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[personal profile] fajrdrako


Yesterday I watched another one of those TV programs I wouldn't normally have been watching, except that John Barrowman was the guest star on it. The show was Have I Been Here Before?; it was an episode from last year.

In this show, they put a celebrity under hypnosis and use regression therapy to get them to remember and talk about a past life. They tape them talking about it under hypnosis, and then show them the clip onscreen, and discuss it with them before getting a historian to check into the plausibility of the apparent past-life memory.

Barrowman remembered being a clown named Oliver, who worked as a young man in 1817 in a circus in Bucharest. His parents and brother were trapeze artists; the circus was in a tent, and they lived in a brightly-painted wood caravan. They were travellers - "you might call us gypsies," he said. Oliver was happy at the circus until one day his brother fell from the trapeze. The family lost their circus job and scrounged for money until Oliver eventually supported the family by thievery. That part was particularly cute: he lowered his voice and confided with a mischievous grin, "I like being a thief." He ended up in prison for stealing a woman's purse in the 1860s, if I understood correctly. He described one of the bills he had stolen.

Historically speaking, some of the things Barrowman said checked out - clowns of that time dressed as he had described, circus tents were just starting to be used, there were Russian influences such as he described in Bucharest at that time. On the other hand, the trapeze was unlikely, and caravans would ave been made of canvas siding, not wood. The money he described could have been a 5 rouble note.

All in all, the show was more entertaining than one would think, and Barrowman said he could believe it, though he didn't know anything about 19th century Bucharest.

So I ask myself: what do I think about this, or any other story of reincarnation? I have no religious reasons to believe in it as a general thing. Logically, I think it possible. Intellectually, I think there's no reason to believe that any one single thing happens after death - different things may happen to different people, and be simultaneously possible. Or nothing at all. Or reincarnation may not be what it appears to be - perhaps it's a bit of psychic interaction not bounded by space or time. Emotionally speaking, I don't like the idea of reincarnation at all: I don't want it to be true. But whether I want something to be true or not has nothing to do with the external reality.

Which is just to say: I don't know.

I'd be totally skeptical, except I think I have two memories of past lives - and yes, it could be simple imagination, or some sort of dream, or imagination, but it feels more like memories. One memory - which surfaced in regression therapy rather like that in the TV show, conducted by my friend Beulah - is particularly vivid, strong, and terrifying. It's difficult to believe those could be anything but memories. The other is inconsequential. Both are enough to remove my certainty of disbelief.

Twice, I have had past-life readings from professional psychics, and both were totally unimpressive. One said I had been a Celtic priestess living on an island in the south of England in prehistoric times - I can't say I wasn't, it sounds in character well enough, but I have no sense of memory or identification with the idea. The other seemed even less like me: a story of a Philadelphia merchant with a ship in colonial America. I can't imagine any life I am less likely to identify with, and wondered if the time whether the psychic was picking up [livejournal.com profile] walkingowl's past life instead, which she agreed was possible.

So: I believe more in reincarnation than I do in psychics, it seems.

The thing is: how do we define the self, or the soul, or identity, or whatever it would be that would make me that person with those memories? I believe we are as much bodies as mind and spirit: which is to say that it's our chemical composition and genetic heritage that makes us what we are, gives us our personalities, determines the way we think. That, and our experiences and choices. If I were another person in another place and time, what links that person with me now? What kind of carry-over is possible? And why?

Perhaps we are just seeing bits of the universal consciousness, randomly accessible by the subconscious in a confused and fragmentary state. And that is amazing enough.

Date: 2008-02-10 09:42 pm (UTC)
ext_120533: Deseine's terracotta bust of Max Robespierre (Default)
From: [identity profile] silverwhistle.livejournal.com
Have seen some of these programmes, as has my father. They are presented very disingenuously. The emphasis is always "there might be something in it", but they never take things far enough in historical evidence. (I find it rather unlikely that the first name Oliver would have been used in 19C Romania.)

These cases tend to involve cryptomnesia and subconscious fantasy. Buried memories of novels, magazine articles, old movies – all reworked in the unconscious. A friend of mine had 'hypnotic regression' once, and told me about it. I realised – as she did not – that she was recycling bits of a 1950s historical movie.

There was a famous set of cases in the 1970s, much-feted on TV, which on closer inspection turned out to be cryptomnesia. What was especially interesting was that one woman, who claimed to have lived in Roman times, had taken what had been a minor character in an obscure historical novel (which she could not consciously recall having read) and made her into the main character. It's like subconscious fic, really.

The human imagination is an amazing thing: there is no need to subscribe to fictitious notions such as 'souls'.

Date: 2008-02-10 10:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
I find it rather unlikely that the first name Oliver would have been used in 19C Romania.

I thought so, too. The evidence - if that is the word - is always obscure. But then, if I was remembering from another lifetime and long ago, would I not confuse details?

Nothing makes me particularly believe any of it on the evidence - though it does seem to prove that we all have rather colourful imaginations, at least when we work through our subconscious.

Perhaps when he was young, Barrowman read a book about a circus clown? And another about Bucharest?

Date: 2008-02-10 10:52 pm (UTC)
ext_120533: Deseine's terracotta bust of Max Robespierre (Default)
From: [identity profile] silverwhistle.livejournal.com
I thought so, too. The evidence - if that is the word - is always obscure. But then, if I was remembering from another lifetime and long ago, would I not confuse details?

Your name is not an obscure detail.

Perhaps when he was young, Barrowman read a book about a circus clown? And another about Bucharest?

Quite possibly. These things can be absorbed unconsciously from a variety of sources, even a casual glance through a guidebook. And of course, actors by profession are attuned to creating imaginative personæ.

Re: my friend Marion: The name she gave, and the time-period she described immediately rang bells with me re: a Jean Simmons film that was popular when she was young. (It was the Napoleonic era, and she said her name was Desirée; the film Desirée was about the wife of Marshal Bernadotte, later King of Sweden.) She said she then went forward, and saw herself as this character dying in bed as an old lady. Given that she had a life-threatening kidney condition, from which she died a year or 2 ago at only 60, I could see that this was wish-fulfillment. She knew that she would not live to a great age, but in her fantasy, she did. She could not consciously recall the film (or the novel on which it was based), but I think she wanted to believe the fantasy that she had glimpsed a past life.

Date: 2008-02-11 01:28 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
What an interesting extrapolation.

Date: 2008-02-11 05:02 pm (UTC)
ext_120533: Deseine's terracotta bust of Max Robespierre (Default)
From: [identity profile] silverwhistle.livejournal.com
She was the first person I knew personally who had done this, and it was interesting to analyse what it said about her and her preoccupations. In many respects, it was a compensatory fantasy. Desirée was loved and cherished, whereas my friend had various difficulties in her marriage which were only resolved when she became more seriously ill.

Date: 2008-02-10 09:57 pm (UTC)
ext_52603: (Default)
From: [identity profile] msp-hacker.livejournal.com
When I watched it, the thing that struck me was "Well, now we have a reason why John loves stripes!"

Date: 2008-02-10 10:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
Colourful ones, too - good point. Having the same taste and style over the centuries!

Date: 2008-02-10 10:27 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wijsgeer.livejournal.com
I believe that you have far more potential memories stored in your mind than you can ever consciously put words to. With only a little manipulation many people can be made to swear they saw things that are impossible (like seeing footage of the El Al plane crashing into the block of flats in Amsterdam in 1994 - no such footage exists, but just asking people to remember the night they saw it many people come up with details, how they watched the news and what they had eaten that evening etc).
Also, there is quite a lot of evidence that people can retrieve things they've only seen once, heard fleetingly and make that into a memory.
I believe peoples minds like stories, given prompting, however small, one makes up a tale around it.

I share you emotional resistance against the idea of reincarnation. I don't know why. Or maybe I do, all types of afterlife rub me the wrong way.

Date: 2008-02-10 10:53 pm (UTC)
ext_120533: Deseine's terracotta bust of Max Robespierre (Default)
From: [identity profile] silverwhistle.livejournal.com
Yup. Some people are very suggestible.

Date: 2008-02-10 11:32 pm (UTC)
ext_120533: Deseine's terracotta bust of Max Robespierre (Default)
From: [identity profile] silverwhistle.livejournal.com
I believe peoples minds like stories, given prompting, however small, one makes up a tale around it.


Yes. The process is called confabulation. I recall, when younger, being quite attracted to the idea of reincarnation, but then I recognised that the 'past memories' I had were vague recollections of scenes from films I had seen. Fortunately, I'm not suggestible in the slightest, because (given my range of reading and interests since childhood) I could probably spin some wild tales.

There are a number of basic objections that can be made to reincarnation: one is, there is no such thing as inherited memory, and if there were, it would be genetically influenced, not random. There is also no such thing as an independently existing 'soul': personality = brain-activity and contents. Nor is there such a thing as "universal consciousness".

Date: 2008-02-11 01:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
I was hoping to find people who do believe in it, to get their perspective.

Date: 2008-02-11 04:35 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] duncanmac.livejournal.com
I'm not sure I believe in it, but I have seen a few references to people who did so believe. The best example I know of is the author H. Beam Piper; his fiction stories (murder mystery and SF) had multiple references to the side-effects of reincarnation. [One such: the victim of a murder in a high-society family discovers his past memories of the murder and files suit to change his name to the murder victim's and asking for murder charges against his "brother".] It always struck me as somewhat ironic that the far-future settings were mixed with such a "backward-looking" (to me, anyways) belief.

Date: 2008-02-11 02:37 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
How interesting!

Percy Byshe Shelley believed in reincarnation. He thought young babies could remember their past lives, but lost the memories as they learned about the new one.

Date: 2008-02-11 10:04 am (UTC)
ext_120533: Deseine's terracotta bust of Max Robespierre (Default)
From: [identity profile] silverwhistle.livejournal.com
I think it's actually far more interesting in psychological terms: that people have rich fantasy lives inside them that they don't always get the chance to express. (I'm with the Doctor on how wonderful human beings are!) I'm in favour of people having vivid fantasy lives – provided they acknowledge that they are fantasy. To go down any other route is to tip into delusion. To subscribe to 'supernatural' explanations is to deny the splendour of the powers of the human imagination.

I do wonder if there will be a decline in this sort of thing now that people can get to play with 'avatars' in things like Second Life, to exercise their imaginary personæ?

Date: 2008-02-11 03:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
I'm with the Doctor on how wonderful human beings are!

I am too. It's one of the things I like about him - and the show. I like it that Captain Jack feels the same way, but - of course he does!

I do wonder if there will be a decline in this sort of thing now that people can get to play with 'avatars' in things like Second Life, to exercise their imaginary personæ?

Culture is changing faster than we can keep track of. It will be interesting to see how it goes in the future - which directions things take.

Date: 2008-02-11 04:57 pm (UTC)
ext_120533: Deseine's terracotta bust of Max Robespierre (Default)
From: [identity profile] silverwhistle.livejournal.com
I suspect the more that people can play with fantasy personæ consciously, there may be less need for them to keep them buried and only surfacing under hypnosis. They're out of the box now.

Culture is changing faster than we can keep track of.

And, unfortunately, I think this is why so many people are taking refuge in a range of irrational beliefs, fundamentalisms, and superstitions, because they no longer feel securely anchored culturally. But change and flux are interesting, and not to be feared.

Date: 2008-02-10 11:04 pm (UTC)
ext_120533: Deseine's terracotta bust of Max Robespierre (Default)
From: [identity profile] silverwhistle.livejournal.com
This is a good article on the phenomenon, re: the cases I recall on TV: The Bloxham Tapes (http://skepdic.com/bloxham.html). 'Ms Evans' is the case I mentioned re: the influence of historical fiction.
Here is an article on Cryptomnesia (http://skepdic.com/cryptomn.html).

Date: 2008-02-11 01:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
Thanks for the links!

Date: 2008-02-11 09:37 am (UTC)
ext_120533: Deseine's terracotta bust of Max Robespierre (Default)
From: [identity profile] silverwhistle.livejournal.com
One of the interesting give-aways re: Ms Evans was one that I spotted in the broadcast even as a kid. In her 12C victim of the York pogrom persona, she referred to Coppergate as 'the Copper Gate', and talked about it as if it were a gate made of copper. It's actually a street: the Street of the Coopers. In York, as in other parts of northern England and Scotland, street names have an Anglo-Scandinavian form: 'gait' or 'gate' meaning 'street'. (I used to live in Crossgate in Cupar: the street that led down from the Market Cross.) Anyone who actually knows York could see through that.

Date: 2008-02-11 03:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
Fascinating use of place-names - in this case, a street name. Things that people who'd been there at that time would know.

Date: 2008-02-11 04:53 pm (UTC)
ext_120533: Deseine's terracotta bust of Max Robespierre (Default)
From: [identity profile] silverwhistle.livejournal.com
Exactly.

'Evans' was an absolutely fascinating case, because she had several, very vividly-described personæ – all of which could be traced back to obscure, long-forgotten historical novels, and in this case, a radio play. Her Roman one was especially interesting, because it was very much a kind of subconscious fanfic: she had adopted as her alter ego a character who had a minor supporting role in the original novel, and had woven her own storyline around her. The servant of Jacques Cœur was interesting, too: the omissions in her narrative mirrored those of the novel she must have read years before. (She 'remembered' him as a lifelong bachelor; he was actually married with children, but the source novel had omitted the wife and kids.)

The human imagination is absolutely fascinating in its workings.

Date: 2008-02-10 11:07 pm (UTC)
ext_6825: (Default)
From: [identity profile] attolia.livejournal.com
I think the real question about shows like that is how they are edited. They showed 'memories' that mostly checked out. But how much did he say that they didn't show, either us or him? He might have remembered supposed past lives that were clearly impossible and which were never shown on screen.

So I, personally, didn't believe any of it. But it was fun to watch.

Date: 2008-02-11 01:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
Well... anything is fun to watch with John Barrowman!

Date: 2008-02-11 10:10 am (UTC)
ext_120533: Deseine's terracotta bust of Max Robespierre (Default)
From: [identity profile] silverwhistle.livejournal.com
I think the real question about shows like that is how they are edited.

Yes: they never probe further into the bits that don't sound plausible. And the bits that appear to fit are never precise enough to confirm identity, & c.

Date: 2008-02-10 11:18 pm (UTC)
ext_120533: Deseine's terracotta bust of Max Robespierre (Default)
From: [identity profile] silverwhistle.livejournal.com
Here's a good commentary on another case: Jenny Cockell (http://csicop.org/sb/9803/reincarnation.html).

Date: 2008-02-11 01:31 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
Thank you!

Date: 2008-02-10 11:34 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
Try to think of it as going through different classes in school. In each one, you have virtually a fresh start because you're essentially going to learn new things. And yet, you're building on what you already know, you bring that to bear on what you're learning in order to help you learn the lesson more easily or perhaps more completely.

Say, for examply, you're taking Chemistry 201. What you learned in Chem 101 would be important. Spanish 101, not so much,but it's possible that something from Spanish 101 casts some new light on what you're
learning in Chemistry. The fact that you experienced Spanish helps you obliquely while the previous Chem class helps you directly.

Relating this to life experience, and in a very broad and generalized way because -- and I think you'll agree -- comprehension of how life works is pretty nebulous at best, but suppose you had a life in Nazi Germany. Assume you were male, and upper middle class, which means that unless you wanted trouble, you became a party member. You were in the army, perhaps. Perhaps you had something to do with the party's program to eliminate so-called undesirables. Not just Jews but political enemies, gay and lesbian people, different nationalities, people with mental problems, any or all of the above. Now for a moment, think of this life as a class. But what is it you're learning?

Now, I know you well enough to know that you identify as bisexual. Has your soul/spirit/whatever chosen this part of your identity to experience some of what you not only rejected but actively persecuted in a previous life? And if so, was that activity in the previous life informed by some event in an even earlier life?

Let's make a very simplistic timeline just about sexuality:

Life 1: You experience some sort of sexual trauma at the hands of a member of the same sex.

Life 2: Because of that abuse, you are both repelled and attracted by same-sex sexuality, though on the surface it seems that there is no more reason for this than social pressures to conform to what is the norm in spite of an orientation that is something other than that norm. You act out in ways which are both confused and hurtful to others because you cannot seem to resolve the issue. You're still too close to it.

Life 3: Because you work for a government with a policy of persecution and eventual elimination of homosexuality, you can express the more negative poles of your past life experiences without fear of repercussion. But because you have have had other lives which have prepared you in some way to experience empathy, somewhere in the process you begin to perceive your victims as human beings. That doesn't stop you but it does trouble you.

Life 4: You choose to experience some form of this orientation in order to experience the social pressures involved in accepting it. It is not necessarily a happy life, but by the end you're more at peace with a perfectly normal aspect of human sexuality.

Life 5: You have learned to accept sexuality -- your own and everyone else's -- without prejudice or baggage of any sort. You are content.

Now as I said,this is all very simplistic, and deals only with one small facet of life, but it shows that the process of finding tolerance of others, and peace within yourself may be bigger than than the scope of a single life. The experiences necessary to truly comprehend ourselves and others can't be learned in 80 years. Haven't you noticed that some people just seem to have a leg up on all sorts of wisdom? They seem to have been born understanding things that you feel you have to work to get? Perhaps it's just that they've had a lot of different classes than you have. We'll all get there in the end, but it's just a matter of what classes you can take and when.

Does that make any sense?

Someday I'll tell you about my past life regressions. *g*

Date: 2008-02-10 11:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
And then again, there may be nothing to it at all.

The thing is that we don't know if there even is a soul, much less how it works. Trying to overlay a lot of rules about how the mind works on the process of reincarnation -- if it exists at all -- is a little like saying it's not possible for cars to move because they don't have legs.

In the end, it's like any other belief. The best thing you can do is to keep an open mind, and try to validate whatever information you get. But validate it honestly, and understand that we may not have the tools yet to accurately prove or disprove anything.

Robert Anton Wilson once said "What the thinker thinks, the prover proves." What you choose to believe will always color your "proof." In my case, reincarnation is the most palatable option for an afterlife. And I accept that there is, perhaps, no afterlife at all. But in all honesty, if I knew for certain that there wasn't, I would not want to bother going on. I would probably just end my life. Because the idea that those we love are nothing more than animated meat, and that one day they will be gone from us, that's unbearable to me. I don't mind so much for myself. But I want better for those I love.

Date: 2008-02-10 11:55 pm (UTC)
ext_120533: Deseine's terracotta bust of Max Robespierre (Default)
From: [identity profile] silverwhistle.livejournal.com
Because the idea that those we love are nothing more than animated meat, and that one day they will be gone from us, that's unbearable to me. I don't mind so much for myself. But I want better for those I love.

That's no reason to cling to irrationalities and fantasies. So many wonderful people have gone before: animated meat, yes, but with what animation. They have left us great things, and (those we knew personally) great memories. It's what we do with our lives that matters. The notion of 'afterlife' in any sense other than that legacy is a terrible indictment of human egotism.

Date: 2008-02-10 11:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
I don't mean to be rude, but I have every reason. Please don't presume to tell me what I should or shouldn't feel.

Date: 2008-02-11 01:41 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
Rest assured, on my LJ you are free to believe whatever you wish and I am interested. I find these perceptions fascinating.

Date: 2008-02-11 01:47 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
Thank you, darlin'. I've always found you to be wonderfully tolerant. It's one of the things I love best about you.

I'd love to sit down and talk to you face-to-face about how we view these things. Exchange ideas. Perhaps next time you come to visit Chicago? You know there'll be a place for you to stay once I have my guest suite put together at the new house.

Date: 2008-02-11 02:15 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
I've always found you to be wonderfully tolerant. It's one of the things I love best about you.

You say the nicest things. *hugs* I'm tolerant about ideas, on the whole - not so tolerant about things I don't like. (War. TV commercials. Bad politicians. People who use highlighters in library books. I have my priorities!)

Perhaps next time you come to visit Chicago? You know there'll be a place for you to stay once I have my guest suite put together at the new house.

Oh, bless you, I'd love to visit! Right now I'm broke and don't know when/if/how I'll ever be able to travel ever again, though in defiance of my poverty, I'm planning a trip to Stratford ON in the summer - thanks to a Christmas present from [livejournal.com profile] maaseru.

And I tell myself: Chicago isn't that far away, right? I've got there before, I can get there again....

Eagerly listening for further news about your lovely new place.



Date: 2008-02-11 02:19 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
You have ample time to save. I haven't even closed on the place yet, and won't be moved in until April. I suspect it'll be autumn before the basement is finished enough to invite people to stay. Yeah, the basement, sorry. But the bedroom will be carpeted and I'm hoping to have a heated floor in the bath. Not the Ritz, but comfy.

People who do anything but read their library books deserve to be punished severely. (My tolerance has limits, too. *g*)

Date: 2008-02-11 02:31 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
It sounds lovely! I don't have a basement. Or a house. So it all sounds like the Ritz to me.

People who do anything but read their library books deserve to be punished severely. (My tolerance has limits, too. *g*)

Well, yes. Writing in library books is incredibly uncivilized.

Date: 2008-02-11 09:22 am (UTC)
ext_120533: Deseine's terracotta bust of Max Robespierre (Default)
From: [identity profile] silverwhistle.livejournal.com
I'm intolerant of a popular culture that tolerates (and financially rewards) the promotion of unreasonand anti-reason: the anti-Enlightenment that seems to be in progress both from traditional religions and 'New Age' drivel, pseudo-history, & c.

A few favourite recent books:
Francis Wheen, How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions;
Damian Thompson, Counterknowledge (though he has one or two blind spots on this himself, being a Catholic);
Frank Furedi, Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age, Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone?: Confronting 21st Century Philistinism, and Culture of Fear: Risk-taking and the Morality of Low Expectation.

Date: 2008-02-11 09:09 am (UTC)
ext_120533: Deseine's terracotta bust of Max Robespierre (Default)
From: [identity profile] silverwhistle.livejournal.com
Because "pie in the sky when you die", in whatever form, is ultimately the opposite of life-affirming. It devalues this life, the only one we know for certain that we have. Taken to its logical conclusion, it is the logic of the suicide terrorist who destroys him/herself and others in this life because s/he believes there will be a reward in the next.

Date: 2008-02-13 03:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
Though I won't presume to speak for anyone else, I suspect I do when I say that you are loved, too.

Date: 2008-02-13 06:10 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sparklebutch.livejournal.com
That's good.
*hugs*
You feeling any better now with your thoughts?

Date: 2008-02-15 04:14 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
You feeling any better now with your thoughts?

Yes... I think so.

Date: 2008-02-15 05:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sparklebutch.livejournal.com
That is good.

If you want, I'm always available for you in chat/email.

Date: 2008-02-15 05:37 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
If you want, I'm always available for you in chat/email.

The trick is to find time to sit at my computer. You'll be seeing me - with any luck.

Date: 2008-02-11 01:38 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
To some extent we fall back on words to deal with these sorts of experiences and words aren't a very good medium for it - but they're all we have to discuss it with. And words like 'soul' and 'afterlife' tend to be coloured by cultural assumptions of many types, from one direction or another, and pinning down meaning becomes difficult or impossible.

As I said, I feel conflicted on the matter - and find it fascinating whether there really are past/future lives or, in terms of how the brain works, if there are psychological reasons for experiencing existence as a series of lives.

I'd like to know a lot more about it, but information tends to be either influenced by the viewpoint of the person - whatever their stance - or by the cultural assumptions (usually religious) of the person's environment.

Date: 2008-02-11 01:48 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
Well yeah, it's always going to be colored by someone's viewpoint until such time as it can be proved or disproved. And we try to define the spiritual by looking to the mind because our conscious selves are what we cling to. The idea of that being extinguished is what terrifies so many people, the idea of ceasing to be who they are right now.

But if spirituality isn't so much a product of the mind as we think it is, then I'm not sure we necessarily can define any of it by looking to the brain. However as you quite rightly say, we're bound by our words, and it's hard to express these ideas when there aren't words that encompass the concepts. Perhaps if we learned a language used in a part of the world where reincarnation is an accepted concept? *g*

Date: 2008-02-11 02:12 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
The idea of that being extinguished is what terrifies so many people

As we've discussed before, I'm not afraid of being extinguished, I'm afaid of pain. And somewhat afraid of loss - which I suppose is the same thing.

the idea of ceasing to be who they are right now.

Maybe that's why the idea of reincarnation seems mildly undesirable to me - I have such a sense of self now, I can't imagine being someone else, with another identity - I don't want to wear another body or mind. I don't want to be me and yet make choices I wouldn't make, do things I wouldn't do, think things I wouldn't think....

But that's putting the cart before the horse, isn't it? If it were me, it would be me, so the problem is erased.

Makes my head spin, a little.

the idea of ceasing to be who they are right now.

Certainly, some of the more intelligent writing I've heard on the subject (and the most interesting) has been in Hindu books and yoga-related writings. But again - they take it as a given, a premise to work from, rather than something to be discussed for its own sake.

Date: 2008-02-11 02:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
Well it's so much a part of the culture that it's taken for granted, in much the same way a good part of the Western world takes Christianity for granted. The advantage, of course, is that they would have developed a vocabulary for it.

One day I want to do more research on the subject. I've always loved reading about various belief systems.

Date: 2008-02-11 02:29 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
The advantage, of course, is that they would have developed a vocabulary for it.

Yes - and since anything I would have, or could have, read is in translation, it puts me back where I started. But... every little bit helps.

Date: 2008-02-11 04:16 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
Have you read anything from Tibetan sources?

Date: 2008-02-11 03:24 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
Tibetan sources

Nothing particularly detailed or reliable. Most of what I've read about Tibet is pseudo-fictional, historical, or biographical - and some things along the lines of travel stories and National Geographic. Not so much about the philosophy.

Date: 2008-02-11 05:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
Ah. I really had no idea of what was available.

Date: 2008-02-11 06:56 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
It might be fun to look at Tibetan sources - when I get time.

Date: 2008-02-11 12:00 am (UTC)
ext_120533: Deseine's terracotta bust of Max Robespierre (Default)
From: [identity profile] silverwhistle.livejournal.com
Haven't you noticed that some people just seem to have a leg up on all sorts of wisdom? They seem to have been born understanding things that you feel you have to work to get? Perhaps it's just that they've had a lot of different classes than you have.

Bollocks. Sorry, but this is bollocks. Some people are more intelligent than others; some people are more sensitive than others; some people have experiences that others do not which shape their personalities. Why read pseudo-mystical significance into things that can easily be explained by basic human psychology and life experience?

We'll all get there in the end, but it's just a matter of what classes you can take and when.

Were that the case, then there would be some kind of linear progress of improvement in humankind. This is demonstrably not the case.

Date: 2008-02-11 01:33 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
The only thing I have left to say is this: Give me empirical evidence of the non-existence of an afterlife and we'll talk. Until then, all you have is all I have: A belief that you're correct. At least I'm honest enough to call it a belief.

Date: 2008-02-11 09:13 am (UTC)
ext_120533: Deseine's terracotta bust of Max Robespierre (Default)
From: [identity profile] silverwhistle.livejournal.com
The fact that no-one has come back to say is highly suggestive. it is also irrational. We see what happens when humans and other animals die. Why assume something for which there is no empirical evidence?

I find it deeply, deeply disturbing that otherwise intelligent people seem keen to peddle unreason these days, in a whole variety of topics.

Date: 2008-02-11 10:40 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
I find it deeply, deeply disturbing that otherwise intelligent people seem keen to peddle unreason these days, in a whole variety of topics.

Well put on your big girl panties and deal. You can play Thought Police all you want with your own friends but this is one gal you're not going to bully into feeling foolish for having an open mind about spiritual issues. BTW, when I said I had every reason to feel the way I do about the subject, I meant it. You might want to learn to recognize other people's "keep out" signs if you want to be taken at all seriously. Treading on fresh wounds with heavy boots like yours? Bad idea.

Date: 2008-02-11 10:42 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
Why assume something for which there is no empirical evidence?
Precisely my point. Thank you.

Date: 2008-02-11 09:25 am (UTC)
ext_120533: Deseine's terracotta bust of Max Robespierre (Default)
From: [identity profile] silverwhistle.livejournal.com
It also makes a farce of genetics, which we do know about and are working to understand.

Date: 2008-02-11 01:45 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
Why read pseudo-mystical significance into things that can easily be explained by basic human psychology and life experience?

I would be more convinced by this is I didn't wonder whether my emotional or learned responses are colouring my views... Let me put it another way: I don't believe, but my belief or lack thereof has no influence on the objective reality and I like to hear other views.

Put another way: I don't need to hear the reasoning against reincarnation explained, because I already know it; I'm more interested in hearing the counter-arguments because I don't know them.

And besides, John Barrowman is cute under hypnosis.

Date: 2008-02-11 01:33 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
Yes, that reasoning makes sense, but it still makes me wonder what it is that I am carrying with me from one life to another - just the possiblities of memories? What makes the person in life #1 the same as the person in life #5 when none of the thoughts, memories, or personality are consistent? Or - is there a consistency, that just happens to be invisible or difficult to see?

Date: 2008-02-11 01:37 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
I don't know. I'm only guessing at what this might encompass should it be the case. I would assume that the soul, whatever that may be, has certain consistent characteristics. And if that's the case, we don't have the ability to measure its existence much less how it works, so we're really just flying blind.

Date: 2008-02-11 01:49 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
Flying blind - yes, the story of all our lives - whether we have one or many!

I think one of the things that interest me is the elusive quality of these memories - and how the subconscious works. As if it links to memories, thoughts, and people in fairly subtle ways, which is why dream analysis is so interesting to many - and yet dreams do not interest me, rather the contrary, I'd rather not know about them. So why am I interested in other aspects of the unconscious mind?

And whether we are talking about one life or many, the question of 'what makes an individual' is a fascinating one - as all the genome projects are showing, on a physical level. Do the neurons of the brain have patterns, or classes of patterns? What determines them? Why are we all so alike in so many ways, and so different in others?

Date: 2008-02-11 01:55 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
And suddenly I'm reminded of Dorothy and the nature/nurture thread that winds through her books.

My mother never liked to dream. She said so often. I think she feared them for some reason, though she never said. I used to love my dreams, as I have said on my LJ. The anti-depressants changed them. Now they're all just info dumps. The only thing they tell me is what I've been thinking about recently. How boring! I know what I've been thinking about. I want to know more about how my mind works.

Date: 2008-02-11 02:07 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
suddenly I'm reminded of Dorothy and the nature/nurture thread that winds through her books.

Yes - good catch, and so true. One of the many interesting aspects there.

And she has reincarnation too - the Nicholas/Lymond link. Cool.

I think perhaps I fear my dreams to some extent as well. Yes, I'm with your mother there! I don't fear them much, but when I remember them, they are often about confusions and fears and things which bother me - not in a way that makes me feel better, but in a way that makes me worry or feel distressed.

I can't recall if my dreams changed with I was depressed, or when I was on medication.

I do occasionally have a terrific dream, clearly fictionally-based. Otherwise... there's a lot writing exams for subjects I haven't studied, or being late for work, or such things. Nothing insightful, just troublesome.

I want to know more about how my mind works.

That might be useful - but my dreams certainly aren't offering much insight.

Date: 2008-02-11 04:20 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
I found that once you get into the habit of thinking about what your dreams might mean, you begin to understand more about how your mind works. Essentially it becomes a habit like... writing, or having plants. *g*

Date: 2008-02-11 02:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
I never managed to get into the proper habit of having plants. Which isn't to say I don't sometimes have plants, just that it never became any kind of a habit. Especially watering them. Which is why I have almost none now. Just a plumbago that looks six but soldiers on, and an orchid that seems to be immortal.

In fact I seem to have a nature that doesn't for habits easily if at all. (Bad habits, maybe.) I might do the same thing every day for a year and then just stop doing it because I forgot all about it one day.

This is why I write notes to myself, and make New Year's Resolutions.

Date: 2008-02-11 05:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
Well, one of the lessons to be learned from having plants is benign neglect. Sometimes it's best if you just leave them alone as much as possible beyond the occasional watering. Clearly that doesn't work for all plants. The key here is to find the ones for which it does work, and keep them.

Date: 2008-02-15 04:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
one of the lessons to be learned from having plants is benign neglect.

I'm good at neglect, and it certainly isn't malign. What I'm really, really bad at is guessing how much water a plant might want or need. Drought or drowning - it always perplexes me.

A while back I had a lot of plants, and they were doing all right. Then I felt cluttered and got rid of them.

The plumbago is a gift from Beulah. The orchid was a lucky find at Costco. I think it's immortal.

Date: 2008-02-15 05:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
If the plants have adequate drainage, you just need to water until the excess runs out the bottom. A good soaking once a week, or twice if it's very dry, and just let the excess run off. That's usually all mine get.

Date: 2008-02-15 05:56 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
I'm not sure whether to smile or sigh. You make it sound so simple!

I, uh, hedge my bets. (My 2 cents)

Date: 2008-02-11 03:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vervassal.livejournal.com
I personally refuse to settle on any one belief system or set of rules re the existence or nonexistence of a deity/afterlife. I do think/believe there's something bigger out there- it might be a someone, or it might be "mother nature." I'm not gonna put a name to it, because I'm convinced that as soon as I settle on, say, Shiva, Judgement Day will come and it'll turn out the Mormons were right all along.

I like the idea of reincarnation, but I don't firmly believe one way or another. I figure if there's an afterlife, cool, if not- well, it won't matter much, eh?



Re: I, uh, hedge my bets. (My 2 cents)

Date: 2008-02-11 03:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
as soon as I settle on, say, Shiva, Judgement Day will come and it'll turn out the Mormons were right all along.

LOL. I've always been rather fond of Shiva, myself - for various reasons.

I figure if there's an afterlife, cool, if not- well, it won't matter much, eh?

Either way, we'll eventually find out, unless there's nothing to find out. Or at least, we'll find out what happens to ourselves, though not necessarily anyone else.

But I enjoy discussing the issue, and looking at the possibilities, and the ramifications - even if it's something we can't know.

Re: I, uh, hedge my bets. (My 2 cents)

Date: 2008-02-11 04:18 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
Precisely. My own feelings about a non-existence of an afterlife are just that, my own feelings, and based on a lot of very personal issues. Objectively, I believe that if there's nothing after we die, then I won't know it anyway. And if there is, I hope I'll make the best of it.

Re: I, uh, hedge my bets. (My 2 cents)

Date: 2008-02-11 05:09 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dargie.livejournal.com
For me, it's best summed up as "The Great Whatever"

Date: 2008-02-11 05:43 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mzlizzy.livejournal.com
I believe in reincarnation, but not in a lot of the mystic sodapop crap that seems to accumulate around it.

I don't believe that hypnotic regression will help you dig into your past lives, and besides, *this life* is the important one. It doesn't matter if you were Cleopatra (any of them) or a gin-soaked charwoman in Victorian London or both.

I believe in a loving God, and I can not believe in a God that would only give each soul one chance to get it right. Life is energy, and conservation of energy is one of the basic principles of the universe (as I understand it).

Date: 2008-02-11 03:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
Beautiful icon!

I believe in reincarnation, but not in a lot of the mystic sodapop crap that seems to accumulate around it.

I can relate to that.

I believe in reincarnation, but not in a lot of the mystic sodapop crap that seems to accumulate around it.

Funny how Napoleon and Cleopatra seem to be prime choices. I remember reading about a woman who said she was one Mary Shelley. I was envious - since I like Mary Shelley - but didn't believe it for a moment.

Life is energy, and conservation of energy is one of the basic principles of the universe (as I understand it).

Interesting comment. Let me think about that.

Date: 2008-02-11 06:36 pm (UTC)
ext_120533: Deseine's terracotta bust of Max Robespierre (Default)
From: [identity profile] silverwhistle.livejournal.com
Yes: that's the interesting thing. People either go for really popular celebrities, or for obscure, humdrum character who are so low down the food-chain that they cannot be proven to have lived or not, but may well have been derived from things like Catherine Cookson novels about arduous Victorian working-class life. Both of which suggest to me very strongly the operation of personal fantasy and cryptomnesia.

Date: 2008-02-12 06:06 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mzlizzy.livejournal.com
Or just wish fulfillment.

People who've given up in there present life yet claim they were important in a past life. It's never successful happy people who claim to have been past royalty.

Date: 2008-02-12 12:34 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
And really, most people who believe in reincarnation don't claim to have been anyone in particular in the past - I think of this as a sort of fringe oddity.

Date: 2008-02-12 09:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sparklebutch.livejournal.com
I try not to do belief and disbelief. I don't know, and that's the only fact I can give.

Unlike you, I'd like it to exist; I'd like to think there is more depth, and width, to all experiences. You said something about "a sense of self" - I don't have a cohesive one, exactly. I have my "self", and then a whole bunch of other stuff around it. I would love to be able to "read", understand, all those other stuff, in a clearer way than I have now.

Re what some say, that it is the subconscious, imagination, or hidden memories from the media: there is a lovely theory that says that all or most of the characters written, in books etc, are "reflections" or echoes of people who live, in the past or parallel. Thus it could be that you were X in a past life, and echoes of X's life made it to an author 50 years ago who took it for muse or inspiration, and made a story out of it.

Whatever images and memories one is getting, they could be past, but also parallel or future; the brain is a folded mushy place of mystery, and one simply can't know what it's generating, and what it's just picking up from waves around it.



You said, "I was hoping to find people who do believe in it, to get their perspective." You can count me as one, if you like. Like I said, I don't *believe*, but I also refuse to state flat out that "things don't exist". I don't like people who "know everything", because we are, as someone stated here before me, human - and as such, possibly don't know everything just yet.

The current "rational"(socially acceptable) explanation is far from being the simplest one, at this point.

Date: 2008-02-15 04:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
I try not to do belief and disbelief.

I do too, but sometimes it's difficult - I have so many opinions, suppositions, and assumptions to sort through. Some of which I'm passionate about. I find it hard to give up on passions. Even to reexamine them.

I have my "self", and then a whole bunch of other stuff around it.

Other stuff? Like what? I don't quite understand. But then I don't quite understand what my own (rather too strong) sense of self consists of either.

there is a lovely theory that says that all or most of the characters written, in books etc, are "reflections" or echoes of people who live, in the past or parallel.

How cool.

we are, as someone stated here before me, human - and as such, possibly don't know everything just yet.

That, I certainly believe! And the mind is one of the greatest mysteries.

As for rationality: I'm all for it, but it's parameters are not clear cut. If I only believed what I saw or experienced, I'd think Nicaragua and Paraguay did not exist. If I only believed what I fully understood, well, that wouldn't leave a heck of a lot.

In general, I am better at emotional responses than intellectual ones, let alone scientific ones - so art, literature and the popular media shape my world more than, say, engineering and a knowledge of physics. Does this make me unrealistic? I don't think so. Irrational? I don't think that, either. I am, in fact, exceptionally rational. But the parameters of my reason are open to the unexplainable.

A hundred years ago, it would have been irrational to believe in quantum theory. Now, whether we understand it or not (and we don't, as a species)most people who know of it believe in it.

If "belief" is the word. It isn't a faith, but a ... probable aspect of reality.

Date: 2008-02-15 05:21 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sparklebutch.livejournal.com
"I accept that it might exist, or at least refuse to refuse it", I think, is better than "belief", in this - not the quantum, the other things - topic.

A few hundred years ago, everything thought today would be considered insane. I'm pretty sure that in a few hundred years, people will look at today's "pure rational scientists" and think they were idiots. Such is life, and such are humans.

Re selves, I'm not sure I can discuss it with you... coherently, at least :) but I'd love to hear about *your* "self", if you wish to tell me.

Date: 2008-02-15 05:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
I'm pretty sure that in a few hundred years, people will look at today's "pure rational scientists" and think they were idiots. Such is life

Yes, and if I may quote Captain Jack - "Everything changes". That's what history does. A sort of permanent ongoing escalating state of generation gap. So much so that the past becomes increasinly foreign and we will see strange to the future.

Which is why visions of the future from twenty or fifty or a hundred years ago look so strange.

I'll have to think about what it means that I have such a strong and immutable view of my 'self' when I still find it hard to define. I remember that this was once a yoga exercise we did in class - and I didn't do so well then, either.

Let me think about it for a day or so and get back to you. I want to try because it's interesting, and, I think, nicely life-affirming (horrible phrase - I can't think of a better). But coherence? Hah. I'll work on it.

Self

Date: 2008-03-04 07:39 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sparklebutch.livejournal.com
Let me know when :)

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