Hi guest! As you can see, the new Wizard Forums has been revived, and we are glad to have you visiting our site! However, it would be really helpful, both to you and us, if you registered on our website! Registering allows you to see all posts, and make posts yourself, which would be great if you could share your knowledge and opinions with us! You could also make posts to ask questions!
This kind of reminds should there be old souls? This thread touches upon the idea of reincarnation existing but what happens to death? If reincarnation really does exist then it kind of sounds like being endlessly tormented by existing and living for thousands upon maybe millions of years.
Is there a way out of reincarnation? I know some beliefs systems like Buddhism talk about escaping the dharma by living well and escpaing earthly desires.
I don't know but (this is just my own personal take and I admit I haven't thought much about belief systems with reincarnation like buddhism/hinduism) since I thought of death as the one thing you don't have to work for in life. Its the one thing you don't have to earn and it happens to everyone. I'm just throwing ideas out there maybe in another framework of reincarnation souls get old and then stop existing.
I don't know. I mean if reincarnation did exist does that mean death exists or does everything keep on going. Is there an end and a beginning in existence? Its kind of daunting to think about but I guess something I wanted to add to the conversation about old souls and reincarnation.
You're right in many ways. As Buddhists don't believe in divine creation but rather cyclical existence without beginning or end, there's no starting point for becoming an old soul, and as there is no permanent self and thus no immortal soul, the entire concept falls flat here. In fact, the very reason for suffering is clinging to the idea of a permanent self which in turn gives rise to the ego (in the pejorative sense), with all its greed for sensual pleasures, hate for one's enemies, vanity, conceit, etc. The dos and don'ts are much more sophisticated than in other religions - say you give up a vice, feeling all smug and proud of your achievement while looking down on all the other people still in its grip, you generate bad karma, no matter how virtuous your new lifestyle may be now; the Christian fundie slogan "Hate the sin, not the sinner" would still be considered unwholesome in Buddhism because hating something has the same effect as desiring something, you'll remain obsessed and attached to it, only in a negative way while producing loads of bad karma nevertheless. Giving to charity in order to amass merit and thus ensure a more favourable rebirth while feeling indifferent about the plight of the underprivileged wouldn't create good karma either. Hence it's the intention, your motivation, that's a major karmic factor.
As there's no soul in Buddhism, what gets reborn is basically your karma, good or bad. A virtuous life alone won't free you from the cycle of death and rebirth, you have to make an effort to achieve ultimate liberation; good karma may create more beneficial conditions for such an effort but that's all. Excepting unfortunate rebirths, e.g. in a famine area, it's all "As ye sow so shall ye reap": everything follows strictly logical chains of cause and effect, this will give rise to that, that to this, without inexplicable interventions from above as a result of past good deeds.
As all karma has effects on one's subsequent lives, rebirth is not necessarily another chance to get it right or to gather novel experiences; things can go horribly wrong as well, with experiences you really don't want to make. For example, an 'old soul' frequently filled with righteous anger towards infidels, communists, terrorists or whomever is a good candidate for rebirth as a hell-being because hate is never considered beneficial in Buddhism, however morally justified. Such an unfavourable rebirth isn't punishment since there is no punisher in Buddhism, just the blind karma machine. Karma is seen as part of the human condition, and as such it isin fact the law of cause and effect - to which I'd like to add that it's more an entire legal corpus than a single statute in Buddhism.
The path to liberation basically consists of study and meditation (rituals optional). One reinforces the other, I've found - once you sit down on your pillow and try to keep your mind empty, you'll realise what a random mess it really is and that there might be something to that no-self doctrine. Then you read up on it, reflect for some time, return to your pillow and notice that meditation just became a little easier. In Buddhism, however, meditation is not inherently karmically positive. If you close your eyes and indulge in harmful thoughts (and that includes "Damn, I'm so stressed out today!"), you generate bad karma. Or if you're listless and apathetic, the same applies (Tibetan masters sometimes tell novices who fall asleep during meditation that they'll be reborn as whales!). Again, it's not punishment, just a consequence, like a hangover is simply the result of having had too much to drink the previous night.
All this means that it's true that karma is about cause and effect but the applicable Buddhist rulebook is more complex than most people suspect.
[NB: I'm still in the exploratory stages so there may be errors in my understanding of Buddhism.]
I would just like to add that I think there is a lot of sense in what you- @Ananda , @Ohana and @HoldAll have said but I refrain the right to just add that there may be one (small) mistake, or rather an addendum to your meditations on the topic of reincarnation and meditation. And that lies within the concept of suffering and its effects on the Soul.
I agree that not merely life, but existence as a cognate being are indispensably linked together-everything in existence must suffer only to make its own existence possible. That is a natural law like any other. And no matter how much we try to end suffering, the ultimate reality not only of that Universe but of existence itself is that we cannot! This is why the only choice we have left with is to either let go of existence altogether, or to find a meaning in suffering-something that can get us through the pain no matter how great it may be.
And this serious of thoughts leads me to the Greatest Choice possible, which I believe all living beings must (eventually) understand and face! Do you live for something, or do you want to die for nothing. In other words can you find something to build up your Soul, something you can invest your being in, no matter how much you must suffer in the process, or do you prefer an endless "bliss" in non-existence itself? And that determines where your Soul would want to go and will end up (eventually). I believe that the Souls that want to liberate themselves from suffering eventually go out of existence altogether-they trade experiences for the "price" of escaping suffering, while the Souls that find something worth existing for give themselves to stimulating that existant as their highest goal. And that can actually turn them into the masters which write the plans for the Universes themselves. Thus, rather than stopping all existence they thrive on it.
And that is what makes the biggest choice a Soul can take and the crux of existence itself!
I would just like to add that I think there is a lot of sense in what you- @Ananda , @Ohana and @HoldAll have said but I refrain the right to just add that there may be one (small) mistake, or rather an addendum to your meditations on the topic of reincarnation and meditation. And that lies within the concept of suffering and its effects on the Soul.
I agree that not merely life, but existence as a cognate being are indispensably linked together-everything in existence must suffer only to make its own existence possible. That is a natural law like any other. And no matter how much we try to end suffering, the ultimate reality not only of that Universe but of existence itself is that we cannot! This is why the only choice we have left with is to either let go of existence altogether, or to find a meaning in suffering-something that can get us through the pain no matter how great it may be.
And this serious of thoughts leads me to the Greatest Choice possible, which I believe all living beings must (eventually) understand and face! Do you live for something, or do you want to die for nothing. In other words can you find something to build up your Soul, something you can invest your being in, no matter how much you must suffer in the process, or do you prefer an endless "bliss" in non-existence itself? And that determines where your Soul would want to go and will end up (eventually). I believe that the Souls that want to liberate themselves from suffering eventually go out of existence altogether-they trade experiences for the "price" of escaping suffering, while the Souls that find something worth existing for give themselves to stimulating that existant as their highest goal. And that can actually turn them into the masters which write the plans for the Universes themselves. Thus, rather than stopping all existence they thrive on it.
And that is what makes the biggest choice a Soul can take and the crux of existence itself!
The way many Buddhist books describe suffering (dukkha) is that the term is meant to encompass more than just acute pain, illness, and death; some explicitly prefer 'unsatisfactoriness', add 'frustration', or 'existential unease'. You could even say that dukkha ultimately means unhappiness, or ask "Why do so many good things in life eventually end in despair?"
Accordingly, I don't think suffering (or dissatisfaction and frustration) necessarily ennoble the spirit. I used to quip "The only time I really learn is whenever I fall flat on my face!" but don't think that's necessarily true anymore. All too often, suffering only serves to make people retreat even more into their unhappiness, and not everybody bounces back from adversity. If suffering provides valuable lessons, they're frequently lost on the sufferers. The motto "That which does not kill us makes us stronger" may hold true for some but for the rest of us it's "No, what does not kill you merely maims you, cripples you, tortures you, incapacitates you, or traumatizes you!" We admire persons that continue to hold their head up high regardless but tend to ignore the ones who fall through the cracks, give up on themselves, start drinking, become insufferable shits, etc. as a result of their anguish. Religions of necessity have to cater to such cases as well but holding up the resilient ones exclusively as the proud ideal to strive for is nothing but spiritual fascism in my mind ("Serves them right if they're not self-aware!").
As a result, I don't think that suffering is inherently a propitious chance to become a better person and not at all a valid means of spiritual purification. Suffering won't make you necessarily wiser - it can provided it leaves your capacity for self-reflection reasonably intact but will most likely cloud your mind and make you even more stubborn or desperate. Thinking clearly while having a toothache or being heartbroken? Not so easy.
Instead of consciously accepting suffering (or unhappiness, frustration, etc.) as a consequence of your choice to 'build up your soul', you could also investigate where your suffering is actually coming from, what causes it, and make that question your starting point. For example, it's been my experience that suffering will inevitably arise as a result of friction between my own ideals and real life. I was kind of aware of it but perversely loved to be a martyr for my own noble cause too much. There's probably no solution for it, everybody lives for their own principles to some extent, but now I've found that it helps to recognise the pattern whenever it raises its head and avoid becoming aggressive once the 'ideal me' appears to be threatened by other people's criticism.
Mind you, spiritual endeavours in and of themselves may become traps. If I pursued my practice the same way as I used to follow my other ideals, I'd probably end up as a self-centred fanatic blind to any alternative views (and I regret to say that sometimes feel like I'm doing just that!).
@HoldAll I agree with what you are saying here and find your resume of the Buddhist perspective on dukkha interesting. I just wanted to present my own point of view on the matter which is my understanding of a two-prone way according to which we must (eventually) choose to either reject dukkha and actively work toward liberation which will mean the end of our Soul, or, conversely, accept that life and suffering are intricately connected and one goes with the other and so arrange our lives in a manner of striving for some goal higher than merely rejecting suffering. A goal that builds you up and in a way gives meaning to all the suffering you have suffered, suffer at the moment and will suffer in the future. (It's also my personal belief that this goal will (eventually) lead you down a path of evolution and self-development that will build you as a real God providing a whole new form of existence where you will be creating an entire Universe in accord with your own vision of the state of affairs that best suits yourself but I digress.)
Thus, what constitutes the biggest choice not merely in one's life but in one's existence is precisely that dichotomy point of either choosing to end your suffering in exchange for eternal bliss in non-existence, or, conversely, accepting that all life contains a measure of suffering and find a goal worth of it. I know that the second option is not "very Buddhist" but I stand by my words and promote precisely that choice not because I don't believe in the doctrine of liberation but precisely because I do believe liberation is possible but there IS something more desirable (at least for me) than it. At least, that is what I believe in and will be curious to know your thoughts (no matter whether you will be speaking as a Buddhist or not) on this second option.
P.S.: I also think that discussion about the second option fits in neatly with the topic of this thread, namely, the path before an old soul after many reincarnations for the way I see it an old soul has only two options ahead of it-either get rid of the dukkha and strive toward a liberation in the non-existence, or try building an Universe on its own where its own will will dictate the rules of that world and that can only happen if it goes on to work towards escaping this Universe/creation/plan with a plan of its own. At least, that is what I believe in.
I’ve always felt that as a soul grows older and goes through countless cycles, the attachment to individual identity starts to fade. In the beginning, reincarnation is all about lessons, drama, and correcting past actions. But after many lives, the soul becomes more of an observer.
Eventually, I think an 'old soul' reaches a point of quiet saturation. They no longer crave the heavy experiences of this matrix. Instead of reincarnating back here, they either transition into guide-like roles to help younger souls, or they simply dissolve back into the source/collective consciousness, not as a loss of self, but as a return to absolute completion. The hunger for earthly experience is just gone.
@BlackRose97 I agree that as the soul grows older it gets saturated by the experiences of the matrix it has been through, however, I do think the soul also has the option of trying to build its own matrix. A place where it will be the creator of the rules. That is the antidote to saturation. When you are fed up with the plan-build your own! And when this plan saturates you again, build another one and another one when that one saturates you and so on ad infinitum. That is the way out of saturation!
P.S.: Remember that the soul's time has a beginning, e.g. its finite, always finite because it has a beginning in linear time, while the number of possible plans that the soul may create and inhabit is literally infinite, therefore, saturation may never set in while you have the infinite to explore.
@BlackRose97 I agree that as the soul grows older it gets saturated by the experiences of the matrix it has been through, however, I do think the soul also has the option of trying to build its own matrix. A place where it will be the creator of the rules. That is the antidote to saturation. When you are fed up with the plan-build your own! And when this plan saturates you again, build another one and another one when that one saturates you and so on ad infinitum. That is the way out of saturation!
P.S.: Remember that the soul's time has a beginning, e.g. its finite, always finite because it has a beginning in linear time, while the number of possible plans that the soul may create and inhabit is literally infinite, therefore, saturation may never set in while you have the infinite to explore.
This is such a refreshing perspective! I really love the idea of the soul as a perpetual architect that instead of just 'retiring' or dissolving, we have the freedom to keep building and refining our own playgrounds.
It actually makes me think that 'saturation' isn't really an end point, but just a nudge from the soul saying it's time to shift gears from being a participant to being a creator. It takes a lot of courage to step out of the established 'rules' and start designing your own matrix, but it sounds like the ultimate form of growth.
I hadn't thought about it as an infinite loop of creation before, but that really changes the way I view those 'old soul' feelings. Thank you for that push! Do you feel like building these new 'plans' is something we can consciously start doing right now, in this current lifetime, or is it more of a process that unfolds after we move on?
@BlackRose97 I believe that in order to become an architect of an entire Universe yourself you need to first leave this Creation and its Creator-the one who brought you to being-the intelligence we have coined God. There is no way any of us could do that right on the spot-we are too far away from the requirements to do that, however, I do believe it's a conscious choice any of us could choose even in our current incarnation. Actually, I believe every soul is bound to face this choice during its path through space and time and this choice is actually the freest choice you can make. The reason is that what lies behind this Creation cannot be of the will of this Creator (I think) but only of your own. And in choosing what you wanna create you are absolutely free. At least, that is what my position is.
@BlackRose97 I believe that in order to become an architect of an entire Universe yourself you need to first leave this Creation and its Creator-the one who brought you to being-the intelligence we have coined God. There is no way any of us could do that right on the spot-we are too far away from the requirements to do that, however, I do believe it's a conscious choice any of us could choose even in our current incarnation. Actually, I believe every soul is bound to face this choice during its path through space and time and this choice is actually the freest choice you can make. The reason is that what lies behind this Creation cannot be of the will of this Creator (I think) but only of your own. And in choosing what you wanna create you are absolutely free. At least, that is what my position is.
Thank you so much for your words, they mean a lot to me. It's truly wonderful to hear your perspective it really makes me pause and reflect more deeply on that whole creative process.
I agree that it might be a huge step for the soul, but I feel like I see this current lifetime as a precious 'practice ground' where we learn how to be creators. Maybe that freedom of choice you mentioned is exactly what is slowly preparing us for those greater things yet to come. How do you see it do you feel our daily life is enough to at least bring us closer to that feeling of being an architect, or is something 'more' needed? I would really value your thoughts on this.
I think you already have what you need in your current form in your current lifetime. You are the ultimate architect of your destiny and that destiny is already manifested in your current lifetime. So, it is only up to you to choose whether you want to be the architect of an entire Universe, or you want to end up as a speck of your Creator and abandon all goals, including the High one of being a Creator, for an internal peace and bliss as a liberated Soul-a consciousness that has given up on itself. The choice is yours...
I recently came across an interesting idea about reincarnation that is sometimes associated with interpretations of the “Old Religion.”
Instead of seeing reincarnation as a punishment or a cycle to escape from, the idea is that a soul returns again and again in order to experience the full range of life. Each life would add another perspective — different circumstances, roles, struggles, and joys — until eventually the soul has experienced the many facets of existence.
In that view, the purpose of reincarnation isn’t moral purification but completeness of experience.
I find this concept fascinating because it would imply that, over many lifetimes, a soul might experience very different positions in life — power and powerlessness, wealth and poverty, happiness and loss — gradually developing a deeper understanding of existence.
I’m curious how others here see this idea.
Do you think reincarnation could be understood as a process of gathering experiences rather than escaping a cycle?
If reincarnation is about gathering experiences until a soul has lived through many aspects of existence, what happens to a very old soul that has already experienced most of what life can offer? Does it stop reincarnating, move to another level, or simply continue the cycle in a different way?
I find this angle compelling because it shifts reincarnation away from a reward-punishment system (which i believe is a common western misconception of the system anyway) and toward consciousness expanding through learning by experience. If you lived 150 lives where you were rich and everything was easy, wouldnt you wonder what its actually like to struggle? I think souls choose these harder lives for that reason as well as to learn lessons from actions in other lifetimes. And those lessons can look like a punishment from one angle but they are really a learning experience about the consequences of your actions in another life to help the soul develop skills in empathy etc. Maybe an 'old soul' doesn't just stop, but moves into a different kind of learning that isn't centred on physical incarnation anymore so doesnt continue incarnationg. Or perhaps it returns by choice, to help rather than to learn in the previous way - like in the concept of "wanderers".
I find this angle compelling because it shifts reincarnation away from a reward-punishment system (which i believe is a common western misconception of the system anyway) and toward consciousness expanding through learning by experience. If you lived 150 lives where you were rich and everything was easy, wouldnt you wonder what its actually like to struggle? I think souls choose these harder lives for that reason as well as to learn lessons from actions in other lifetimes. And those lessons can look like a punishment from one angle but they are really a learning experience about the consequences of your actions in another life to help the soul develop skills in empathy etc. Maybe an 'old soul' doesn't just stop, but moves into a different kind of learning that isn't centred on physical incarnation anymore so doesnt continue incarnationg. Or perhaps it returns by choice, to help rather than to learn in the previous way - like in the concept of "wanderers".
The original Indian reincarnation/rebirth & karma system was never meant as an opportunity for learning and refinement. Samsara is the wheel of birth, death and rebirth, and a wheel has no beginning and no end. What Western thought did was straightening out that wheel to naively ensure a linear upward progression instead of an endless cycle, and only then it became possible for people to claim proudly they were 'old souls' because they had been in the game for longer. In the original samsaric system, everybody's infinitely old anyway - you get born, you die, you're born again, rinse wash repeat, and the wheel never stops turning, has never started turning, and will never stop turning.
There's an infinitely small chance of escape but it takes a huge amount of spiritual effort. Good deeds, performed with the correct intention (and not haphazardly!), will produce good karma and may ensure rebirth in a favourable realm - always provided old karma from previous lives doesn't come to haunt you - but they won't liberate you from samsaric existence. To use a metaphor, you may get a cushier cell but you'll still be in prison for all eternity. It's a cruel blind machinery, a curse, an affliction.
My suspicion is that Victorian colonialists of a spiritual bent hated it in its original form and remodelled it to conform to their own views of what's right and what's wrong. The effects of good karma were upped to include enlightenment while all-important causes for bad karma like greed and hate were downplayed (after all, oppressing the natives wasn't seen a crime, it was what a gentleman did for a living in those days); 'extenuating circumstances' for karmically unwholesome actions were invented where originally there weren't any (hate or greed are never justified, whatever the reason). What's more, I don't think they ever got the concept of delusion, the root cause of all evil, probably because the thought that they could be mistaken about anything spiritual never entered their minds.
It's an inhumane system, no two ways about it, enough to make you crawl back to the faith of your fathers. Beats me why NewAgers feel so excited about it, it's probably because all they know is the benign Victorian version.
@regina_moneta I urge you to read the entire thread, and especially my replies in the last few comments, to get a better glimpse into the alternatives for an "old soul" that has been through many reincarnations. Don't get stuck in only the OP's comment No. 1. Spoiler alert: If you do that you will read about the prospect of an old soul becoming the creator of its own domain-its own reality of a sort and that is a fate worth exploring.
@HoldAll I still can't get why is this "existential fatigue" so pervasive in the old scripts and especially among the Hindus and Buddhists?
It looks like these people hate existence itself, do they? It's true that all existence brings in with itself a dose of suffering but why this should darken the entire point of being? Why so negative about existence and why picture it as something dull and empty? For me it all looks like doomsters all over history guiding humanity towards it own undoing. While there is pain in every birth, there is also joy, and meaning, and growth, and intelligence in existing as well. Why concentrate only on the doom when existence can give you so much more? These religions look like death cults to me.
I would say because the belief system was formulated long ago when life expectancy was shorter and childbed death, starvation, plague, or becoming a victim of warfare were distinct possibilities. Human life has its moments or periods of happiness, existence as a hell-being or hungry ghost has nothing but suffering in store while animals... well, that's easier to imagine, prey and predator, have you spayed or neutered your pet and so on. There are six realms of Samsara, so within that system a favourable rebirth is by no means garanteed (and impossible to predict, I've read that several times now). In view of these factors, I suppose the ancient Indian sages decided that the cons outweighed the pros, hence the Buddhist claim that life in Samsara was ultimately unsatisfying and frustrating. I'm not here to convince anybody of the veracity of this paradigm but I suppose the bit about suffering is easier to understand when you're 78 and harder when you're 24.
I suppose it all comes down to whether you consider the universe to be caring or uncaring. If it's caring, rebirth/reincarnation is educational and enlightening; if it's not, you're left to your own devices, only today we have much better healthcare, government bodies (hopefully) trying to keep us safe and ensure our well-being, companies to feed and entertain us, etc. You're right, life's not so bleak as it used to be.
I recently came across an interesting idea about reincarnation that is sometimes associated with interpretations of the “Old Religion.”
Instead of seeing reincarnation as a punishment or a cycle to escape from, the idea is that a soul returns again and again in order to experience the full range of life. Each life would add another perspective — different circumstances, roles, struggles, and joys — until eventually the soul has experienced the many facets of existence.
In that view, the purpose of reincarnation isn’t moral purification but completeness of experience.
I find this concept fascinating because it would imply that, over many lifetimes, a soul might experience very different positions in life — power and powerlessness, wealth and poverty, happiness and loss — gradually developing a deeper understanding of existence.
I’m curious how others here see this idea.
Do you think reincarnation could be understood as a process of gathering experiences rather than escaping a cycle?
If reincarnation is about gathering experiences until a soul has lived through many aspects of existence, what happens to a very old soul that has already experienced most of what life can offer? Does it stop reincarnating, move to another level, or simply continue the cycle in a different way?
Whether moral purification or completeness of experience... How can we achieve either if there is a memory wipe?
It doesn't matter if you're an old soul or a N00b soul—if there's a memory wipe, both start from scratch.
To add to the questions: why is there is a memory wipe that prevents growth or escape.
@BlackRose97 I believe that in order to become an architect of an entire Universe yourself you need to first leave this Creation and its Creator-the one who brought you to being-the intelligence we have coined God. There is no way any of us could do that right on the spot-we are too far away from the requirements to do that, however, I do believe it's a conscious choice any of us could choose even in our current incarnation.
lol so some once physically incarnate entity graduated to becoming a creator, and this creator fashioned our universe, including the wasp that paralyzes a caterpillar and then deposits its eggs around it so its spawn can slowly devour it while it's still alive. According to your schema, someone with superior 'morality' and karmic spotlessness used that to graduate existence and then become a creator and decide to exhibit continual sadism on more living creatures than one could ever count.
Eventually people have to realize how very childish and simplistic it is to view all this as the conscious fashioning of some being.
Likewise, this isn't a school. That's so obvious you have to be deep into delusion and the Stockholm Syndrome to believe it. But it is an opportunity, and you have to grasp it right now otherwise you're just lost to the annihilating winds. The smallest physical events snuff out awareness on a daily basis for you, and people think they just go on their merry way when they die. You have to fight for coherence after death.
I recently came across an interesting idea about reincarnation that is sometimes associated with interpretations of the “Old Religion.”
Instead of seeing reincarnation as a punishment or a cycle to escape from, the idea is that a soul returns again and again in order to experience the full range of life. Each life would add another perspective — different circumstances, roles, struggles, and joys — until eventually the soul has experienced the many facets of existence.
In that view, the purpose of reincarnation isn’t moral purification but completeness of experience.
I find this concept fascinating because it would imply that, over many lifetimes, a soul might experience very different positions in life — power and powerlessness, wealth and poverty, happiness and loss — gradually developing a deeper understanding of existence.
I’m curious how others here see this idea.
Do you think reincarnation could be understood as a process of gathering experiences rather than escaping a cycle?
If reincarnation is about gathering experiences until a soul has lived through many aspects of existence, what happens to a very old soul that has already experienced most of what life can offer? Does it stop reincarnating, move to another level, or simply continue the cycle in a different way?
Based on my experience on clinical death twice. I came to realize awaking in the Matrix is the easy part. Learning to navigate is tumultuous. To stay engaged on contract. To come to recognize we are the Monad, singularity, having a momentary experience. WE are a dream, an illusion of the All. Relearning to learn we are immortal spiritual beings. Seeking not to be bored, that WE know ALL things and experiences. Just my humble opinion. Thanks for reading…Peace.
Old is relative, but given the age of the universe to its hypothetical lifespan souls would objectively be quite early in reincarnational cycles. Horizons of time and space vary to perception ofc which changes how souls are considered.
In an immanent hyperphysical hylozoic universe its natural selection relative to cosmic imperative where souls gain coherence or dissipate from activities during incarnations over the course of the cosmos.
There's been a significant change to one fundamental of my model in recent days regarding the nature of matter-energy and different extensions of spacetime. That instead of exclusively using the same matter-energy along different extensions of spacetime it may be that matter-energy is the result of different spacetime extensions intersecting with something hidden producing stable matter-energy along the extensions. Not that different extensions of s/t couldn't intersect the same hidden thing to produce stable matter-energy in its dimensions. Meaning gravity may not be the only information carrier between dimensions that influences the soul by it consciously aligning itself with cosmic imperative for momentum and coherence during incarnation in synergy with hyperphysical beings.
I recently came across an interesting idea about reincarnation that is sometimes associated with interpretations of the “Old Religion.”
Instead of seeing reincarnation as a punishment or a cycle to escape from, the idea is that a soul returns again and again in order to experience the full range of life. Each life would add another perspective — different circumstances, roles, struggles, and joys — until eventually the soul has experienced the many facets of existence.
In that view, the purpose of reincarnation isn’t moral purification but completeness of experience.
I find this concept fascinating because it would imply that, over many lifetimes, a soul might experience very different positions in life — power and powerlessness, wealth and poverty, happiness and loss — gradually developing a deeper understanding of existence.
I’m curious how others here see this idea.
Do you think reincarnation could be understood as a process of gathering experiences rather than escaping a cycle?
If reincarnation is about gathering experiences until a soul has lived through many aspects of existence, what happens to a very old soul that has already experienced most of what life can offer? Does it stop reincarnating, move to another level, or simply continue the cycle in a different way?
Speaking from personal experience, starting with backstory, I've been working on developing my chakras since I was a kid. I integrated the Tree of Life, first nations spirituality, Confucianism and traditional chinese medicine about ten years ago. I kept a dream journal for on-and-off a couple years, diligently for about a year, and I stopped writing because I was sick of the handcramp of 30-60 minutes writing every morning.
Getting to the point, and answering your question: During and after this time, ongoing to the present moment, I have had frequent dreams of past lives. Most of my dreams are "review dreams" (the kind where, when you interpret them, you can see how they're your brain practicing memory consolidation by symbolizing recent experiences), second most common are symbolic "mini prophecies" (i.e a dream of something happening that I later get deja vu from, for example I'll dream of driving a fire truck and later that day there's a fire siren). But THIRD most common, and still quite common, are dreams of other lives. I say "other" and not "past" because frankly, and I can only repeat this an infinite number of times: Reincarnation is not limited to "you can only be reborn in a time after you died". One of my past lives is my mother's patrilineal grandfather, who died 8 days after I was born. But if that were impossible, it'd be impossible to have the experience of attending your own funeral in the flesh, which I did. My first trip out of state was as a baby, to my great-grandfather's funeral.
Here's a way to think of reincarnation. Imagine memories as grains of sand in an hourglass. The sand runs out, the hourglass is smashed and the sand returned to a bowl. Sand is scooped out and put into new hourglasses. The sand in the hourglasses experiences time by measuring it against its own contents while the hourglass is intact. The bowl of sand never experiences time passing, just all the memories that aren't in hourglasses at the moment.
In reincarnation, you don't really get the complete package of a 'past' life, sand is leaking out of the hourglass while you're living, you never remember your own complete life while you're living it, because part of you is leaving the world and entering other people all the time. Your soul is larger than your body, it includes all the people you touch throughout your life and after your death and even before you were conceived, when people imagined you as potential. You're probably imagining a small bowl and a few hourglasses, but really, the bowl is every desert in the universe and each desert is filled with hourglasses. The observable universe is huge and the "observable" part is important because the universe is much larger than what we can observe (not to mention, the word is observable not observed). The universe is full of life, and while they are not the most varied lives, the majority of lives are microscopic and yes, we have all lived those lives too. Stars are a form of life, albeit a form of life that from a human perspective looks mostly like a chemical process, but there is a part of each of us that has been and still is a star. How perfect is that, that as Chris Lehto notes:
And in between the two sit humans, 12 orders of magnitude larger than the worm and 12 orders of magnitude smaller than the Milky Way. And you've experienced life at both of those scales, not to mention the scales in between (the playlist I linked has a wonderful video that goes into detail of how nationstates meet more of the criteria for life than viruses). So to better iterate on what it means to have experienced many lives, On at least one level, I'm not just American, I am America. I have lived what this land has lived, the cultures that have played out atop it are woven into my memetic code, programmed by it and all the other nations and cultures that have touched it throughout time. And on another level, I am Earth. And that's why I love the song 'The Way of the Dodo' by The Streets:
I spoke of how huge the universe is (either unimaginably large or infinite, but definitely one of the two). There's also the multiverse, which is also one of those two sizes. Then there's the size of time which is also... One of those two sizes, either infinite or simply unimaginably large. So in plain language, the field of incarnation is roughly "unimaginably large³–∞³". You have to understand, not every dream is of another physical life, but many dreams are. If you have a dream that you're a dog, that is totally, 100%, a dream of another life you lived. It may be symbolic and not a literal account of your experience, much like how you have a dream of something that really happened and it's different from the memory. That's what's happening. You're remembering in the dream-state.
Not all of my past life memories come in dreams, but most of them do because I don't focus on it. The thing about past life recall is that the field is very large, so unless you devote your life to the practice, you're going to get blips from all across existence, not a lot of stuff that is pertinent to your current reality. The consensus I've gotten from most people who have experienced prophecy is that prophecies of BIG stuff is usually metaphorical, a dream of a comet crashing usually symbolizes a war or "military engagement", not a literal meteor. Most prophecies are just foresight of a conversation you're going to have later that day, serving as a sort of reinforcement mechanism to remind you that it's all real and you're in tune.
But to get back to the question of "what do people who have reincarnated a lot and know it do", I don't focus on my past lives because I've already learned those lessons, I only focus on them when I see an obvious parallel to something going on in my current life. I file them away and review them, but I know the important time to consolidate these memories is out of the body. In the body, I know the whole point is that I went into this body, so I focus on what I'm experiencing in this life. I focus on the people in my life, directly and indirectly. I practice xiàoshùn, and call my grandmother at least once a season and my mother once a month. When I work my job as a fry cook, I always strive for perfection because I want to give every customer the best experience, because that is me in another life, and the same goes for how I treat my coworkers. I'm diligent about food waste at work because that's a life that was sacrificed to be consumed, so I avoid overprepping food so that it wasn't slaughtered in vain. I enjoy every meal I eat, because I've got a connection to lives where I didn't have the modern American luxury of an international palate and abundant food. I endeavor to include my wife in all my activities, while giving her space to pursue her own interests, because we chose to incarnate in this life and experience it together so of course I'm going to, but we chose to incarnate separately, so we each need to have our own independent experiences to share with each other and grow in our own ways.
There's a dichotomy that's hard to express and I don't perfectly understand, where on one level we are entirely individuals, and that's what makes each life so precious is because of this identity we are attached to (the "ego"), and on another level, we are one great cosmic being that shares all of these experiences and contains our souls the way we contain cells. Through magical practice, one can get into this cosmic state and experience the vastness of reality, but ultimately you are bound to your container and will return to the limited experience after a brief period. Your consciousness sort of floats across a spectrum of association, going from associating with the body, or parts of the body (such as the pangs of hunger, or the sensation of an injury) up to larger scale organizations of intelligence, like the local community, nation or galaxy. In recent history (the last 150 or so years), western magickal practice has focused on the development of the "light body", the idea of crystalizing your sense of self to retain your identity after incarnation and preserve agency should one choose to reincarnate. This is a noble practice, and attempts to do in one lifetime what Eastern practices have taught is achieved across many lifetimes. I take a somewhat hybrid approach, consolidating my past life memories with the intention of expanding on this information after this lifetime, dwelling on my lessons before I come back into the world. It's a somewhat abstract notion, considering that time doesn't really exist outside of incarnation as far as I understand it, so regardless of intention, the time between lives is either infinite or infinitesimal depending on whether one looks at it from inside a life or outside of it. The part I lack understanding on is the indistinct line where individuality and duality cease and become non-duality and infinite oneness. The part I do understand, the lesson I can impart, is that they're both real. The takeaway from my current catalog of incarnations is:
There are two reasons to be kind to others.
That is you in another life, treat others as you would want to be treated, because how you treat others is exactly how you will be treated in that life.
That is an entire universe, from a different perspective, with different relations to all things. Do your best to practice empathy, and understand how they want to be treated, because that is something that defines their relationship to you and therefore impacts two worlds (yours and theirs), not to mention the uncountable lives you will both later impact. Treat every encounter like it is precious, because it is a unique, defining moment throughout all of existence.
Either one is a great reason on its own, but together, they become an invincible argument for empathy. I could get political with this very easy and summarize my thoughts on reincarnation by saying that charity begins at home (a large part of you lives on in the family, friends and community that remembers you after you die), but that on a very important level, we all live everywhere and so we owe the world to every soul we encounter. Every life is immensely precious.
I doubt that so many souls would choose life so full of misery, majority of people are constantly living in it.
Any rational being, if it was given a choice for reincarnation, would choose some kind of "cheat" to at least avoid constantly having to struggle for survival.
Starting from scratch each time is not amusing it all. That's why memory is constantly being erased - it is to "brainwash" soul into another act of slavery.
The universe is expanding. Reality is expanding. Reincarnation is real, and there are more souls every day. Not to mention, incarnating as plasma bodies (i.e stars) and germs turns the human population into a rounding era compared to the number of souls in circulation. This is verified by many NDE accounts, who frequently stress that a human life is a precious incarnation.
Old is relative, but given the age of the universe to its hypothetical lifespan souls would objectively be quite early in reincarnational cycles. Horizons of time and space vary to perception ofc which changes how souls are considered.
In an immanent hyperphysical hylozoic universe its natural selection relative to cosmic imperative where souls gain coherence or dissipate from activities during incarnations over the course of the cosmos.
There's been a significant change to one fundamental of my model in recent days regarding the nature of matter-energy and different extensions of spacetime. That instead of exclusively using the same matter-energy along different extensions of spacetime it may be that matter-energy is the result of different spacetime extensions intersecting with something hidden producing stable matter-energy along the extensions. Not that different extensions of s/t couldn't intersect the same hidden thing to produce stable matter-energy in its dimensions. Meaning gravity may not be the only information carrier between dimensions that influences the soul by it consciously aligning itself with cosmic imperative for momentum and coherence during incarnation in synergy with hyperphysical beings.
