(note--in this item, I will be using "reincarnation" to mean "the belief that,
after death, your soul enters another body, and this other body will be
more pleasant if you have led a good life".  I am not sure if other
definitions exist or not)

Ok, suppose I am a murderer, and, as punishment, I am reincarnated as a leech.
How is this punishment?  True, for my counciousness to be placed in a leech's
body would be punishment, but a leech's mind is different from mine.  My
conciousness wouldn't 'fit' into a leech's brain.  So "I" wouldn't really be
a leech--some lower conciousness would.

356 responses total.

Ah, but what if it *did* fit?  What if you spent your next
lifetime as a leech, fully remembering your previous life
as a human?  Imagine reminiscing about eating potato chips,
and then being disgusted at the thought that you ate something
that was covered in salt...  >8)  Of course, if you were a
murderer, being reincarnated as something that survives by
drinking blood might not be appropriate.  Maybe a slug?
An aphid?  A midge?  (What do midges eat, anyway?)

Most adult midges do not eat.  As juveniles the probably eat algae or 
detritus.  <I'm pretty sure>
My ideas about reincarnation differ a bit.  I beleive that being 
reincarnated is not a punishment, its just another chance to enjoy 
life.

  I thought reincarnation normally meant just that your soul would
be reborn in another body.  The "better life if you've been good"
sounds like Christianity meets Buddhism!  :-)  Though I do recall a
tale (from "The Little Buddha," perhaps?) where a goat told a goat-
sacrificer that he was going to be reincarnated as a goat (it was a
much better tale in its longer form :-).
 
  But taking your definition as a given, perhaps a slug wouldn't be
the worst thing you could be reincarnated as...instead you could be
reborn as a premature malnourished crack-addicted baby in the Bronx,
allowing you a fuller capacity in which to appreciate your suffering.
Or maybe as an elephant or whale born into captivity at a circus or
amusement park, with even bigger brains with which to contemplate
your misery.

Not quite Christianity meets Buddhism, Rob, but #0 is mixing reincarnation
with karma.
Reincarnation is simply the belief that lifeforce does not die with the body 
but inhabits multiple bodies (usually in series), sometimes for a finite
number of incarnations, sometimes infinite, depending on the belief system.
Karma is the belief that every act you do, positive or negative, creates an
imbalance in the universe which must be equilibriated by an equal or stronger
act of kind (depending again on the belief system) occurring *to* you.
  
Karma mixed with reincarnation, then, implies that if you've done many bad 
things, and don't pay for it in this lifetime, some future incarnation will
have a pretty lousy existence.  The issue is not whether or not you *know*
at the time you're being punished.  The issue of punishment is, I think, a
fairly JudeoChristian one; in most other systems, Gods don't punish so much
as they seek to regain balance (this is especially true in Eastern systems).
So being a leech or a mosquito, where there is much negative energy heaped
upon you in the form of disgust and hatred by higher life forms, allows the
negative imbalance created by killing someone to be equilibriated.
*curtsey*

Another way of looking at it is this.  (getting the conversation back on track)

What determines who you are?  When somebody says to me on grex, "Oh, you must
be Daniel", what are they saying?  Clearly, they are not saying that the text
they see on their screen is me.  What they are saying is that the mind that
thought up the text is my mind.
Is someone who gets an artificial heart or an organ transplant the same
person?  Yes, of course they are.  The brain, on the other hand, cannot be
removed and replaced by an artificial substitute.  My heart or my kidneys
do not determine who I am.  It is my mind, and my brain that it resides
in, that determines my identity.

Part of your mind is your memories of past events.  Therefore, "who you
are", your personality etc., are determined by your memories.  
So, when your soul goes to a new body, it could either take your mind with
it, or not.  If your mind, and therefore your memories, come with your
soul, then why can't people remember past lives?  And if your mind does
not come with your soul, and instead is destroyed with your physical body,
then "you" are not really getting a new body, because an important part of
your identity is not going into that body.

*is confused as to how his post was off track and orinoco's was on*
*shrugs*

As to the question of the consciousness fitting.  Look back to 
your original supposition, your soul, *not* your consciousness 
would be placed in the new body.  The commone mistake is to 
equate the two.  
 
Your consciousness (mind) simply acts as an interface through 
which your soul (spiritual self) may interact with your body 
(physical self).  Your mind is to your soul as your modem is 
to the internet.  A higher level of consciousness, such as we 
enjoy over a leech, allows us to manipulate our physical 
selves.  Should we use that power to create chaos (and take on 
negative karma) it may be in the universes best interest to 
place our soul in a recepticle with lower consciousness.  This 
would not only prevent us from creating more chaos, but also 
to divest ourselves of that negative karma.
   .

Okay, something to think about here:
If your soul is re-used over and over, being placed in a new body each time,   
wouldn't overpopulation be impossible, because of the limited amount of souls? 
 One solution to this would be the spilting or reprodousing of souls. So, this 
 brings up a number of questions: can souls split in two? Do soul reprodouse?  
 Think....

<Bob ponders>

  Maybe there's just a redistribution of souls...like maybe
there's a quadrillion souls total, belonging to people and
mosquitos alike...as human population increases, we just
start using more mosquito souls, not even noticing that there
are a few less mosquitos in the world.  In fact, if we are
inheriting mosquito souls, that could explain why society
is always getting more annoying!

you could also have overlapping lives.
i dont believe that reincarnation necessarily HAS to go in a
straight linear timeframe.
perhaps your next life might jump several hundred years in the past?

and souls *COULD* reproduce too.

Wow, Orinoco, nice item you've sarted.  Thanks.

Ajax, I believe that a fairly late form of Hindu/Buddhist thinking says that
certain forms are "higher" than others, with, for example, a chicken being
fairly low on the scale, a cow pretty high, and various castes of humans
going up from there to the highest attainable in a physical body.  In that
belief system, karma does indeed influence the form in which one is
reborn.  I repeat, it's a late and possibly corrupt belief system, not 
representative of all Eastern reincarnation views, much less the totality
of those variants.
        The way I read you goat story, a guy was about to slaughter a chicken
when it began crying.  The guy asked why, and it said; "I was just remembering
last time, when I was the butcher."  They talked about this, and it said
to go ahead and finish the job.  The butcher again raised his ax, when the
chicken began laughing.  The butcher asked why and the chicken said; "I was
remembering when you were the chicken."  (I may have it entirely backwards...)

Good Brighn- I hadn't thought of the equilibrium aspect.  THat makes sense.

Daniel, about your organs vs. brain issue; a friend of mine, rather younger
than I am, has a pacemaker.  He said that since it was implanted, he does
not feel entirely human, and in doing some energy sensing with him, I did
notice that he feels rather disconnected from much of his body from the neck
down (we're working on that).  Reactions vary, I suppose.

Variable, your analyis of karmic re-balancing was wonderful!  Thanks.

Eldrich, I've never heard of splitting souls. If it happened, my sense is
that the bearers of each part would be tied together and feel incomplete.
Hm, such accounts have been described with twins, come to think of it.
As to reproducing- I don't know.  My sense is that the "once born" have
"proto-souls" perhaps, and might find them maturing at a greater rate from
contact with a more "evolved" or experienced soul, but that new souls arise
as needed.

Ajax- the soul of a mosquito; what a lovely insult. <bweg>

Iggy, I've read of past life regression logs which seem to jump around a
bit, although I don't know but what we'd tend to organize such "memories"
linearly for comfort.  Dunno.  No real reason why it'd have to be linear.

Now, after all of that, *I* don't necessarily buy into the karma-meets-
rebirth notion just like so.  I think there is much to be learned from
each form, and a person might *choose* (at some level) to spend time as
a group organism; part of a herd of cattle or school of fish, or as a lone
carnivore, as a handicapped kid who dies young or as the opposite gender
from last time, in order to correct an imbalance of spirit, to rest, or
whatever.  I think real sociopathy has to come from somewhere- a deep
mistake or imbalance or some ill that was done to oneself getting passed
on down the line, and it might best be corrected by living a life as a
victim or as flotsam to be buffetted by the streams of life-energy. I
dont' know.  But I don't think it's as simple as putting humans at the
top of the chain.

Very nice item.  You've gone and  made thezone the action-packed fun conf it
never was but we can pretend it was.  On a slighty different topic, I bade (is
that a word?) Dan to come to the very next item, which you can look at, or,
more over, pass over .  Because it be c\kinda boring.

 
        I've struggled with the concept of reincarnation several times in the
last few months ... I've seen enough to feel that neither the Christian 
notion of an afterlife in "another place", nor the athiest notion of soul
contained within six pounds of flesh in a quarter-inch thick wall, is 
entirely correct.  Though I've yet to see anything to support reincarnation,
either, I like the feel of the idea.
 
        Orson Scott Card, in his _Xenocide_ trilogy, raised some interesting
theories (although partially pseudoscientific) about the nature of souls.

Generally, you're reborn into the same type of body you left. <cats are cats,
people are people, etc...>, and the One creates more souls all the time, 
so there are people who have been around a few times and then there are 
'new sould'.

 
        One idea that I've found that doesn't conflict with my (admittedly
layman) understanding of neurology and psychology nor my philosophy, is
that the soul is almost completely different than the human personlity and
person, perhaps even non-linear in time.  That's an idea that I find somehow
beautiful.

yup.

Very good.  Please note that all I am about to write is from my own
philosphy.
The soul is not subejct to time.  The body is.  The physical self
exists in the physical plane, which is organized by way of a number
of rules.  Time is one such rule.  Our mind percieves this rule and 
translates it to the soul.  The soul can relate future events and 
past events back through the mind, but only if the mind has been 
trained to let the flow back the other way.  Otherwise the mind ends
up in a feedback loop with the physical self, ignoring the data from
the soul.  This si the state of the commone man, and it is one
that we must help others recognize so that they may develope
their ability to communicate with the soul.

Shaival, I liked your statement right up until the last line.  That is,
while I'd be glad of any such "help [to] recognize...", it doesn't
necessarily follow that everyone would welcome or even tolerate such
"help".  It's so easy to drift over the line from willingness to share
in the journey to proceletyzing or patronizing or good ol' mind fuck.
I think we almost have to guard more against those trends than we have
to work at enlightening others.  Yes?

I always assumed reincarnation into a *human* body....?

Kami,
  Agreed.  That last line should have read "we must make ourselves
available to help others recognize this state."  Words have little power
if the action witnessed is contradictory.  
It is foolish to attempt to offer a jump start to those who are resigned
to pushing their car home...

good point variable...

Nicely said. I like analogies. 

I hate it when people say what I planned to say before I get the chance...oh
well...I'll live (maybe)

and if not, you can always make that response in the next life

    





                     then comes the judgement.







-------------------------------------------------------------------------

        And YOU aren't the judge, bucko.

*brighn is confused again*

Really?

<he he he>
<again>

*brighn is giving a pouty look to orinoco*
It's not nice to laugh.
<j/k>

Oops... drift... anyone want to take us back on topic?

Er, what *was* the topic last?

There are many types of reincarnation beliefs.  The belief I was forced into
was one of reincarnation that eventually leads to Apotheosis, or becoming a
god.  This theory existed long before TSR put it into their Planescape
campaign setting, though.  You see, everything is borrowed, or stolen, from
soMEONE or somewhere or even some thing else.

It is one of the Hindu forms.  Have a look at the Vedas for more.

        TSR did What? Idgits.

I would if I had more $ on hand than I need, but I don't.  Ain't enough room
in my dorm anywho and I am pretty certain that my college library doesn't
have them.

Tsr does a lot of stuff.  everybody, indeed, everything, does.

Here's something interesting I just came across.  It's pure speculation, of
course:

        The druids did believe in reincarnation, in the ancient days' i'm
sure everyone on the list knows that, and where the references are in the
source literature etc. etc.  I wanted to ask about what everyone here
personally thinks about reincarnation,what is remembered of past lives.
 
        The reason I ask is because in my thinking, reincarnation is
perfectly consistent with the other things I think I know about Druidism,
such as the seasonal cycle and the way some myths are interpreted.
Noteable myths like Midir and Etain, Birth of Taleisin (sp?) etc. feature
reincarnation quite explicitly, and usually by way of the woman ingesting
a foregn substance (presumably, when the stories were first introduced to
celtic culture, they hadn't yet connected sex with childbirth).  Yet I
myself posess no actual memories of what my past lives have been.  I
could be looking at myself in the ROM paleontology wing, for all I know.  :)
        I have made a premise, though, to determine by way of logical
induction what skills i may have posessed in past lives.  If there is a
skill or knowledge which I have observed I learned very quickly and
easily in this life, I induce that I learned it before in a past life.  I
also have examined past dreams, assuming that certain consistent images
might be associated with my past lives, but i think that dreams have more
to do with the present than the past.  Anyway, this is what I came up with.
        - I may have been a Druid, fili, or known one intimately.  My
awareness of druidism came to me at a most auspicious time in my life; i
am able to remember the myths that i studied with near-edeidic accuracy.
        - I may have been a musician or composer, since i learned to play
guitar and mandolin entirely by myself, and quick enough to begin
jazz-like improvisations within a few weeks.  My sisters like to brag
that i learned the mandolin in 20 seconds, but that is an exaggeration.

oops, it seems to have gotten garbled in process.  Sigh.

One thing I have noticed, is like deleting files on a computer, our
minds are mostly blanked inbetween incarnations.  From what I have
learned in my experiences of Deja vu, the mind blank is to help us
stay sane in the fact that we are immortal.  However, because of
sensations of Deja Vu, I believe that I can safely say that some
of our mental files are "access denied" to the forces of nature.  These
are virtually impossible to delete.  Inter-incarnation residue.

I believe that the knowledge is accessable, due to the fact that our soul
actually lives outside of time.  Te problem lies in the mind, which acts
as an interface, is built to process information linearly, and lacks the
training to access your greater knowledge.  

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss