The discovery channel documentary might be what I was recalling. The cases about the boys who believed they were reincarnates of their grandfather is quite similar to what I remember. I don't recall the second case, where the boy suffered a heart complication that aligned with his grandfather's fatal heart injury, that one is quite intriguing indeed. I mean memories are one thing, but for a possible reincarnate to carry over complications of a gunshot wound to a new body? Quite the scary idea going on there.That might be the program/documentary on Discovery Chanel where they collected some stories of the kind from different countries. I have heard of some of these stories locally too. In most cases where people seem to remember past it involves some tragic death in the past life often murder or an accident.
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It's also a reason why people believe that soul is eternal and keeps learning and evolving retaining the past karma or knowledge to an extent.
Whether I believe in it or not depends on my mood but believing it helps in so many ways that I don't see harm in it unless you get too obsessed with the idea and start looking for your past lives...Just do good- if you are good then people will remember you better and if their is a next life you have some positive karma to carry. It's not a bad deal either way.
It also presents the theory that soul starts its journey from the simplest life forms and keeps progressing so past life could have been any plant, insect, animal and bad karma and lack of progress in evolution may send soul back to go through that life again. This cycle goes on till the soul has learned and understood itself, gets moksha, niravana etc.. Depending on school of thought.
I thought about this and, as you say, it makes for quite the complication. I'd lean toward the number of souls being constant and there are so many in fact, that there are simply not enough bodies to contain all of them. If the theory that souls reside in animals as well is true, than the number of souls out there is downright staggering. So perhaps there are 50 billion souls out there or so. Lets say there are 25 billion humans/ animals with souls out there (I'm just making up numbers) than there would another 25 billion that are either in our plane of existence and not in a body, or elsewhere. The elsewhere might be heaven or hell or something different. The ones in our plane of existence not already in a body are 'ghosts' as we refer to spiritual beings as.I don't believe in Reincarnation, but if it existed would it mean the total number of souls in the world is constant? or are some souls selectively destroyed while others are created? The human population keeps increasing, meaning there are new souls and some other complexities that will arise if reincarnation were to be true.
just out of Curiosity, @bold how did the souls come to being in the first place?I thought about this and, as you say, it makes for quite the complication. I'd lean toward the number of souls being constant and there are so many in fact, that there are simply not enough bodies to contain all of them. If the theory that souls reside in animals as well is true, than the number of souls out there is downright staggering. So perhaps there are 50 billion souls out there or so. Lets say there are 25 billion humans/ animals with souls out there (I'm just making up numbers) than there would another 25 billion that are either in our plane of existence and not in a body, or elsewhere. The elsewhere might be heaven or hell or something different. The ones in our plane of existence not already in a body are 'ghosts' as we refer to spiritual beings as.
Again, quite the complicated matter but I would find it hard to believe souls can actually be created, but maybe a power like God could in fact do something as seemingly impossible as that.
Basically another Naruto but without ninjas.Now that I think about it, reincarnation with memories is a sick concept. I was thinking of making a manga about the main character doing that a few months ago but then I realized I can't draw for shit.
-You can’t simulate a neuron until you know how a neuron is supposed to behave. Before the Blue Brain team could start constructing their model, they needed to aggregate a dizzying amount of data. The collected works of modern neuroscience had to be painstakingly programmed into the supercomputer, so that the software could simulate our hardware. The problem is that neuroscience is still woefully incomplete. Even the simple neuron, just a sheath of porous membrane, remains a mostly mysterious entity. How do you simulate what you can’t understand?
-Some proponents of the anthropic principle reason that it explains why the universe has the age and the fundamental physical constants necessary to accommodate conscious life
So, one group of scientists started with the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, a critter whose genes and simple nervous system we know intimately.
The OpenWorm project has mapped the connections between the worm’s 302 neurons and simulated them in software. (The project’s ultimate goal is to completely simulate C. elegans as a virtual organism.) Recently, they put that software program in a simple Lego robot.
A part of me would say they just always existed. I have no way of knowing how one might be created simply because I cannot fathom nor contemplate how such a task would be accomplished. That's why I said perhaps God or a Godlike being could do it, but I have literally know idea myself.just out of Curiosity, @bold how did the souls come to being in the first place?
Yeah, it's becoming a religious "thing". I believe in God btw.A part of me would say they just always existed. I have no way of knowing how one might be created simply because I cannot fathom nor contemplate how such a task would be accomplished. That's why I said perhaps God or a Godlike being could do it, but I have literally know idea myself.
Getting to a point here where its bordering on religion now.
Stories like this are particularly common in regions of the world, like India, where the Hindu belief in reincarnation is much more common. There are even cases of families attempting to identify who a loved one was reincarnated as and bestowing a sort of dowry payment to support them.First of all, I'm going to be referencing a program I recall seeing that touches on the issue. I can't recall the exact program but if it sounds familiar or if anyone has additional details about it that I missed, please share them here.
I recall a story I heard about 6 months ago about a boy exhibiting some strange behavior. Ultimately, it was discovered that he was exhibiting habits and mannerisms identical to a man who died shortly before the child's birthdate. The reason this comparison was discovered, if I recall correctly, was because the boy still had memories of this man's life and would express them. After research was done, the family found a man that matched all these phenomenon. Once the boy hit a certain age, around 5 if I recall, he proceeded to loose all these memories.
I believe I likely saw this story on the Science channel, but I don't recall for certain. The idea certainly creped me out, but I recall I found it hard evidence to dispute. Obviously someone looking in hindsight might see connections that aren't really there, take ambiguous fortune tellers of the past for example, but I found this to be much more convincing.
To be honest, I find the idea of reincarnation with no end much more alluring than the possibility of residing in hell for all eternity. Have you any thoughts or beliefs on the topic? If you have any knowledge of what program/ story I am referring to, I'd gladly like to hear it! Thanks for reading.
Source?Stories like this are particularly common in regions of the world, like India, where the Hindu belief in reincarnation is much more common. There are even cases of families attempting to identify who a loved one was reincarnated as and bestowing a sort of dowry payment to support them.
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Whether or not this is what is really going on - or just a product of mass psychology is, of course, next to impossible to scientifically determine at this point.
It doesn't matter much which program it was as they always tend to make it so that topics like these look like that they are very believable. They selectively chose what they want to see and what not. You can be certain it's not even remotely evidence. It simply is less interesting to make a program where they keep pointing out how unlikely and flawed all of this is than to make one where they imply how it could be possible. It's the principle of whether the glass is half full or empty. It's more interesting for the watchers to have the first approach and not the latter.First of all, I'm going to be referencing a program I recall seeing that touches on the issue. I can't recall the exact program but if it sounds familiar or if anyone has additional details about it that I missed, please share them here.
I recall a story I heard about 6 months ago about a boy exhibiting some strange behavior. Ultimately, it was discovered that he was exhibiting habits and mannerisms identical to a man who died shortly before the child's birthdate. The reason this comparison was discovered, if I recall correctly, was because the boy still had memories of this man's life and would express them. After research was done, the family found a man that matched all these phenomenon. Once the boy hit a certain age, around 5 if I recall, he proceeded to loose all these memories.
I believe I likely saw this story on the Science channel, but I don't recall for certain. The idea certainly creped me out, but I recall I found it hard evidence to dispute. Obviously someone looking in hindsight might see connections that aren't really there, take ambiguous fortune tellers of the past for example, but I found this to be much more convincing.
To be honest, I find the idea of reincarnation with no end much more alluring than the possibility of residing in hell for all eternity. Have you any thoughts or beliefs on the topic? If you have any knowledge of what program/ story I am referring to, I'd gladly like to hear it! Thanks for reading.
In this belief system- A soul is never destroyed. It merely changes the container or moves on to the next birth/form. Existence of souls is not limited to humans either. Every living being has a soul.I don't believe in Reincarnation, but if it existed would it mean the total number of souls in the world is constant? or are some souls selectively destroyed while others are created? The human population keeps increasing, meaning there are new souls and some other complexities that will arise if reincarnation were to be true.
I'd have to dig the section out of the book I read a few years ago, and I might be remembering some of it incorrectly. There are some excerpts online:Source?
Must be some rare case. No one actively seeks out where their family members are reborn nor it's possible. Since according to the idea itself- next birth can be anything. Any life form on any planet even.
Anyone showing up at the door with such a claim is seen with skepticism- even by those who theoretically may believe the idea.
I'd have to dig the section out of the book I read a few years ago, and I might be remembering some of it incorrectly. There are some excerpts online:
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" Dr. Rawat is telling me that the case we are investigating is fairly typical. The child, Aishwary, began talking about people from a previous existence when he was around three. Ninety-five percent of the children in Stevenson's cases began talking about a previous existence between the ages of two and four, and started to forget about it all by age five.
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Aishwary is thought by his family to be the reincarnation of a factory worker named Veerpal, several villages distant, who accidentally electrocuted himself not long before Aishwary was born. Dr. Rawat opens his briefcase and takes out an envelope of snapshots from last month, when he began this investigation.
"Here is the boy Aishwary at the birthday party of his 'son.'" Aishwary is four in the photograph. His "son" has just turned ten. Just in case the age business isn't sufficiently topsy-turvy, the elastic strap on the "son's" birthday hat has been inexplicably outfitted with a long, white beard. This morning, while leafing through a file of Dr. Rawat's correspondences, I came across a letter that included the line: "I am so glad you were able to marry your daughter." I am reasonably, but not entirely, sure that the correspondent meant "marry off."
"Now, here is the boy with Rani."
Rani is the dead factory worker's widow. She is twenty-six years old. In the photo, the boy stares fondly — lustfully, one might almost say, were one to spend too much time in India with reincarnation researchers — at his alleged past-life wife. This strikes me as the most improbable, chimerical thing I've ever seen, and then I look out the car window, where an elephant plods down a busy Delhi motorway. "
Mary Roach writes some excellent stuff.
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" In India, everywhere you look, someone is calmly comporting themselves in a manner that we in the States would consider a terrible risk, a beseeching of death with signal flares and megaphone. Women in saris perch sidesaddle, unhelmeted, on the backs of freeway-fast Vespas. Bicyclists weave through clots of city traffic, breathing leaded diesel fumes. Passengers sit atop truck cabs and hang off the sides like those acrobat troupes that pile onto a single bicycle. Trucks overladen with bulbous muffin-top loads threaten to topple and bury nearby motorists under illegal tonnages of cauliflower and potatoes. (Accident Prone Area, the signs say, as though the area itself were somehow responsible for the carnage.) People don't seem to approach life with the same terrified, risk-aversive tenacity that we do. I'm beginning to understand why, religious doctrine aside, the concept of reincarnation might be so popular here. Rural India seems like a place where life is taken away too easily -- accidents, childhood diseases, poverty, pollution, murder. If you'll be back for another go, why get too worked up about the leaving? "
I could have been confusing that marriage comment with a form of dowry payment in my memory. Regardless, I know that she painted the picture of it being far more common in India for people to treat reincarnation as a fact of life and even as a vehicle for tying families together.
Keep in mind those are excerpts. There was more to that part of the story where it went into how families were tracking each other down.The conclusion you drew from the letter is fantastic. ...:| I don't think it had anything to do with the reincarnation case itself, if at all. There is no context as to who sent it to whom or any other detail. Instead she was making fun of the grammar of the letter writer. It said " marry your daughter" instead of " marry off " - a common mistake when people make literal translations and choose the wrong phrase.
While the part about not wearing helmet and seeing an elephant on the road is not surprising most of the quote is just a typical Western( here but also people in general) approach to things they don't understand or don't believe in and adding a stupid cause effect theory for the extra gimmick. People often believe in reincarnation to some extent but not the way you imply or she might have implied.
Then there must be a story why they were tracking down. Most probably the one claiming to be the reincarnated one contacted them first otherwise they wouldn't even know where to look. You are far more likely to meet people looking for their deads with a planchette or getting a psychic rather than a person looking for next rebirth anyway.Keep in mind those are excerpts. There was more to that part of the story where it went into how families were tracking each other down.
The letter, itself, is part of a file that was being worked on by a doctor who was researching reincarnation claims/phenomena in the region who was, as I understand, native to India.
Also, that is just how Mary Roach writes. It doesn't matter what she's writing. Whether she is covering NASA or the taboo research into *** - she writes with her tongue in her cheek a lot. It's nothing unique to her coverage of foreign places.