h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think there is such a thing as 'soul' because I believe that there is a difference between life with consciousness and self-awareness (sentient life) and other life, and I think it is the soul, some additional energy perhaps, that makes this difference.

When we die, the energy leaves the body - but where does it go? After reading this forum and thinking some more, it seems fairly probable that if my initial thoughts are correct, the energy dissipates, in effect joining a pool of energy throughout the world - or indeed the Universe. Reincarnation happens when some of this energy that used to be said person is taken and made into a new person and injected into that new person's body at whatever stage this happens. Perhaps it just gathers gradually as we go through life - which would explain why babies are or appear to be less aware of the world around them than we are, and why we don't generally remember things from our early lives.

Therefore we would all be reincarnations of parts of perhaps thousands of other people... if nothing else, that idea could help people treat each other with more respect, because we may all very well have parts of the same people making up ourselves.

By the way, this was worked out today, so it probably has a lot of holes in... but I like the idea and its implications for human behaviour w.r.t. each other...

Yes I thought of a car. And I followed the logic of your argument and cannot deny your conclusion. But if Ben was a car, and her engine shut off and she ran out of gas and was abandoned in a field and birds nested in her upholstery and snow fell and covered her up completely, I would still see that bump in the snow covered field and I would say, "That's Ben, best car ever re-in-car-nated!"

Perhaps you are making a distinction between 'life-force' and 'soul' because your final paragraph about soul and Sam Clements seems to be more akin to Ben's ideas. Her wave theory, although more abstract, more 'chaotic', less logical, none-the-less is in harmony with natural reality and gives me more hope for the possibility of re-incarnation than your rusting junker image discourages me from allowing the possibility.

I do LIKE the people who post on H2G2....

I was thinking 'gosh-darn-it Colonel, you got me there again!' when jwf comes galloping gallantly to my rescue. Thanks jwf.

Apathetic - if ever anyone was ever mis-named it is you - have you heard of someone called Richard Bandler? You would like him - he would like you - (you aren't him, are you?)

The subject of bad people doing good things (and vice versa) is an exceptionally interesting one. I disliked most things about Princess Di from her George Michael hairstyle, to her serial marriage wrecking, and her habit of obsessional telephone-stalking, but I have to admit that she reached far more people in a far better way than I will ever manage. But at least I dont look like either half of any 80s pop duo. *Hides behind heat-sheild to duck the flames*

Xanatic asked "But about reincarnation, do you then believe there are any memories transfered?" - Not really, as I said, I think the personality and the fade or disappear. There is a whole load of stuff that I accept the theory of, but reject in practice because it is either so flakey or else so easy to mistake.

Past-life regression is one of these things. It seems too much like self-indulgent voyeurism, to me, and way too easy to imagine or fake. One of the others is channeling spirits. Though a friend of mine said "just because they are spirits doesn't mean they aren't stupid". But the unconsious mind and self-hypnosis seem to be to be far more plausable explanations for past-life regressions and for channelling.

Hell what do I know?

a new age dippy hippy called Ben

Flakey does not even begin to describe the ineptness of 'past-life regression'. Recent studies (well, several year old studies if we're going to be pedantic. Which we are) have shown that strong influences during the formative years of a persons life have a profound effect on the outcome of regression. Put it this way: have you ever heard of someone being regressed and saying "So I was a Victorian chimney-sweep in a past life? Talk about anti-climactic."?

And I suspect you never will.

Regression, like all hypnosis, taps heavily into the subconscious, releasing thoughts that you don't necessarily know about having. So when the hypnotist (read: "t**t") asks the patient to travel back into a previous form, all the mind does is delve deep and search for the historical icons that have become imbedded in the subconscious through some form of latent desire and dredges them up for the hypnotist to order into an understandable format. Which explains why so many of these "regressed individuals" all claim to have been Nefertiti or Alexander the Great.

It's worth noting in fairness that I hate hypnotists anyway, so perhaps I'm a little biased.

And I have no idea who Richard Bandler is.

He's a hypnotist!

Sorry, that was a cheap trick, even though it is true.

*Overcome with remorse for failing to resist the urge to make a cheap crack. Again*

agcB

Cheap but funny. I'll buy that for a Dollar. (Which is only about 67p, real value)

Let's see. I've been a slug, a rat, a dolphin that hated fish, and can you believe the coincidence, a Victorian chimney sweep. Well, if what I'd like to believe, is true, I've been every conscious entity in the Universe, which includes, if you hadn't noticed, all of you good people. I said it when I was John Lennon(I am you, as you are me...). Didn't say it when I was Adolf Hitler; I was having a bad hair life. I hate spiders because.....well I just hate spiders, but would never dream of killing one because in one life time, that size 9 would be squashing me.
A sperm whale and a bowl of petunias come to mind. Douglas Neil Adams. Yeh, that was one of my better lives.

Dave the infinately prolonged

If I fall into the trap of an unsustainable analogy, please forgive me, but I want to expand on possibilities of ideas expressed by MaW, the Pillowcase and Ben. We seem to agree that something does, or at least ought to, survive death of the body. And perhaps it returns to a group or pool and brings its life experience there. And perhaps at some point it returns, unladen of most of its past experience, to new life. This is the classic reincarnation theory of being born again that Hollywood loves.

But today, from a purely mathematical point of view, re-incarnation from one human to a new human life is currently facing the problem that there are more human beings alive now (6 billion plus) than all the humans who ever lived and died before. If everyone who ever lived had come back there are still a couple of billion 'new' souls alive today. Where'd they come from... I drifted ..sorry.

Or maybe as Colonel Sellers suggests, we can only hope to make an impact on the living consciousness, like a Mark Twain, and leave our ideas, words and thoughts for others to remember or consider.

Or perhaps, soul, spirit, or whatever includes all life. And we combine, intermix, return, live and die only to recombine with other spirit other 'soul' and return again. This is a belief held by many aboriginal races. For me it solves the numbers riddle and explains why certain 'personalities', certain 'combos' continue to appear throughout history, in all races. It also explains why I have no prior lives memories as a human but seem to know a lot about being a dog and a bird and an elephant.

Well, if I am VERY good in this life, I hope to come back as a dolphin!



agcB

Flipping (being a Flipper kinda guy) thru channels last night, some interesting footage of dolphins streaming along under the bow-sprit of some fancy yacht caught my eye. I paused long enough to hear some patronising voice-over saying, "Dolphins are the only creatures besides man who engage in sex purely for pleasure..."
This raised several questions ..but I knew the program was not going to answer any of them.
Galldarnit! 57 channels and still nothing on!

I don't really understand much of what's being suggested here. Maybe I'm one of those new souls you were talking about jwf. I have no memory of ever having been here before, no feeling of having mental/spiritual/spooky anything beyond my one and only mind. I've had a poke about in it to make sure and sure enough all I find in there is me. Not a soul, a spirit, a ka. Nothing but a mind.

Has anyone here actually had any "solid" experience (as opposed to a spooky feeling) of the kind of other worldly, other life, ghostly ....... anything, to cause them to believe the kinds of ideas described here? Or is it just wishful thinking?

BTW, didn't that programme mention bonobos (promiscuous little apes)?

Well, chimpansees masturbate. And just how would you know when animals have sex for pleasure as opposed to for reproduction? They got a big smile on their face or so?

As for the "There´s a part of us all in everyone", that also goes for genetics. You don´t need a soul for that.

agcb: So you wanna be a dolphin in your next life if you behave. Who do you think will be the judge of that? And on a side note, dolphins are no better than the rest of the animal world. They´re no angels of the sea.

I would say in my case its mostly wishful thinking, because I don't have anything solid. The subject matter is in fact something that is by definition not solid, not concrete! I have this feeling I have had past lives, but it's mostly just a feeling - I feel like I've been around for very much longer than the 29 years so far of this lifetime. When I read historical stuff about the Celts and the Vikings it feels to me like I was one of those guys and did those things along with the rest - I could have been a woman too. I could have been an animal, or a tree, or any living thing - whatever the case it feels to me like my life has continued unbroken for millennia or even for millions of millennia. I don't believe in 'pure' reincarnation, I believe life is a continuous phenomenon, it gets carried on from one creature to another, through reproduction, through feeding and so on ... every person is a very complex entity, what you can call a person's 'soul' is actually made up of lots of different bits that come together to make a whole and go apart again and later come together again to make a different whole. I believe that thoughts are not material - they are not matter, not energy either; in fact, nothing in science (and I have studied science) can explain what my thoughts are and why they are the way they are. Whatever the medium is that carries thoughts, it is something not yet accounted for in mainstream science, and it seems to me that the same medium can carry thoughts not only within one person, but also between people, over time and space.

If everyone was as meek as the dudes in this absorbingly, poetic thread, then the Earth would be inherited by six billion H2G2 researchers who count angels, contemplate umbilicle cord scars, and enlighten the whole, because light is the strongest energy created by positive words.

Now where did I put those tablets.

Shine on you blessed people.

Dave the (did you see Robbie fire the magicle sphere of perfect joy under that Alaves) Goalkeeper

Hi UMP MII. Is there anything in your feelings that couldn't be accounted for by mind, imagination and ego? Is there any reason to grasp at supernatural straws to explain things science hasn't yet got round to answering?

Piling in, ignoring Shorn (not deliberately, just cos I can't think of more than two things at once), Xanatic's thoughts that the spirit disipates like a jigsaw puzzle after an earthquake, and all the pieces, although still there, are jumbled with everything else, got me thinking.

I am a strong believer in reincarnation partly because I like the idea, partly because I spent 6 months with tibetan monks and the evidence that I was told of then, convinced me, and thirdly, and possibly most importantly, because I find it hard to believe (and vaguely unnerving) that nothing happens - with heaven and hell being the equivalent of nothing.

Ego and Personality we can afford, perhaps, to leave behind. Our progeny, should we be so lucky to have any will always carry certain amounts of those with them - live with someone long enough and you're bound to exchange idiosyncracies.

Where the spirit goes is harder to decide - I like the idea that it disipates and spreads itself around. Perhaps it is the case that if a Buddhist monk reincarnates, a large proportion of his previous incarnations spirit is present. For the likes of the rest of us, well we are all the combination of a whole host of entities - cats, dogs, dolphins, victorian chimney sweeps, spiders, whatever. Personally, I like the sound of that.

Ekki

I still find it amazing that I am agreeing with Xanatic on something!

Shorn asked - "Has anyone here actually had any "solid" experience (as opposed to a spooky feeling) of the kind of other worldly, other life, ghostly ....... anything, to cause them to believe the kinds of ideas described here? Or is it just wishful thinking?"

Well, as I said further up the thread, people who have been clinically dead and then recovered all report a common experience. This consists of seeing themselves and those around them from outside their body. Then experiencing travelling though a tunnel towards a clear light, and feeling a great sensation of love. There is usually a figure, who offers them the choice of staying in the light and love or returning her. Obviously all the ones who report this experience return here.

But no Shorn, I dont have any solid experience, and yes, this could just be wishful thinking on my part.

On the other hand, I mistrust my eyes and ears and mind a lot anyway.

...Most drugs I have taken from cheesecake to cannabis give a perceptable hit and create a noticable change of state. (This is not topic drift, really). The only two I know which don't are valium (which they told me they gave me before I went to the dentist, but it ncould have been a placebo) and oestrogen, or whichever one it is that imbalances before a period. I dont get bad PMS, but when I do it seems to me that the world really IS that shitty, and that my thoughts and feelings about the world are perfectly sensible. These have included suicide as a clearly logical thing to do, (though I am blessed that I have never been tempted by suicide).

What I am saying here is that my brain is merely a bunch of electrical reactions sitting in a chemical soup, and what I think and feel depends largely on the contents of the soup, and not on what happens outside. ie - there IS no such thing as objective reality. Sorry.

Have you ever compared notes with someone about a shared experience? There ain't no such thing.

I believe what I believe because it works for me. It gives a pattern and a structure to what I do and what other people do. It frees me up to get on with the rest of my life. I get very very irritated with people who present themselves as deeply Senstitive and Spiritual. (And I know a lot of them). But I am an extremely practical person, even about my spirituality. This is one of the reasons why Buddhism appeals to me so much - with its emphasis on practice.

If none of this works for you - fine. There is no reason on earth why it should.

agcB

A lot of great thoughts! And nicely put!
For a 'religious' discussion we are doing remarkably well in terms of ranting Atheist Missionaries so far. (Hope that doesn't offend non-believers but let's face it some Atheists are flaming Zealots.)
I want to comment on several of the last postings, but I know that posts that get too long don't get read. But stick around, I'll get to them.

To the question on personal experience of the paranormal: 'yes'.
I have regularly encountered pre-cognition and guiding 'voices' that allowed me to see into the future. My sense of smell (I don't know what else to call it!) often tells me of far away events in real time .
And certain 'spirits' appear to have been reborn, or are at least hosted, if only occassionally and temporarily, in some children (innocents) and women (loving) I have known.
And things (objects) do resonate with the spirit of their owners living or dead - that's what keeps museums, art galleries and historic sites 'alive'.
peace
~jwf~

Oh, well, if we are going to get all subjective... how long have you got?

an alternative new age dippy and Deeply Caring Person called Ben

I say. I hope nobody thinks this atheist was flaming or ranting! I was only interested. Honest.