Reincarnation

I dont have anything to say about it that youre going to enjoy hearing...but i do have something to say that i think you ought to be aware of. In pursuit of my degree I have had to learn about memory and how memories are stored and recalled. It turns out that imagination is a major component of memories. What this means is that we partially remember things but we also create images and count them as memories.

Wikipedia has got a pretty good entry on False Memory but its a lot to read

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory

Healthline.com has a somewhat shorter but still informative article here

https://www.healthline.com/health/false-memory#false-memory-syndrome

And PsychologyToday.com has a pretty good article on how fales memories are implanted during hypnosis

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/media-spotlight/201211/implanting-false-memories

Im not going to tell anyone that their memories are false but I am going to point out that the scientific literature on the subject makes it very clear that even memories of this life are unreliable.

OB1Shinobi wrote: I dont have anything to say about it that youre going to enjoy hearing..but i do have something to say that i think you ought to be aware of. In pursuit of my degree I have had to learn about memory and how memories are stored. It turns out that imagination is a major component of memories. What this means is that we partially remember things but we also create images and count them as memories.
Wikipedia has got a pretty good entry on False Memory but its a lot to read

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory

Healthline.com has a somewhat shorter but still informative article here
https://www.healthline.com/health/false-memory#false-memory-syndrome

And PsychologyToday.com has a pretty good article on how fales memories are implanted during hypnosis
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/media-spotlight/201211/implanting-false-memories

Im not going to tell anyone that their memories are false but I am going to point out that the scientific literature on the subject makes it very clear that even memories of this life are unreliable.

This is true. I too have bumped into this information during my internet travels. And it reminds me of the movie Inception.

The reality is that the brain sometimes uses illusions to "cheat" what we believe it to be capable of. This is why there are so many "UFOs". When the brain sees something, it isn't really seeing the thing you think you see. It's instead "seeing data" from light bouncing off that thing into your eye. While processing that data your brain might say "that's a ghost" instead of "that's a coat hanging over a chair" and the imagination kicks in like a database of stored images and ideas.

If you try to go back into the past your memory, like a muscle, degrades over time if you don't think about that memory. As it degrades (and what little bits were actually stored long term) your imagination fills in the gaps to approximate the missing data; kind of like how TVs can upscale a picture to 4K or 8K by using pixel data to fill in those gaps.

And since memories degrade and rely on the brain's hardware (neurons), when those neurons or neural connections go... even if you're alive... those memories get lost. This is why, elderly people, unfortunately, can suffer devastating memory loss, including forgetting their own children.

The idea of reincarnation, if at all believable, would almost certainly include a loss of memory to the point you were a new person with no idea of who you were before. People can believe they were someone else before but without evidence it is likely just their imagination.

I'm... open to the idea of Force Ghosts, although I'm of the opinion that a genuine occurrence is highly unusual, thus rare. An anomaly, if you will.
I'm presently forming an idea, within the "spirit" of the topic, as to how something like "reincarnation" would occur within a spiritual system that doesn't explicitly include it...

I want to spend some time organizing my thoughts before presenting my speculation, but I'd be interested to hear some of your own purported experiences, Padme.

I certainly acknowledge the reality of false memories. Our subconscious territory can be like pea soup - solid bits of reality floating in a viscous gel of uncertainty, that can be dried and shaped to look like a pea.

But some of the peas are actually peas. There are documented stories of children claiming to recall a past life of someone they've never met or had described to them, where some research shows that the person they claim to have been actually lived and experienced the events the child remembers. Here is such a story I picked because its source might be more credible than many for members of this group. Early in this interview from NPR, University of Virginia professor of psychiatry Jim Tucker describes a two-year-old boy who describes the identity and fate of the World War 2 pilot he claims to have been: https://www.npr.org/2014/01/05/259886077/searching-for-science-behind-reincarnationhttps://www.npr.org/2014/01/05/259886077/searching-for-science-behind-reincarnation

I'm sure this is against the spirit of the thread, but I'm getting tetchy at the current roster of subjects and the heavy weighting of random schmoes vs Jedi knights in the forums at the moment.

I believe in reincarnation in the Force... if anyone has anything to say about this, any possible past life memories to discuss, let's talk about it! (:

What part of being a Jedi makes you ponder this sort of thing? are you near death and fear you've not lived your best life? is there any useful outcome of this line of thought or is your life just a bit low on wonder and magic at the moment so you're grasping at nonsense?

There is far more to be achieved by a nice bush walk, or buying a destitute person a toothbrush, or doing a hundred pushups than there is in this drivel.

Live in the now, live for the now, and follow the path.

Jediism isn't an excuse to fill your head and time with any piece of mystical bollocks seems briefly romantic or "kewl" at any given point in time.

If, lets say, reincarnation does exist, it'll exist with or without you, so just be a good Jedi, and let the force sort the rest out.

*Purposely ignoring James...*

I have never had a past life memory but I definitely believe its possible to have them and that we come back many times into this life! We are reincarnated many times through the lower chakras and by the astral realms where the spirit guides reside. each time giving us advice on how to achieve higher levels of consciousness so that we can ascend back to the force and become one with it again!

I would love to hear of past life memories!

JamesSand wrote: I'm sure this is against the spirit of the thread, but I'm getting tetchy at the current roster of subjects ... There is far more to be achieved by a nice bush walk, or buying a destitute person a toothbrush, or doing a hundred pushups than there is in this drivel.

Live in the now, live for the now, and follow the path.

While not all of us see subjects like this as drivel - reincarnation actually being of importance to over a billion people on Earth - I am, upon reflection, partly aligned with your sentiments in this post, James, despite the fact that I am one of those billion.

Some degree of contemplation of what may lie beyond this physical existence is, for some people, an enhancement to the mystery and wonder that surrounds us in our walk through the universe. Yet, as in so many things, there is a need for balance. It does seem like most of the recent subjects introduced into the forums have focused on ethereal topics; for some that is interesting, for some at least a minor irritant. A constant diet of nothing but this sort of dialog though is, imo, potentially harmful to anyone engaging in it.

Years back, I remember spending lots of time hanging out with people whose lives were primarily focused on subjects like reincarnation, spirit communication, channeling, and the like. While there was insight to be found there, I also began to see that when such matters dominated a person's daily affairs they often tended to become "spacey" - unable to deal with the mundane aspects of most careers, unable to recognize personal boundaries, unable to respond effectively to the rough-and-tumble to which we are often subjected in human life, even sometimes unable to discern reality from fantasy. "Airhead" was a label I remember being tossed around now and then from more rooted folk regarding those whose heads were in the clouds and feet clearly not on the ground.

In the context of this conversation, I remember the teacher of meditation who had the most impact on me once discussing past lives. While he believed they were a reality, he advised his students: "Don't spend too much time wondering about them. If you need information about your past lives to grow, it will come to you of its own accord. But most people find simply their current lifetime an awful lot to manage; it's best to focus on this lifetime, as it is the one in which you've been placed for now and which you can act upon."

With that in mind, I'm going to withdraw from these conversations for a bit. I agree that we need to refocus more attention on matters closer to 3D reality, and appreciate your blunt-but-direct comments.

Oh, reincarnation! I misread the topic, I thought it said procrastination. :laugh:

Seriously, I have no problem with people believing in reincarnation, nor am I here to convince anyone that it is not real. My curiousity leads me to ask of all those who do remember their previous selves... what now? I mean, is your previous life in any way influencing how you live your current one? Is it possible to gain perspective on how it is to live like someone else simply by a few glimpses of a previous life? Are there maybe better ways to do that?

Omhu Cuspor wrote: Years back, I remember spending lots of time hanging out with people whose lives were primarily focused on subjects like reincarnation, spirit communication, channeling, and the like. While there was insight to be found there, I also began to see that when such matters dominated a person's daily affairs they often tended to become "spacey" - unable to deal with the mundane aspects of most careers, unable to recognize personal boundaries, unable to respond effectively to the rough-and-tumble to which we are often subjected in human life, even sometimes unable to discern reality from fantasy. "Airhead" was a label I remember being tossed around now and then from more rooted folk regarding those whose heads were in the clouds and feet clearly not on the ground.

Your choice of words is wonderful for me because the term i used to describe them was actually “space-cadet” and i assumed the inverse of your proposition here, namely that “space-brained” people tend to gravitate towards topics like channeling and crystals and well basically just all the gibberish and wild speculation-as-fact of the new age movement

Manu wrote: Oh, reincarnation! I misread the topic, I thought it said procrastination. :laugh:

Seriously, I have no problem with people believing in reincarnation, nor am I here to convince anyone that it is not real. My curiousity leads me to ask of all those who do remember their previous selves... what now? I mean, is your previous life in any way influencing how you live your current one? Is it possible to gain perspective on how it is to live like someone else simply by a few glimpses of a previous life? Are there maybe better ways to do that?

Lmao! Yes we procrastinate to reincarnate!

Actually I think we reincarnate through our ancestral lines. So some places in your own ancestorsy you will find a version of yourself! Not the same exactly because the ethereal spirit evolves each time so you actually become different, so much so that it becomes hard to find yourself from life to life.. but hey, that's life!