Being a hindu, I am still confused at reincarnation...I'm suppose to believe it as per my religion, but heck, nobody's sure of anything beyond our living universe.

Does anyone have any real accounts of reincarnation? Perhaps a reliable source on USA news or NY times or something of the like, or any stories at all?

I'm just wondering whether reincarnation is real, or whether souls live somewhere on their own...if anyone has read Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" in that book all the dead were crammed into this one little universe that was guarded by these goblin-like creatures, and it was a very horrible place.

My next question, if reincarnation is not real, then is afterlife good or bad? What proof do we have?

May sound like a lot, sorry if it is. Thanks.

this could have many answears based on personal feelings, up-bringing, relegeous back ground, and so forth.
and even two people with in the same faith have different ideas as to what happens to the soul after a human dies, or after anything dies,

also Hindu? "how would you like to contribute to the Hinduism thread?" ^_^

I'll do this the lazy way, at first, just to get things started here...I'll copy one of my posts from another thread, about this same subject.

I believe in reincarnation. When we die, we go to a 'waiting place', in my mind somewhat like the middle section in the first Narnia book...the forest with lots of little ponds, each one leading to one world. How long we wait between each life is up to each one, time is rather irrelevant there. I don't believe in a supreme being granting out lives and bodies, we chose ourself where to go, and who to be. We chose our parents, and thus also our looks, in some sense. I don't believe we are limited to this world alone, there are several different worlds, or realms, and we can be reincarnated on either one of them.

I've been taught by new agers...of course i believe in ascension. Reincarnation isn't a neverending cycle, it's a learning process. Each life is a lesson, how you perform determines wether yuou need to repeat the lesson or not...it's up to you wether you want to learn, evolve, or wether you want to remain stagnant.

Stagnant isn't necessarily bad, sometimes a break from the climbing is necessary, like a vacation life. Sometimes issues and problems from past lives will follow you into the next, to give you a chance to deal with it, and get it overwith. A neighbour you had a fight with, and never really were able to forgive, might show in your next, as someone close to you, a teacher, a family member, a boss/coworker. The relationship, and initiate emotions surrounding that person will be the same. I believe this could be a reason in some of the cases where you just instantly dislike a person, for no apparent reason. Or, in the opposite cases. Past life's lovers, children, best friends.

Everything you learn, everything you experience, everything you do, shapes you into who you are and who you'll become. Your choices determines your personality, and your Karma. I wonder a bit about Karma, wether it may not be just the New Age way of inflicting the Great Guilt of organised religion...if your life is hard, it's because you've been bad in your past life. It sounds a bit too easy. In a lot of cases I think hardships are just as much a result of your own choices in this life, and right before this life, when you chose your starting point. If your father is abusive, it may be bacause you inflicted pain upon others in your past life (Karma version, you reap what you sow), but it may just as well be because you wanted to learn what it is like to endure pain, and fear, in order to overcome it. A test of strength. Or it could be just plain bad luck.

I won't completely rule out the power of Karma. Your actions will have consequences. And to return to Ascension, the ultimate outcome, Karma will determine wether you reach it or not. The way I've had ascension explained, as you go through your lives, learning and improving, you will slowly evolve mentally. This is mostly a spiritual thing, you won't turn into Superhuman. But Buddha, and in some cases Jesus, are good examples of what is possible. Your mind, and your way of perceiving the world around you, will change, forced limits will dissolve, and you'll be able to do things our modern mindset thinks impossible. There is no such thing as impossible, some things are just a bit trickier than others.

This would be my personal opinion on the subject, now onto the documented accounts. First off, children... 'Many children remember their past lives-spontaneously, without hypnosis or prompting. Some as young as two and still in diapers blurt out, "I remember when I died before" or "My other Mommy had curly hair". They often describe details that they had no way of learning in this life.'

http://www.childpastlives.org/com/chapter1.htm

And even better account is to be found here: http://www.near-death.com/experiences/reincarnation07.html
The reincarnation of Jeffrey Keene.

Also check their main page: http://www.near-death.com/reincarnation.html

*opens his book of knowledge*

It just says...'Wait and see' I'm afraid.

My own personal view is that yes it is possible....but then...we are not all the same.

personally i believe rather strongly in reincarnation. as well as walkins, posession, transvokation, etc.

to my thinking... (and its based somewhat on heavy research,and somewhat on experience) well... actually have you read Memnoch The Devil by Anne Rice? the part about lestat, and the devil, and god... were mostly made up to make the story flow. But the setting, 'sheol', the abode of the dead from early hebrew mysticism, was very well researched. I'm not a huge anne rice fan, but i'll give her credit for very heavily researching all the occult content in her books.

anyway, i think the spirit becomes detatched from the body, i do not think it goes to a different place at all really, i think it simply shifts focus from the physical to the noncormporeal, much as in astral projection. physical reality becomes a slice of a much larger loaf of bread. really it would be like astral projection but without a body to return to.

without a body as a foundation, conflict on the astral could be much more dangerous. also there is the possibility raised by some very experienced necromancers i have talked to, that the afterlife has a slowly corosive effect on the spirit after death. though in my model of more of a sort of multiverse, it could simply be a coroding connection to the physical plane.

I think there are other spirits there, human and nonhuman. and that some human spirits are rather nonhuman, and that some nonhuman spirits are rather human like. quite a zoo at any rate.

I suspect that some seek reincarnation, and some do not. I also think some try to get at physical manifestations by other means.

I do not think that reincarnation is an option laiden process. Only people who've had it relatively good can believe we really choose our incarnation. I think it very well could be more a matter of being the first to invade a fertilized embryo perhaps.

anyways, just some of my 'agnostic mystic' thoughts on the afterlife.

Kath

I've hardly studied hinduism at all, but I have ran into the basic beliefs and such. There is no way I am going to be able to tell you about your religion though at this point. Just a hodge podge of things I belive and seem to see.



It is doubtful that the USA news or the NY Times has went into much depth on it. Partcularly because of the way many americans would probably be extremely offended (there is a strong conservative religious movement still though it was more powerful in the past) by it. You will probably need to just find anything you can and judge on your own what is reliable.



That sounds like an interesting book. Does he intend it as truth or fiction?

I believe that souls are essentially immortal. I am inclined to believe that your soul always exists both before and after your death. "Where" exactly? I don't know now, to be honest. But I figure that it is connected with the current physical reality. To me this makes sense on many levels.



I tend to take the afterlife as being the place where the soul truly resides more fully -- like it's home -- here (earth, etc.) we are in a way just visiting.

Is the afterlife good or bad. Maybe we envision different things and ideas quite a bit? Hmmm. I had a "connection" (vague on purpose) once where I found myself in a place among a woman who was surrounded by scorpions - thousands. I thought, surely this person is crazy or something and was scared. An old man there also began laughing (?) when I let on that I did not want to go near this person and wanted to leave. He then showed me how to become immune to the scorpions, so tha I would not be afraid of them as much any longer. Perhaps some of these symbols, these things that we fear or see negatively here - maybe they are not all that negative elsewhere? I am inclined to think that the afterlife is more of a place of learning and interaction that other things. But this is just me.

Proof. Very tough. For me, I have enough, for me, to believe surely that the soul is immortal. The question of whether we reincarnate back to the earth, I don't know. It is clear to me though that sometimes people are able to see things beyond their life whether in the future or in what was then the unknown past to them. For me, if people begin living (at leasty in some areas) in these broad flatlike pyramidial structures that resemble some sort of crystal (in appearance) solar panels sometime after I died, I would personally take it as more than enough proof of reincarnation. Particularly if I was surprising someone on their way to class or something. But obviously, lol, I really wouldn't be around like this in this exact form to say so, would I? heheh I guess that is where things get tricky.



Sorry I can't help much. Good luck on finding your answers. Also, if you wouldn't mind helping me, do you have any reccommended sources on ancient hindu beliefs and culture (including sanskrit) ? Sometime in the future, I will probably study them and would like to begin amassing a good reading list in advance when I get to it.

I have all 3 of them actually, and well, I liked the idea of it, actually, that's what broke me from being a faithful Christian. Those books, I don't know why, but they did, and well, reincarnation had always seemed to be what I was thinking, and that has become something I believe in. That once we die, all our parts of spirit, body, and strength, are distributed evenly. Our body to the earth to become something like fertilizer for a new plant, or food for another life, and strength to go on into the next being who takes it in the air they breath. And for my soul, to be reborn into that being that is taking the air that everyone has breathed once before, like the plants and the like. I don't know if it is true, and I don't have any proof of them, but, I liked the idea and I have stuck with it. Plus, for example, when a flame goes out it becomes smoke, and then dissipates into carbon monoxide, which is another physical form, the heat source of the flame which was it's strength has deminished and been taken in by air, while the spirit, well, if fire has a spirit, it is probably residing in some fire somewhere else.

I myself do not believe in reincarnation, but that does not mean that it is not real. It could be but who knows.

"split" this topic is "Reincarnation" as in views of, cultural variations, and myths of.

I sent all the off-topic stuff to a new thread where it is more appropriate to argue science vs sorcery