Reincarnation

Because I grew up in a Buddhist family I always believed in reincarnation, so obviously I believe in Reincarnation now. I would love to meet someone who believed in Reincarnation when they were younger and then decided to believe in the idea that when you die you either completely disappear or go to one place for eternity.

It doesn't make sense to believe that your soul is invented out of nothing only to live here one time before graduating on to another place forever. There are a lot of ways to scientifically disprove this idea. The best way is with my own Fractal Pattern Theory, by showing that the Heaven/Hell, and the evaporate into nothingness paradigms aren't consistent with all of the laws of the Universe. 

The Law of Evolution

Lets start with the universal law of evolution.  Everything takes billions of years of evolution to become what it is today.  Even the simplest grain of sand took billions of years for the star to create the metals in it and then disperse them out into the Universe until it conglomerated into a planet which melted and froze countless times until it created a simple grain of sand.  Naturally things more complex than sand, like a computer, took billions of more years on top of that to evolve.  So it just doesn´t make sense that the most complex of all Gods creatures, us, just popped out of the ether.  1) We must have been in existence before we entered this world in our present bodies. 2) We must have been in a situation very similar to the situation we are in now, seeing that the laws of the Universe show that evolution is a gradual steady thing and not a leaps and bounds thing.  Sure, things suddenly happen like supernovas, but they are a result of Billions of years of buildup; and it doesn't take billions of years for God to build us up until it spits us into this world.  That concept would suggest that God created us out of nothing, and we didn't come from nothing.  I contest we grew gradually over a great many years.

We Remember

The next obvious reason to believe in Reincarnation is the simple fact that we remember our past lives.  The best way to describe the fact that we remember our past lives is the simple fact that we feel so natural here as if we have been through all this before.  We all have preconceived ideas about things that we experience, and that comes from our soul experience, not the hard wiring of our brains. We all have preconceived notions about countries we haven´t been to, for example.  When we go to a new country it is exactly how we expected it to be, because we have already been there. 

Another way we remember is from our dreams.  We dream of being in situations we have never been in before. For example when we have a dream about walking through the dessert.  One could argue that our mind is creating everything, but what would be the biological purpose of dreaming of a situation that you have never been in, that you have only imagined.  The physical mind is only the hardware that you could say the software of our souls is controlling.  And the purpose of dreaming that situation is because we are actually living in our non physical mind.  We need to realize that our non physical spirits, our souls, are in control of our brains, not the other way around. 

Everything is related

Once we realize that everything is indeed related, than we realize that the non belief in Reincarnation makes no sense.  Lets try to imagine everything related under the Heaven-Hell doctrine.  According to the live on Earth one time belief, our souls spring up out of nowhere to live such complex and meaningful lives as to make all other forms of life seem like they are only here to support us. Then we graduate to a non physical place far away for eternity.  When one thinks about this idea one quickly sees that it separates us from everything else, which makes it false.  If you believe that your soul pops up out of the ether to live as a human and then to go to Heaven or Hell forever, what about the animals?  Do they go to animal Heaven or Hell then? Does that Animal Heaven and Hell exist for all eternity for them? I have never heard the Christian explanation for that which is another suggestion that the Heaven-Hell paradigm could be a faulty argument. Any strong theory needs to have all of the bases covered. The Heaven-Hell paradigm suggests that God made some souls better than, or separate from others.  Another way to escape this incongruency of logic is by just saying that animals don't have souls, which is what a lot of the proponents of the Heaven Hell paradigm contest.

Once you realize that everything is related and eternal it becomes abundantly clear that all life forms must therefore be ultimately equal.  God is a network of self conscious beings sharing the experience of life with one another. Because the various life forms are all on a different stage in their paths people believe that some life forms are superior to others, but only in one life to live paradigm. Humans live the same kinds of lives as animals and evolve in the same way. Animals and humans have families and emotions and grow and learn and live and die, so in the eyes of God we humans are siblings to the animal world, and so we both naturally evolve for eternity.  That means that animals must reincarnate too.  Animals surely reincarnate into more intelligent animals and finally into humans.  In a universe where animals live once like us and then go to animal heaven suggests that animal souls are inferior to ours as an animal heaven would be a whole lot less interesting that ours due to the fact that they live much simpler and less interesting lives in this world. It seems too confusing for God to have to catalogue different heavens and hells for all of the different animal species. You could say that animal heaven is the same place as human heaven, but I would imagine that after an eternity the animals would start getting bored being just animals and would want to be humans.

Consensus says

Perhaps the best reason to believe in Reincarnation is the fact that the vast majority of people in the world today and throughout history believe in Reincarnation. From looking at polls and Religious adherent statistics I estimate that most people in the world believe in reincarnation. There are 1.7 Billion who belong to Hinduism, Chinese Traditional, Jainism and Buddhism, religions that beleive in reincarnation. Then in countries that are primarily Christian like the US, in '86 37% beleived in Reincarnation. In England it was %30 in 1980. Those numbers have been on the rise. In 1969 it was only 18% in England and in 1980 it was 24%.

I think the only people in the world who don't believe in Reincarnation are the Christians and Muslims, and unfortunately for the belief in Reincarnation those two religions comprise about half of the worlds population, although I am sure that a good percentage of the populations of those two religions believe in Reincarnation.  Even Christianity and Judaism believed in Reincarnation in the past. The only reason it doesn't now is because of a political move by the Romans in the year 325 at the council of Nicea when they decided that they were going to take control of the Christian religion. 

The reason the Romans annexed Christianity was because Christianity believed in one God for everybody. Monotheism is a good religion for an empire to have so people don't have unnecessary wars about who's god is better. The problem is that the Romans didn't stop there, they wanted to have control over the constituents of the religion so they could keep control over them.  Realize that by the year 325 Christianity was a very big religion and the Romans still had power, although their power was waning and they desperately needed a way to keep control over their constituents in order to preserve their empire's survival. 

At the council of Nicea they gathered up all of the Christian documents they could get their hands on and put together the Bible.  The ideas of God and Heaven were great, but they needed a way to secure control of this Heaven and Hell.  They must have genuinely thought they had a monopoly on heaven.  Throughout the ancient world there have been societies who have been more advanced that the others surrounding them and rightly took it upon themselves to teach the surrounding societies about their ways.  And Rome was definitely a light in the ancient world, and taught those who they concurred a lot of useful information and opened trade.  But by the year 325 the Roman Empire was just a large army controlled by Germans who had never been to Rome. And as all military entities do, they designed a blueprint for control.  But they had to rule by fear the same way as they did when they threatened people with crucifiction.  They invented a hot torturous place called Hell that you will go for eternity if you're bad.  It is easier to subdue people who are afraid of death because of the fact that they will go to Hell.  The Romans had a lot harder time subduing the Barbarian tribes who weren't afraid of death because they knew they would live to fight in their next life as a member of the same tribe.  The Church even made money from selling admittance to heaven; enough to make Saint Peters Basilica. 

I calculate the belief in Reincarnation constitutes more than half of the population today, and is higher among younger people than older people so it is increasing.  However the belief in the Heaven-Hell paradigm is constituted primarily by uneducated people who have never been exposed to the belief in Reincarnation.  Polls show that Conservative Christians such as Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, and Christian Scientists, those who are most likely to not believe in Reincarnation make nearly half as much money as the more liberal Christians such as the Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Unitarians.  People who make less money are generally also less educated, and those who are less educated tend to believe in the more traditional belief in Hell.  People who are less educated are also more likely to not question the Heaven-Hell dogma.  They have no reason to because nobody has ever actually explained the concept of Reincarnation to them.  I will give you an example. My wife Paola is a Chilean Catholic, and because she is a Catholic she has always just believed in the Heaven-Hell concept.  But after three years of being around me, just because of the fact that I believe in Reincarnation she has changed her mind and now she believes. I never explained the concept to her the way I am explaining the concept now, she merely changed her mind through osmosis.  That is how the human psyche works, a lot of the time people believe stuff just because the people around them do.

But belief in Heaven and Hell is what got us here in the first place, places that believe in Reincarnation are third world, so who is right?

If the belief in Reincarnation is so important why did the societies that believe in Heaven and Hell succeed in becoming the bringers of Civilization and not the societies that embraced Reincarnation?  My answer to that is that the rules are different in the days of Barbarianism and the days of Civilization.  Unfortunately as it is, it is sometimes beneficial to a world that is totally divided to have one large superpower bring order so there can be trade and thus, progress.  And sometimes these armies use fear to keep order in line.  The difference between Europe and India does not have so much to do with their religious viewpoints anyway. It has more to do with the fact that people in the North have to think more to survive and thus created a society that relied a lot on hard work and planning for the upcoming winter.  The belief in God and having to work hard in order to achieve heaven worked well for them. 

The fact of the matter is that the western civilization and the Eastern Civilization have different strengths and different weaknesses.  The western tradition of one central power enforcing their desire to open up large trade routes with fear and war is beneficial to create an environment where people can communicate well enough to exchange useful ideas.  Whereas the Eastern tradition of trying to go inward to fix your own inner demons is not as conductive to motivating one to go out in the world and make a difference. However  I contest that this is a cause of race also. 

This is the perfect example of the beautiful poetry of the mind of God.  Different segments of the whole working together to create something new that is the mixture of the best of the two parts. The Western war machine brought us to the age of information, now the eastern view of Reincarnation and Indigenous traditions of enjoying the finer things in life can bring us back to the mystical experience of the misti volcano hike.

Intelligent people have always believed in Reincarnation

Aristotle who talked about the transmigration of souls, David Hume, Plato, Socrates, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Emanuel Kant, Nietsche, Shakespeare, Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Faulkner, Whittier, Lowell, Mark Twain, Longfellow, Jack London, Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Burns, Charles Dickens, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Paracelsus, John Lindberg, Thomas Edison, George Patton, Frederick the Great, Henry Ford, Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, Saint Augustine, Saint Justin, Saint Gregory, Saint Synesius, and Saint Origen.

My Personal Reincarnation philosophy

Now I will do my duties as one of the blessed chosen ones who is intellectually capable of coming up with my own theory about the subject. It really doesn't involve very complex reasoning, but due to the fact that common Christian folk are not encouraged to question their Heaven/Hell concept, or even sadly never seriously imagine the living conditions of their own cultures theories of what will happen when they die; it is completely new turf for them and seems complicated.  I always say that the simplest explanation is the correct one, and my theory on Reincarnation is a perfect example of that. 

I will answer all the obvious questions in sequence:

1) When were our souls born?
2) Where were our souls born?
3) How many lives have we lived?
4) How many lives will we live?

I think there is a birthday for our souls, and I think it was a very long time ago. I am perfectly happy looking at the evolution of my soul acting in conjunction with the evolution of my planet.  I think my soul was originally born along with a great number of other souls, in a gigantic explosion, like the big bang or possibly a supernova.  After a long time of hibernating in the caverns of space and meditating on what I wanted to become, I found myself on this planet Earth as one of its first pieces of bacteria.  I think I evolved as a soul along with the evolution of life on the planet. I was a fish, then a dinosaur, then a mammal, then a monkey, and then a human. 

 I read on Wikipedia that common Hindus say that we usually have about 80,000 lives on this earth before we graduate on to the next level beyond that of Human existence.  That would mean that if we live an average of 70 years per life with ten years inbetween we would have to live on the planet for about six and a half million years before the next step.  That makes perfect sense to me, if we're talking about 80,000 human life's. I think we lived much more lives than that when we include our animal lives.  Perhaps putting such a large number of lives may sound depressing to people who haven't thought seriously about the issue of reincarnation, but to me thinking of my souls life in terms of such a large scale makes life exciting.  It means there is always a second change at life.  Also, for those who get depressed thinking of themselves as living over and over again as an animal, I must stress that animals actually enjoy their lives.  Animals don't think about how they wish they were humans, they just enjoy being animals.  Death comes naturally to animals the same as it comes naturally to humans.  We die, we sleep and dream, and then we are reborn to live again.  The only unpleasant experience is the fear of death or the pain and terror you fear as you are dying, but then again that is just another exciting part about being alive isn't it?  We would get pretty bored if we were to just sit in the shade for eternity with nothing exiting happening like running from predators. 

How many lives do we live and were do we go when we graduate?

As far as the idea of graduating from the Earthly Human realm is concerned, I stick to the ''We evolve along with the Earth" principle.  I believe we have many lives here on Earth, gradually improving our lives until we evolve to the next level and so on and so forth.  The interesting part about this subject is the contemplation of:

1) Are there levels of human evolution on Earth, and if so are they consistent throughout the Universe? and
2) What exactly are those levels of human evolution?

I belief the levels of soul evolution on the Earth go along the same lines as the evolution of the bodies that the souls inhabit. Pretty simple, I know. Simple is always the best.  For example, we lived as Dinosaurs for millions of years, steadily growing larger and more brains until it came time that we just hit a wall as dinosaurs.  We were ready to be a species that was capable of having more cerebral activity.  So with the help of the Earth by way of mechanisms far too complex to write about in this subject, we died as dinosaurs and began living in more sociable packs as various types of mammals, which are more intelligent than dinosaurs.  I wish to stress now that when the dinosaurs died out on this world, the live form that dinosaurs represent didn't disappear from existence.  I think dinosaurs still exist on other planets, and the souls who weren't ready to leave their dinosaur bodies here on Earth just went over to those planets to continue their dinosaur existences.  So the evolution of the dinosaur represents the trend of slow and continuous evolution, and the extinction of the dinosaur represents a cosmic changing of gears. 

In terms of Human reincarnation al evolution I think we live a rather predictable series of various steps characterized by a steadily increasing reliability of....do you want to guess?.....that's right, sociability.  As we evolve and get more intelligent and complex, we become more sociable.  After all that is the whole meaning of live isn't it?  That was the whole reason the God put us here in the first place, to share life with others.  To not be alone in the everlasting Cosmic experience.  To put it simply I believe there are two major factors that give joy to being alive in the physical form. 

1) To experience doing things that are relatively new to oneself in the world, and..
2) Sharing our experiences with others by way of helping others or getting help from others.

To translate the idea of a steadily increasing sociability of the Human being I will narrate the evolution of the Human race.  In the beginning we were the Caveman; the most sociable species on Earth.  A creature that for the first time in the story of the Earth is really looking at the world and contemplating how he can use it to make his like easier, rather than just letting nature passively mutate its body to make it more adapted to the environment.  The Caveman began to carve stones to make hunting easier, and hunted in ever more complex groups. With the development of the Caveman we entered in a new era of conscious communication with ourselves and the rest of our world. 

Too many people look at the life of the Caveman and see it in an unrealistically subjective point of view.  There are two schools of thought concerning Caveman that I believe miss the reality which is a middle ground between the two.:

1) He lived a hard miserable life.
2) He lived a mystical magical life completely free from the horrific ills of modern day society.

Some people look at Caveman's life as being a tough life riddled with death and cold and pain, and surely it was compared to ours. But I think we must remember that back then when we were Cavemen we were much younger as souls and everything was new and fresh to us, and actually thoroughly enjoyed being Cavemen the same way a cat enjoys sitting on the couch all day.  Obviously you would be bored being a cat sitting around all day, but you aren't a cat, are you?  The best analogy of the happy caveman that I can give is my experience biking through Australia and getting to know our modern day cave man, the Aborigine. I spent a couple months getting stoned off my ass and riding my bike across the desert of Australia.  It was a beautiful and very peaceful place.  I thoroughly enjoyed life as I just cruised across the land feeling the breeze and the sun on my skin.  Drinking water and feeling it seep out of my skin. Doing nothing but eating, sleeping, and riding.  It was great, but it wasn't only a chapter in my life. I would have become bored if I had have done that trip for too long.  More me I stopped the trip because I ran out of money, and we stopped being cavemen for other various reasons, but there is always the underlying reason that, ''It just became time to make the transition to the next step''.  The Australian Aborigine is the perfect example of a type of person who can be perfectly happy just walking about all their live's  They don't gain satisfaction from driving around the neighborhood  in a flashy car, or living in a large house with nice appliances, or traveling to other countries.  All the Aborigine needs to be happy is a nice warm sun on their back, clean water, and enough Kangaroos to eat.  I think the Aborigine represents the Caveman perfectly.  Not our imagination of the suffering caveman, but of a happy life loving mystical caveman.  However I think there are people who take this too far and go straight into saying that our modern world only negative.

I believe along the lines of planetary evolution our modern society is more advanced than the Aboriginal culture.  In fact I think our society is a few steps ahead of the Aborigines.  And needless to say when we put two different levels of the same thing together, you get friction, explosions, pain, suffering.  We get planetary growing pains.  Putting the English empire in the same melting pot as the Aborigine is much like putting large amounts of hot air with cold air, you get a storm. 

I think the belief in Reincarnation can be useful in understanding the differences and similarities between the Aborigines and modern civilization.  It can help them understand that our present would is just as natural of an occurrence as their time tested lifestyle, and it can help us understand that we came from them and are thus related. If we study the fact that there are different ways that souls travel though existence, we will realize that the evolution of the white race is different than that of the Aboriginal.  We brought this civilization upon ourselves over the course of thousands of years, while the Aboriginals are having it imposed on them in just a few years.  When we understand that the natural course of physical and soul evolution is very slow, we will understand that it is more beneficial to the Aboriginals to bring their transition about slowly at a pace they are comfortable to them. 

To the people who insist that this modern world is just an ugly, unnatural, violent and destructive place that is not in our best interests, I must stress that this world actually is a more a more beautiful, natural, less violent and less destructive place than it has every been. 

When people start talking about how awful the modern world is they compare it to the simple and beautiful tribal life.  But people who argue this point make claims that tribal life was more peaceful. This is not true.  A perfect example of the violence of tribal societies is the constant ethnic violence in Africa today.  People may argue that the various African tribes are constantly at war with each other because of the colonial ills that we have imposed on them, but I say that although that is related, as everything is, the real reason is because they are at the tail end of an epoch of their legacy that is characterized by miscommunication and ignorance.  And along with miscommunication and ignorance comes ideas that they are separate from one another and have no reason to co-exist with one another.  Cavemen throughout time have always had violent intertribal warfare. And for millions of years dying violently was just a natural part of life, but there always comes a time when we get sick of always dying violently and want to get to the next step of evolution where we can enjoy the finer things in life; so we create societies.

Ancient civilizations such as the Roman civilization did many wonderful things for the warring European tribes.  It created life easier by reducing wars in order to allow the various cultures to trade among themselves in order to have easier and more enjoyable lives.  The people of France could import grain from Egypt, and the Egyptians could import various farming tools from Europe that were made out of materials that can't be found in Egypt, and so on and so forth.  The Roman Civilization and others like it promoted a sense of peace of mind amongst the citizens living within its boarders to not have to constantly worry about a surprising raid from a neighboring tribe coming and killing everybody. 

The concept of a civilization as improving the world as apposed to hurting the world is a very complex and thus controversial one, and must be dealt with great description.  People may say that the Romans just looted those who they conquered, but that was just how the economy of Empires works.  After the initial looting the trading begins.  People may say that they were perfectly peaceful tribes before the Romans came, and many tribes probably were. But the fact of the matter is that the European continent had lived as peaceful tribes for millions of years and were getting ready to arrive at the next step in human evolution and needed a catalyst to bring them to that next step.  On a very esoteric note, the citizens of the European tribes surely started to become quiet ancy and bored with their repetitive lives, reincarnating so live the same type of life over and over again.  They surely gained less satisfaction from doing the same thing life after life after life and started to seek some sort of excitement, and thus began waging war.  With the tribes beginning to wage war came the necessity of a civilization to control the various tribes and bring them together.  It is just a natural and necessary occurrence in the evolution of the human race.  

The best analogy I can make to prove my point of the human soul experiencing the bliss of living and how it changes is naturally by comparing it to the life of a child.  While the soul lives various lives, the child lives in the microcosm of the same thing, with various days.  With each day the child gains joy partaking in different activities.  At first it is turing on and off the lights in the room. When he gets bored with that he graduates to playing with a spinning top, then with video games, until he gains satisfaction going out into the world and riding his bike through the woods.  The child enjoys playing ever more complex and games until he becomes an adult and takes joy in giving back what he has been receiving his whole life by having his own child and teaching and helping him. 

For people who still need proof of the fact the the Roman Civilization was in fact beneficial to mankind I bring up the fact that it lasted for a thousand years, and for the last few hundred years of the Empire it was practically nothing more than a gigantic military machine having less and less to do with Rome, and being self perpetuated by people from both inside and outside the boarders of the Empire for the sole purposes of maintaining order in the ancient world.  The citizens of Europe had realized that they actually did benefit from a grand army maintaining rogue tribes in check so people can live peaceful and predictable lives. 

Now that I have clarified the place the Roman Empire had on bringing Europe together so people can exchange their products and ideas with each other, I will no doubt have little trouble explaining the natural growth of a continuation of a unified European society throughout the whole world. 

The benefits and ills of Reincarnation verses Heaven/Hell

I know I got a little sidetracked but it just goes to show that the concept of Reincarnation ties into pattern and law in the physical, and spiritual Universe.  One cannot use the Heaven/Hell paradigm to explain the world the way it is.  Why would the world be created in such near infinite complexity just to be the home of Trillions upon Trillions of completely disconnected life forms to live but one life time and then go off to a place that is not even explained with the slightest bit of imagination.  One who believes in the Heaven/Hell paradigm has no choice but to believe that people who live their one and only life in a rich family in a rich nation is quite simply higher in the eyes of God than someone who has to live their life in a poor family in a poor country.  One must therefore ask why did God chose this soul over the other when neither of them had a previous life? Is it just sheer luck?  When we think like that we will naturally start to believe that we are better than those who are less fortunate than us, that it is Gods will that it is like that, and thus it is Gods will that we do whatever we can to maintain ourselves above and the less fortunate below. 

Even The Bible and Koran support Reincarnation

Koran

“And Allah hath caused you to spring forth from the Earth like a plant; Hereafter will He turn you back into it again, and will bring you forth anew” (Sura 71:17-18)

The Bible

Judaism’s The Zohar, a Kabalistic classic believed to date from the first century AD, states:

“The souls must re-enter the absolute, whence they have emerged.  But to accomplish this end they must develop all the perfections, the germ of which is planted in them; and if they have not fulfilled this condition during one life, they must commence another, a third and so forth; until they have acquired the condition which fits them for reunion with God.

”Christianity’s Bible includes: “Him that over cometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out.”      (Revelation 3:12)

When did the church and, ultimately, modern day Christianity turn away from reincarnation?  Most historians see the crucial turning point in the Second Council of Constantinople

(the Fifth Ecumenical Council of the Church) in 553 CE, during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian 1.  It was one of the council’s 14 anathemas, or denunciations, which stated, that if anyone asserted the fabulous pre existence of souls, and asserted the monstrous restoration which followed it, that person would be anathema. A few such biblical references include:

    “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.”   (Malachi 4:5)

   “Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist; notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.  And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.  And for all the prophets and the law which was prophesied until John.  And if ye will receive it, this is Elijah, which was for to come.” (Matthew 11:11‑14)U  

“But I say unto you, That Elijah is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed.  Likewise shall also the Son of Man suffer of them.  Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.” (Matthew 17:12‑13)U    

“Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am.”  (John 8:58)U  

  “And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea Philippi: and by the way, he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am?  And they answered, John the Baptist: but some say, Elijah; and others, One of the Prophets. And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?  And Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ.  And he charged them that they should tell no man of him.”  (Mark 8: 27-30)U  

  “And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.  And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?  Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” (John 9:1‑3)