theres been a few deep thinking threads recently, i would like to start another. im not religious or a hippy or anything , but I believe in reincarnation. I think everyone has been someone or something else since the beginning of time, and this raises the issue of what 'existence' means. what does it mean to exist? i cant remember when 'I' was a tree or a lizard or whatever, because it wasn't 'me' as an entity in relation to my current state, but it will be 'me' in the next life as 'I' will be existing as a conscious entity as someone or something else.

So what is 'conscience' - and why is there any link between the two 'me's' in different forms? i think the answer is hard to fathom.

id appreciate any serious contributions

the nature of the human mind is to believe in the incredible and mysterious. i think it would be really really cool to see if advanced alien life would be the same way. i bet they would. i actually bet that organic technologically advanced aliens would be very similar to humans in most ways. or maybe thats way off. but i digress

do you find it weird that you claim to not be religious or hippie yet you espouse a belief of religious origin which is maintained only by the religious/hippie mindset? the origin of the concept doesn't alone determine its accuracy, but it does lend a hand towards evaluating it wisely.

when we look at the idea of reincarnation from the perspective of logics learned via the scientific method, we see that it is purely abstract and a fabrication of our minds. except it makes so much sense since, based on perspective, it actually can be correct. we are all of the same origin and thread and cylce of life and death. in this sense reincarnation is correct, but this creates the problem of inducting conclusions. we see one thing that is correct then we jump to conclusions. we say 'not only are we all intertwined on some unknown base, but our consciousnesses are also'. the former does not entail the latter, yet we act like it does. we dont define our observations, we dont delineate premises in order to understand what exactly the truth is. we see something of a broad and non-definitive nature which we find intuitive so we create philosophies around it. this is religion. there is no inherent truth in religion. it can make so much sense yet be so wrong.

on top of that, there is no way to know and if we did know it would matter in no way. religions that espouse this ideology fabricate even deeper constructs to demonstrate that it does matter, but they're still illusions.

i grew up incredibly incredibly religious. i believed it into young adulthood. it was only when i delved into understanding logic, logical fallacies, and the scientific method that i learned that the thought processes/logics that are used to conclude religious beliefs are simply wrong. part of why its so hard to see this without extensive learning is simply because logical fallacies are all logical. they make sense, they're just not in order or aren't applied correctly.


wrt what it means to exist: i have no clue. this strikes me as a semantic issue along the lines of 'what does it mean to speak'. the spoken word is defined by the spoken word. existence is defined by existence. not much else we can do there.

the age old human inquisitions 'who are we' 'where are we going' etc strike me as retarded questions to ponder. its like a child asking the same question over and over. the child may think its doing something productive and meaningful when in reality it just simply cannot understand the answers. so 'who are we?' we're humans. 'what are humans?' humans are conscious biological organisms that breed and interact via complex social and political constructs. 'where did that come from' or 'why is that?'. its because we're human and thats what humans do. commence circular argument.

the most core questions our ancestors had about existence are not questions. they are language misunderstood and misused.


wrt conscience: i imagine you actually mean to say 'consciousness'. consciousness has to do with thought, while conscience is that thought in a moral sense.

anyways, consciousness is basically a self-awareness; we know what we're doing. we think (dont actually know) that consciousness is a product of neuronal activity. since we dont actually know since its not something we can observe impartially, we do not know if a rock or microbe or gust of wind is conscious. we have no clue what happens to consciousness upon death. this is because consciousness doesn't necessarily need life to exist. its more an idea we have about ourselves than something we can know and touch.

asking the question 'what does it mean to be conscious' kind also a semantic issue imo, but i think i can address it from a different perspective. for example: what does it mean to be electric, or to be organic? what does it mean to be evolution, or to be physical? when phrased with your intent these questions have no merit since they're not looking for any 'real' answers, and reality is the only thing we know. they're looking for the elusive, enigmatic wonderment.

electricity is electricity. it does what it does because thats how things work. physics is physics, it is what it is. this is the deepest most fundamental understanding we can have of our universe. funny how it actually doesn't provide any understanding outside of the indirect. it could be that consciousness is product of neuronal activity in the same way that sparks are products of electrical activity. there's nothing special about sparks; there's nothing special about consciousness.

[boost]

wuf... srsly dude... youre not gonna catch my wpp count, so just give it up.

reincarnation makes no sense to me. For it to work, there have to have been and always be a set amount of living things.

[Lukie]

please please please please please tell me OP is a level

seriously

here is what happens when you die: you get thrown in the ground or burnt to ashes. that's it. game over. or you can convince yourself of a fairy-land dream world, but that's your perogative.

[wufwugy]

wuf... srsly dude... youre not gonna catch my wpp count, so just give it up.

reincarnation makes no sense to me. For it to work, there have to have been and always be a set amount of living things.

good god howd you get that wpp?

and thats a good point. there is, however, a set amount of energy, and thats all that hippies need to convince themselves that energy = life.

[boost]

wuf... srsly dude... youre not gonna catch my wpp count, so just give it up.

reincarnation makes no sense to me. For it to work, there have to have been and always be a set amount of living things.

good god howd you get that wpp?

and thats a good point. there is, however, a set amount of energy, and thats all that hippies need to convince themselves that energy = life.

I am awesome; that is how.

who says there is a set amount of energy? Why is the universe still accelerating? Imo the only sense the reincarnation works is that we die and the physical material our bodies are made of decomposes and becomes part of other living things. Its weird though, every time I come to this conclusion, that there is no afterlife, I get this severe pit in my stomach. I guess it stems from me always being fascinated with history and scifi, its kinda depressing that at most Ill only get a 70 or 80 year window of this world.

[wufwugy]

first law of thermodynamics: energy cannot be created or destroyed. in general relativity energy is constant. i guess we dont actually know if if energy can be created or destroyed, but we know its much more likely that it cannot. we dont know if the universe is finite even though we believe it to be most likely iirc.

the universe is still accelerating based on energy and mass distributions, not so much on alterations of total amounts. granted our understanding of the universe in this regard is small, im only going off foremost theories.

[BigBadBull]

wait...you guys do know that deep in Tibet, certain monks put themselves in such a state that their heartbeat becomes extremely slow. in that state they exist for hundreds of years. alive.

if you didnt know about it or dont belive it, you should read up on it. interesting stuff. in fact one such monk was found recently in a cave (dont remember where exactly), the body was still alive in a state of deep trance.archeologists say the body is much more then just one or two hundred years old. Like I said, read up on it, youll get a much deper understanding of "life" and rotting in the ground when you die.

In my psychology classes the topic of energy and vibrations comes up quite a bit(like we exist as vibrations so dense that we can actually see and feel ourselves, but our further vibrations around us(i think thats what some call aura, but not sure) is so high that we cannot see or feel it(most of the time). Anyway, the point is= everything has a vibration and supposedly if you study the topic, you will get a much deeper understanging of and feeling as an actual part of this universe.

There is a same topic in physics, but i dont think ill be studying it cause it involves a lot of math and real complicated(even my econ prof. almost failed the course and hes one smart mofo), but if anyone in here is familiar with the string theory in depth, maybe you can explain it better then I can.

[will641]

i got my palm read today and they said i will be the next dalai lama...so i got that going for me....which is nice...

[wufwugy]

BBB, your thoughts are very much in line with pseudo-science.

equating our understanding of vibrations as we experience them in life with how quarks behave in string theory is wrong. also, your bicentennial monks dont exist. hippie and religious resources may say they do, or it may be that information has gotten embellished along the way, but theyre wrong.

i know this is hard to believe that miraculous things we hear about from our ancient secrets are hogwash, but the fact of the matter is that the scientific community does not leave rocks unturned. if it was in fact truth that meditation slows the aging process down then we would be able to find it plastered all over pubmed and then into popular magazines and news. but we dont. i dont quite understand how its so easy to believe in things that are clearly not determined to be true. if a hundred and fifty year old dude was alive do you think he wouldnt be on the front page? doesnt matter if he lived beneath the ice of the north pole, reporters and journalists make a living off of finding newsworthy shit and so many would be scrambling for this one.

the most our science has unraveled is that meditation may have a positive effect on aging. proper controls for these studies are extremely hard to do, and are likely impossible for a long time. the best we can make are correlations, but thats nothing.

[BigBadBull]

BBB, your thoughts are very much in line with pseudo-science.

equating our understanding of vibrations as we experience them in life with how quarks behave in string theory is wrong. also, your bicentennial monks dont exist. hippie and religious resources may say they do, or it may be that information has gotten embellished along the way, but theyre wrong.

i know this is hard to believe that miraculous things we hear about from our ancient secrets are hogwash, but the fact of the matter is that the scientific community does not leave rocks unturned. if it was in fact truth that meditation slows the aging process down then we would be able to find it plastered all over pubmed and then into popular magazines and news. but we dont. i dont quite understand how its so easy to believe in things that are clearly not determined to be true. if a hundred and fifty year old dude was alive do you think he wouldnt be on the front page? doesnt matter if he lived beneath the ice of the north pole, reporters and journalists make a living off of finding newsworthy shit and so many would be scrambling for this one.

the most our science has unraveled is that meditation may have a positive effect on aging. proper controls for these studies are extremely hard to do, and are likely impossible for a long time. the best we can make are correlations, but thats nothing.

if you didnt know about it or dont belive it, you should read up on it. interesting stuff.

wuf, don't claim everything you do not believe as pseudo-science. I had to sit through a three hour lecture in my phyc class listening about those monks. I think that qualifies as a credible source. I have another phsyc. class that deals specifically with meditations, vibrations and consciousness, that actually is real branch of science. Believe it or not, but just don't scream "its a scam, im gonna go stick my head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist"

Sorry, but I just couldnt help but finding your post offensive, not to me but to the people who actually put hard work into studying the subject. your post just reminded me of a bunch of kids i took a transpersonal psychology class with, who left the 1st day of class laughing, saying shit like, wow that bitch was crazy; i dont know what she was smoking... i had no clue why those guys took the class in the first place if they firmly believe that none of this shit exists... sorry if I sound harsh, I really dont mean to, just trying to get a point across.

you have as much reason to believe nothing like energy and vibrations exist as I have a reason to believe these things: you weren't proven wrong and presented evidence, and I was convinced otherwise by sources I consider credible.
And now Im not trying to prove you're wrong, just saying that instead of writing plain "youre wrong, Im right" you've probably been more correct saying "I believe this doesnt exists".
Now like I said, I have no clue about the sting theory, and if some one knows what the hell it is in detail- feel free to explain, but about the vibrations and the monks and heartbeat shit- Ive learned that in two different phyc. classes, thus have a reason to belive it as a fact.
fwiw, apparently media did cover when they found this monk's half alive body, but i havent seen anything about him on tv myself(the professor was 72 when she was giving the lecture, so it might have been in the 80s or 70s, for all i know).

But yeah wuf, we're all posting in this thread because we either have atleast a remote interest about the subject and willing to learn more about it, or atleast have an open mind about it.

So don't take anything I said to offence, but have an open mind. If you really don't believe in this whole energy thing- take an introduction to
transpersonal psychology class, you sound like an intelligent guy, I think you'll find it pretty interesting.

[SaulPaul]

essentially tho wuf is right and you are wrong

"like we exist as vibrations so dense that we can actually see and feel ourselves, but our further vibrations around us"

what the hell? its comes across as your teacher took a load of acid then decided to teach the class. theres two reasons i can think of, for why someone would say this.

these are 1) string theory says this i think 2) every particle has a non zero vibration energy level


1) is just complete conjecture, that is not that widely believed and 2) is a complete misnomer, u feel the vibration energy as heat if i remember correctly

i would be interested in any links about the monks

[d0zer]

Agnosticism FTW

[BigBadBull]

Agnosticism FTW for sure. I mean come on, Saul when you deny a whole subdivision of a certain science, I really don't know how to reply to that. I won't argue with you that's for sure, that's like arguing with a guy who believes that the moon landing was fake. In this case I just can't help you.
I already said many times, if you dont believe it- take a class or two, don't ask for internet links on an online forumif my teacher gave me "links" in order to teach me- id probably not believe her either. Otherwise, if you believe everything on the internet- do some searching, im sure theres a lot of stuff there with added "glory and scifi".

As I was saying before- be openminded. If you're not that- I don't know what youre doing posting here, i mean you arent going to convince anyone otherwise...just saying that Im wrong is kinda like saying- "well i know the moon landing. it was fake, all there is to it."

be open-minded. or not. whatever youre into man.

[SaulPaul]

i wasnt denying the whole subject of trans pys, i was objecting to the odd quote about us everything being a vibration.
call aura, but not sure) is so high that we cannot see or feel it"

Internet links may or may not be helpful, but at least i can consider the following things; 1) source, 2) evidence 3) credibilty of the site.

also fwiw, im alot more open minded than u give me credit for.

another reason i am skepitcal about this, is because it was an area i was very interested in a couple of years ago. have u read Tao of physics, it sounds like a book u will definitely be interested in. Im pretty sure it makes no reference to being 'vibrations' or w/e. im still interested in an explanation of this.

also u'll love this link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...30863803398434
i believe this vaguely comes under trans pys, it definitely a fascinating video

[wufwugy]

BBB,

you have strawmanned me in a number of ways. reread what we both said and tell me in what ways you think you've misinterpreted my arguments. if you would like to get to the bottom of this then that is the first step.

[wufwugy]

oh and i almost forgot,

another step which should be coupled with the first step is understanding the meanings of the terminologies you used (like consciousness and vibrations). be sure to apply the correct context.