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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: 2008-02-12 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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