Fascination with rebirth
Meditationtime Forum Post
Date: Posted 6 years before Dec 11, 2018
MiBeloved 6 years ago
William wrote:
I am not too familiar with the astral plain, but, as far as I understand from certain Buddhist philosophies, this reincarnation as a baby isn't exactly like stuffing an adult (with all its baggage) into a "little sack." It’s more like putting the potential of an adult (mind, spirit, and body) into a form that will allow for a human being to grow.
One of the best things about being a parent is watching this transformation in real-time.
MiBeloved's Response:
You have great realization from the Buddhist philosophies.
I would be interested if this view will remain the same if and when you ever have experience of your past life (lives). I wonder if you would feel the same then.
I want to add though that the whole idea of nature which we are endowed with at birth, which is that we are new and innocent and that we will grow into what you term as the potential of an adult (mind, spirit and body), that whole idea coming from biological nature is a huge con.
Due to experiences of my past lives, I see it as a cover up where when the body dies, the spirit using that body is deprived of his life experiences and are then given these only as dispositions and instincts only in the new life, in the little sack.
Actually though that sounds farfetched, we see this happening before we pass from a body in our elderly relatives who get Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, where nature begins to turn them from an adult into a child in a big sack, like having a child in an adult body. Nature is doing that right before our eye in so many Homes-for-the-Aged.
So what do we say about that. Well let me use your terminology:
That is more like putting the potential of a child (mind, spirit, and body) into a form that will allow for a human being to shrink considerably.
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How is that?
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Ever wonder if in the spring, trees in the North remember their past life from the last summer?
I guess they too are being given that opportunity to grow just as if they never grew out leaves and blossomed before.
Ignorance is a wonderful thing, because if you have it you can return and enjoy this life over and over again, afresh as if you never did do any of this before.
It is interesting that you quoted Buddhism, an existential system which was founded by a person who wanted to be done with these repeat lives, a Tathagata, a person who went away (gata) from it as it is presented by Nature (tatha – as is done).
Personally I think that rebirth is one of nature’s biggest con games.
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Haley wrote:
I am totally confused, Michael: do you believe in reincarnation or not? Honest, I am not trying to pull your leg, I am just plain confused by your last phrase, "personally I think that rebirth is one of nature's biggest con games."
MiBeloved's Response:
Due to repeated astral projection and also perceptions of past lives, reincarnation is for me a fact, not a belief.
It is however more Nature's game than it is the individual’s. When a tree freezes down in the winter time, no one says that the tree selected that hibernation. No one says the tree is the master of its own destiny and created the freeze down. We understand that this circumstance is enforced by Nature agencies, irrespective of the desire of the tree.
The waking up of the tree in the spring is also determined by Nature agencies, but once it happens, then the tree begins to grow like it did before, it assumes a growth pattern according to predispositions which it had in the last growing season, even though these tendencies are now in the form of a growing instinct.
A similar process is followed by the spirits who repeatedly take rebirth, where because we are separated from our memories of the previous life, we live again and repeat the same experiences including many stupid mistakes. We must even relearn languages which we may have spoken in many lives prior to the present one. Nature confiscates much of our psychological makeup during the interim period between lives and so in the new life, people say that we are innocent infants which really means that we were shorn of our previous experiences and maturities.
To me, that is a rip off. If I were to take the money in your bank account, the money you saved from working say the last 30 years, and then you are left with zero balance, would you or would you not consider that to be a rip off.
Of course if you are a dementia case, then it may not seem to be so because you would have forgotten all about your hard earned money and you might even consider it a challenge to go out and get a job in your own old age just to save up all that money again.
Jettins 6 years ago
Interesting post. I like the comparison with Alzheimers.
MiBeloved 6 years ago
Haley wrote:
Got it! Yes, I agree, it is a rip off. Yet, don't you agree that if we open ourselves, many times those forgotten things come back? For instance, I have a facility with dialects and a memory of my life and death at Mont Segur; a friend of mine has all of her great-grandmother's (whom she never met) memories of the medicinal properties of plants, etc.
I guess, what I'm saying, is that there are possibilities to lift the veil, clear the fog of forgetting. That our memories are not completely wiped out. There is always enough essence to have them back if we are open. No one taught me this, I got the answers spontaneously, although I sought to live a simple life, based on spiritual principles (what I was drawn to for spiritual principles, anyway), which helped me to be open.
When you go into the astral, you must be open, too, right? And this is where you get your information, is that not so?
MiBeloved's Response:
You raised some good points which need consideration by one who is really serious about a spiritual path, as to whether we can tap into the memories of past lives.
Those memories are not gone. They are existent at least in two locations, namely the subconscious of the individual spirit and the universal reserve of energy (known otherwise as the Akashi records. They are also in a reserve of very subtle supernatural energy on the causal plane of existence.
However the existence of that memory reserve does not in any way mean that we can access most of it. The plain truth is that the best of our mystics are able to only access a minute portion of it, and after such access they have difficulty translating it into coherent information which we can use.
It is like in computers, where you have a special hard drive for storage of files but if you take that drive out of the computer and chew on it, you will never get the information from it. You must have certain equipment which brings that into a format you can make sense of.
Are we born with that equipment? Well Buddha had to do gruesome austerities to reach his past lives and he was a divine being from day one. People try to say that he was an ordinary person turned God overnight but that is not true. In any case, the question stands, as to whether you can access the information.
However it is a matter of how much of this we can access? For one thing intuition is not the same as objective conscious access, nor is instinct. As far as nature is concerned, it awarded us instinct for sure and intuition which is problematic since it has to be converted into sensible information in the mind, a mind which on occasion is downright mis-calibrated.
Instinct serves the purpose for survival in the now but beyond that it is useless. The intuition is faulty unless it is calibrated. I bring to your attention also that as great a person as Lord Krishna indicated in the Bhagavad Gita that the natural condition of the limited selves (jivatmas) is not to remember the past lives since they lack that ability primeval. Here is the verse which suggests that:
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श्रीभगवानुवाच
बहूनि मे व्यतीतानि
जन्मानि तव चार्जुन ।
तान्यहं वेद सर्वाणि
न त्वं वेत्थ परंतप ॥४.५॥
śrībhagavānuvāca
bahūni me vyatītāni
janmāni tava cārjuna
tānyahaṁ veda sarvāṇi
na tvaṁ vettha paraṁtapa (4.5)
śrī bhagavān — the Blessed Lord; uvāca — said; bahūni — many; me — of Me; vyatītāni — transpired; janmāni — births; tava — your; cārjuna = ca — and + arjuna — Arjuna; tānyahaṁ = tāny (tāni) — them + aham — I; veda — I recall; sarvāṇi — all; na — not; tvaṁ — you; vettha — you remember; paraṁtapa — O scorcher of the enemies
The Blessed Lord said: Many of My births transpired, and yours, Arjuna. I recall them all. You do not remember, O scorcher of the enemies. (Bhagavad Gita 4.5)
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So if something is not natural, we know that we may in some areas strive and attain it. For instance flying is natural for birds but it is not for human beings. And it took human beings thousands of years of evolution to reach the stage where they could fly in airplanes. They did it but only after much effort and it still has not enabled one single human being to fly in the air like a bird, not even like those dumb prehistoric animals.
One of the side features of an advanced meditation practice is the ability to go back into one’s past lives and to tap into information from the past. Meditation can do that. Here is a verse from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras about that:
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सांस्कारसाक्षात्करणात्पूवयजाश्चतज्ञानम्॥१८॥
saṁskāra sākṣātkaraṇāt pūrvajātijñānam
saṁskāra – the subtle impressions stored in memory; sākṣātkaraṇāt – from causing to be visibly present, direct intuitive perception; pūrva – before, previous; jāti – status, life; jñānam – knowledge.
From direct intuitive perception of the subtle impressions stored in the memory, the yogi gains knowledge of previous lives.
