Past & Future Lives

Zertel

Well-known member
I scanned over some of the comments from the luminaries but the one from Ben Franklin caught my interest.

Benjamin Franklin:

"I look upon death to be as necessary to the constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning. And, finding myself to exist in the world, I believe I shall, in some shape or other always exist."

Maybe Ben had a kensho or satori experience. In that state of awareness current life takes on an irrelevance, knowing that "I" as self conscious awareness now awakened continues forward once again in some form of self conscious awareness.

From Wikipedia

Kenshō[note 1] (見性) is a Japanese term from the Zen tradition. Ken means "seeing," shō means "nature, essence". It is usually translated as "seeing one's (true) nature," that is, the Buddha-nature.
Kenshō is an initial insight or awakening, not full Buddhahood. It is to be followed by further training to deepen this insight, and learn to express it in daily life.
The term kenshō is often used interchangeably with satori, which is derived from the verb satoru, and means "comprehension; understanding".
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I think the Buddhists say you come back in basically the same condition as when you left - good enough for now - haha
 

Zertel

Well-known member
I once spent some time in the Hall of Valhalla. Too late to go into it now. More on that tomorrow.

I didn't stick around too long. There were too many grouchy old men sitting around getting drunk and griping about how their dumbass commanders had gotten them killed.

In Norse mythology, Valhalla (/vælˈhælə, vɑːlˈhɑːlə/;[1] from Old Norse Valhöll "hall of the slain")[2] is a majestic, enormous hall located in Asgard, ruled over by the god Odin. Chosen by Odin, half of those who die in combat travel to Valhalla upon death, led by valkyries, while the other half go to the goddess Freyja's field Fólkvangr. In Valhalla, the dead warriors join the masses of those who have died in combat (known as the Einherjar) and various legendary Germanic heroes and kings, as they prepare to aid Odin during the events of Ragnarök.
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One time on Marty Rathbun's blog I got the sneaky suspicion that a poster named "The Oracle" was once my commanding officer and the bonehead had gotten me killed. I didn't bring it up since she probably would have put me in some kind of "condition" to work myself out of. She had a mathematical way of thinking.
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Hey - It's time to get this reincarnation issue resolved once and for all.
 
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Zertel

Well-known member
One time in an auditing session I recalled part of my birth. I suddenly realized I could breathe on my own so I let out a war whoop as loud as I could. I recalled feeling quite proud of myself for my accomplishment at the time.

Which gives rise to the question of how does a newborn with an undeveloped brain and probably no cognitive ability manage to "feel proud" of itself? hmmm
 

Veda

Well-known member
I scanned over some of the comments from the luminaries but the one from Ben Franklin caught my interest.

Benjamin Franklin:

"I look upon death to be as necessary to the constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning. And, finding myself to exist in the world, I believe I shall, in some shape or other always exist."

-snip-
A popular song reflecting ol' Ben's words:

 

programmer_guy

True ex-Scientologist
This topic should also be studied in "confabulation" and "false memory".

For infancy, I would also study neuroscience for when long term brain memory is developed.
 

guanoloco

As-Wased
Science is not a religion.
Science has nothing to do with it. "Science" doesn't say or claim anything. "Scientists" don't have a position other than sticking to methods to determine facts.

I've posted a ton of science studying consciousness and past lives as well as documented instances of people with no brain up to severe brain traumas and deformities with no recognizable impairment to the subjects but you refused to look at it and stuck to your "brain is consciousness" format.

That paradigm is outdated.
 
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Zertel

Well-known member
Another question might be when is the beginning of self conscious awareness for an individual. My earliest non auditing memory is when I was sitting on the grass somewhere when I was probably less than two years old and I was watching some ants crawl around. I thought they were very interesting so I decided to taste a couple of them but they didn't taste good so I split them out.

To add -There were many opinions as to the "beginning of self awareness" in scientology. Some people spoke of their "home universe" and such things. Mr. Hubbard seemed quite interested in returning to and exploring the beginning of time or existence, assuming there is such a thing.
 
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programmer_guy

True ex-Scientologist
"The roots of human self-awareness"
"New study points to a complex, diffuse patchwork of brain pathways"

My comments:
Currently, the many brain pathways are being attempted to be modeled with TensorFlow.
So far, this has produced "machine learning" (sometimes referred to as "deep learning").
The "machine learning" is not yet at self-awareness (true artificial intelligence).
For this to happen we will also need much more advancement in digital hardware capability.

For so-called "future lives" these tensor patterns (structure) will need to be understood and be able to be copied.
 

pineapple

能说的名字不真的名字
From "Japan, An Interpretation" by Lafcadio Hearn. (Numbers in brackets [ ] are page numbers.) This is from Chapter XI, "The Higher Buddhism," beginning on page 207.

As taught by popular Buddhism, the doctrine of rebirth is simple enough,—signifying no more than transmigration: you have lived millions of times in the past, and you are likely to live again millions of times in the future,—all the conditions of each rebirth depending upon past conduct. The common notion is that after a certain period of bodiless sojourn in this world, the spirit is guided somehow to the place of its next incarnation. The people, of course, believe in souls. But there is nothing of all this in the higher doctrine, which denies transmigration, denies the existence of the soul, denies personality. There is no Self to be reborn; there is no transmigration—and yet there [225] is rebirth! There is no real "I" that suffers or is glad—and yet there is new suffering to be borne or new happiness to be gained! What we call the Self,—the personal consciousness,—dissolves at the death of the body; but the Karma, formed during life, then brings about the integration of a new body and a new consciousness.
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Successive births do not mean transmigration in the common sense of that word, but only the self-propagation of [226] Karma: the perpetual multiplying of certain conditions by a kind of ghostly gemmation,—if I may borrow a biological term. The Buddhist illustration, however, is that of flame communicated from one lamp-wick to another: a hundred lamps may thus be lighted from one flame, and the hundred flames will all be different, though the origin of all was the same. Within the hollow flame of each transitory life is enclosed a part of the only Reality; but this is not a soul that transmigrates. Nothing passes from birth to birth but Karma,—character or condition.


According to the above, the doctrine of rebirth in popular Buddhism is much the same as it is in scn. When you die, you wander around for a while and eventually pick up another body. What comes back is the same "you" that was here before, just in a different body.

But Hearn says this is not the way it's viewed at the highest levels of Buddhism, since there is no permanent "I" or personality: "Nothing passes from birth to birth but Karma."

I quoted this to point out that not all Buddhists believe in "past lives" in the scn sense, though scngsts think they do, and would cite belief in past lives as a strong similarity between scn and Buddhism.

My own opinion is that when I die, that will be the end of me. (I'm not a Buddhist, but I am something of a Buddhist sympathizer.)
 
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pineapple

能说的名字不真的名字
I see Friedrich Nietzsche is quoted in the original Reincarnation thread: "Live so that thou mayest desire to live again - that is thy duty - for in any case thou wilt live again!"

This is misleading IMO, as Nietzsche did not believe in reincarnation in any usual sense. He believed in Eternal Return, or Eternal Recurrence:
  • Time is infinite, but the quantity of matter and energy in the universe is finite.
  • In an infinite amount of time, a finite amount of matter and energy will eventually assume every possible configuration an infinite number of times.
  • Therefore, our present universe, exact down to the smallest detail, will eventually recur an infinite number of times.
(It seems to me that an infinite number of completely different universes would also recur an infinite
number of times, though that is seldom mentioned.)

In other words, there have already been an infinite number of universes where someone with the pseudonym "pineapple" is writing a post about Nietzsche's theory of Eternal Recurrence on a message board called "exscn2.net" in a thread called "Past & Future Lives" started by a poster known as "Veda," etc., and this same universe will also exist an infinite number of times in the future.

All the past and future pineapples would be the same, down to the smallest detail, but would live in different recurrences of the universe. They would be in a sense the same person, though living billions, trillions, quadrillions etc. of years apart. They would share all of their memories, but only because they had had exactly the same experiences in their identical (but eons apart) lives, NOT because they had carried these memories with them from life to life, which they would not.

None of this requires the existence of a soul or a personality that survives death.

This is very interesting, and maybe even more plausible than reincarnation as usually understood, but it's completely different. It isn't reincarnation in any usual sense.

 
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Zertel

Well-known member
My co-auditor had a metaphor I liked and which I adopted for myself. He called it "The Sea of Theta". In my version of the metaphor the Sea of Theta was like a sea of champagne. Each champagne bubble popping up was an individual thetan coming into self awareness. Almost all attitudes, emotions, sensations and pains could be tracked back to this original awareness. For example, I might see a bubble nearby and be attracted to it or a bubble might bang into me and make me angry. And so on and so forth as Mr. Hubbard liked to say.

In this scenario not all thetans would have a beginning at the very "beginning of existence" (another hypothetical) so not everyone would have millions of past lives. Likewise, spacetime in the Twilight Zone might not relate to spacetime on earth. This might be the reason why Mr. Hubbard is tardy on returning. He should have figured out the difference between spacetime on earth and spacetime in the ether or other dimensions before he departed. Dumbass.
 
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Chuck J.

"Austere Religious Scholar"
One of the reasons I was enticed by the cult was my awareness of a lot of past track. When I was a kid I felt it must be 'past lives.' So when I heard about and read up on $cn. I thought , "Oh, these people must know something about this."

Most of the stuff I've remembered has to do with (now) locations that are similar in some way to back then. It'll trigger some pictures and I'll try to figure it out, when & where they come from, etc.

I called up the Arizona Historical Society one time in the early 90s to ask about something, figuring they'd research it and get back to me. I described the incident, a shooting in a certain town along with some other nastyness, and the lady started telling me about it. She didn't even have to look it up. She filled in some more details for me and it spooked me bad. :dizzy: No doubt.

Another time about ten years ago I hired a guy to look up something in the LA Public Library. He had access to the microfiche which as far as I know is (still) closed to the general public. Anyway, he pulled up a short newspaper story about a gangland shooting, photocopied it and mailed it to me. That one really f**k*d me up. Imagine looking a photo of the face you used to be! :ohmy: I threw it away. Yow!

I've never had much doubt about the fact of my other lives. My thing is: WTF was I doing and why? And, is it even important now, other than for entertainment. I mean I could write stories, I guess. I have plenty of material, lol.
 
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