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!

@James
I'm not going to ignore your question.

There is plenty that can be contemplated in the idea of reincarnation. Not everyone has the privilege of financial ability right now to even get a toothbrush for someone on the street. Just to address a couple of common retorts:

"They have the money for the internet!" Which I'll just say is a better use of their finances atm because that can actually help them get a better paying job, and who knows it might be the only thing keeping their depression at bay.

"This is depressing!" not so much. Knowing that there is something after has been a huge comfort for people... Look at the wild success of so many religions that promise something for the afterlife!

ALL OF THAT SAID! lol, I actually agree with you on "if it exists..."

I've seen some pretty intriguing stories (does not mean I'm sold) on the subject. But I think that we focus too heavily on the past life, rather than the future one. Where Hinduism works to achieve Nirvana or a better next life, I think that with the few intriguing stories I mentioned above, a Jedi might be better served with looking at how they can make this life one that the next life will not be hindered by.

I guess I should explain what I'm talking about. So there was this story of a kid that was believed to be the reincarnation of a WWII pilot. The pilot had some unfinished business and even plagued the poor kid with previous memories. Now, we're not going to get into whether or not the case is true- but instead talk about it as if it IS true, so that I can get my point across.

If it was true that this past life was real, then something I can take away from his experience is that what I (as in Alethea Thompson) would want to do in this life, is live it so that my next life (whatever name it takes) can have a fresh start, unhindered by the life I (Alethea Thompson) led during some dream sequence or some problem I (Alethea Thompson) think (at the end of Alethea's life) needs to be resolved before I (Alethea) move on. (Grammarly didn't get me on that last sentence...so it's perfectly structured ...maybe).

One of the things I love about Jediism is that there's no insistence upon the importance of an afterlife. Most of the big traditions treat the afterlife as a carrot, but in the Jedi Path the carrot is a better world, one step at a time. I think that takes the pressure off of trying to become something that is perfect, and rather just work on what you can.

@James
I'm not going to ignore your question.

There is plenty that can be contemplated in the idea of reincarnation. Not everyone has the privilege of financial ability right now to even get a toothbrush for someone on the street. Just to address a couple of common retorts:

"They have the money for the internet!" Which I'll just say is a better use of their finances atm because that can actually help them get a better paying job, and who knows it might be the only thing keeping their depression at bay.

Thanks Al, you can't imagine the restless sleep I had last night thinking I'd be ignored on the internet - I've no interest in discussing the wonders of people's personal finances, it was just a throwaway example of "being nice to someone"

"This is depressing!" not so much. Knowing that there is something after has been a huge comfort for people... Look at the wild success of so many religions that promise something for the afterlife!

Ye...ess...which is something we "deal with" in Jediism by saying the Force is everywhere and eternal, and you are with the force regardless of whether or not you still have a heartbeat - moving into *other* answers or solutions to the "mortality is depressing" problem seems like a move away from the basic premise of the Force?

If we're going to say that reincarnation/afterlife is something that could be a thing, I prefer the Nac Mac Feegle Model - Where you are now is the paradise, and if you die (er....) then you just have to use your other life, to re-earn entry to the paradise you are presently in....

The fearlessness of Nac Mac Feegle warriors in combat is derived from their religious belief that they cannot be killed, because they are already dead; they believe that they are in the afterlife, and that any Feegle who is killed has simply been reincarnated into the world where they have already lived before. They reason that Discworld, with the sunshine, flowers, birds, trees, things to steal and people to fight, must be some sort of heaven, because "a world that good couldn't be open to just anybody". They consider it a kind of Valhalla, where brave warriors go when they are dead. So, they reason, they have already been alive somewhere else, and then died and were allowed to come to the Discworld because they have been so good.

I had to ask my husband about this species- that’s interesting. He mentioned the series actually has some hints that it might actually be true in their case.

To me, that’s cool and all, but if all they do is party and engage in battle then I’d say it’s just not a life I could engage in. I prefer working on building a better world for the lives I can touch. This species can have fun in self-indulgment, I’ll be somewhere out in the field trying to repair the broken pieces- because that’s what is what I believe the Jedi should be doing.

Dunno. I have a belief in the afterlife so I can entertain reincarnation.
I tend though to feel the minds power exceeds that needed to make up detail sufficient to be as if it were real..... which makes vetting a requirement before believing it for me. It is a powerful tool of belief for a bit if mental alchemy, a psycho-surgery if you will

I heard a story from a old rabbi that originally there was a set amount of souls that God had created and one day all the souls where used up so an angel had an ingenious idea to split a soul in two . Eventually with the rise in population the number of people living grew to where they had to do it seven times to every soul and that's why there are seven people around the world that looks like you . I think this fits in to this reincarnation subject . Personally I don't hold much truth in this wisetail but food for thought I guess .

My body won’t live forever, it can’t. It’s not made that way. No one can. Life expectancy’s are declining by the day. More and more things are keeping us at a very aware sense of our short span of time here.

Teaching 15

15. Jedi believe in eternal life through the Force. We do not become obsessed in mourning those who pass. We may grieve at their passing but we are content, knowing that they will forever be a part of the Force and so always a part of us.

We do this- but in what way - the practice is strictly a gift to each of us. If you remember - the Force can be our choice. So-in real talk , how we -(some of us) -live forever -can very well be in our own chosen faith or belief. If we choose to live on in our example of our belief and how our faith has helped us grow and change- in the actual world- when gone, we will seem like lights in the sky To others. Many people become the light or a reflection of the light they seek. Many people begin to become “like” or “in the spirit of”.

How will I live on

This is how “I “ will live after I’m gone.
Every word posted here, is here forever. Every word of encouragement, argument, everything it’s on the temple; I will dwell in the archives. I’ve gone into the archives, and have visited old teachers past and learned from them. They, in turn, have lived beyond their time. As will I. As will many after and with me. I am not the only one. (So are you). What I teach, how I teach it, who It reaches will be one of many things I leave behind.
You will find me in the trees I planted and the stuff that grows. You will find me in the library at home. You will find me in the books and information I keep and in the movies I watch. You will find me in the things we share long after I’m gone. Will I live forever - nope- can I live or dwell always - in the Force and in the hearts of many and some in their boots! Lol either way when I’m gone you will know - I was trying to make a few things last a bit - longer.
My hope is every step I leave there’s a drop of grace - mercy - hope - every hand I touch and hold will be a moment shared every back I scratch won’t go un noticed. My hope is every where I go - I can add. Add something - anything better - some times it’s NOT adding that makes things better but that’s how I plan to live forever in the Force - by my actions.
Some day you may see some one and say - that’s just almost like ... ( insert my name) yea - the Force works like that some times. Very “Yoda-esque” some times just familiar - all the time me. One of the Joys of the hero’s journey - same story told in different ways - Force be with us all.

To me, that’s cool and all, but if all they do is party and engage in battle then I’d say it’s just not a life I could engage in. I prefer working on building a better world for the lives I can touch. This species can have fun in self-indulgment, I’ll be somewhere out in the field trying to repair the broken pieces- because that’s what is what I believe the Jedi should be doing.

I always thought the point was less "Hey, you're already dead, see how much coke you can do" but rather "It's a better, healthier mindset to imagine where you are now as the perfect place to be enjoyed and lived in fully rather than always dreaming and striving for the next place to be better."

I entertain the idea of reincarnation. I have like Alethea read some eye brow raising stories but never lived it myself so IDK. However, I am content with 2 types, a "circle of life" idea of reincarnation, and ripple action effect.

A while ago many of us remember a good Jedi that passed. I occasionally revisit his words, does he not reincarnate each time I visit those. Does each ripple of action he made consequences that are continuation/revival of his life?

If my wishes in my will are followed (I'll be dead so meh) my body will be allowed to decompose naturally and used for forensic training. The multitude of life that is forwarded through the energy left via my corpse is a form of reincarnation that through a passage of time will eventually lead back to humans.

This is enough for me. However, a little looking at whether it is possible for full fledged reincarnation can be a good exercise into ones understanding of the physical and spiritual reality.

Much Love,
Kobos

Dakini wrote: Isn't reincarnation separate from legacy?

While I do honor the literary perspective of a person's continuing to live through the work s/he left behind, I would say yes, it certainly is. Legacy referes to our gift; reincarnation refers to us, directly.

If there is reincarnation, that which I will become is not like that which I am. No memories (which are physically present in the brain and may be damaged if the brain is damaged) or even personality traits (these being determined by a combination of genetics and learning from environment) would carry over from me (now) to me (later). In what sense is this "me"? Even if that which makes up my consciousness is transferred from me (n) to me (l) in what sense is it me rather than a recycled thing which is currently part of me?
The Force is, in my view, eternal, boundless, timeless, limitless, and indivisible -- it exists regardless of this experience of "me", even the parts which make up "me" (if any such parts have ontic validity given that the Force is indivisible and these "parts" are arguably divisions). So if that part of "me" is reincarnated, or I am reincarnated through it, has anything changed? Have I actually switched between two states of affairs? Or, rather than "reincarnating", am I "incarnating" continuously?
I do believe in eternal life through the Force, but I am not convinced there is an eternal "TheDude".