• Thank you to Carol and Steve Bowman, the forum owners, for our new upgrade!

Effect of extreme longevity/immortality on reincarnation?

M

momof3

Senior Registered
I've been reading articles by respected scientists and doctors who believe that we are very close to finding a cure for aging and achieving immortality. Of course, people would still die from accidents, suicide, and murder; but the common diseases that occur as we age would become a thing of the past.

Aside from the obvious ethical and practical concerns, I wonder what the implications would be for reincarnation? Assuming reincarnation is a reality, immortality would put a halt to, or at least disrupt, the natural cycle of our souls. As the death rate dramatically drops and babies continue to be born, do we run out of souls? Or, do new souls continue to be created? Would this new technology interfere with the natural order of the universe or is this just the next inevitable step in our evolution?

Also, would you want to take advantage of the medical advances that would make this possible or would you prefer to move on to your next life? As for myself, I like the life I am living now and would have a hard time moving on. Who knows what my next life would be like?
 
The earth is already over crowded with people as it is. If immortality happened, then I'm confident that everything we need to survive would run out, food, air etc. Just to make my point, without violating the guidelines, there are many other places we can incarnate on, not just earth, so I very much doubt we could ever "run out of souls". Earth is just a rain drop in the ocean.


I think due to immortality not being natural, no one would cope with the anxieties it may bring. Seeing loved ones killed in accidents and knowing you wont have at least a chance of seeing them again because you will live forever, I feel dieing of old age would be replaced by suicides.


If I had the chance of being immortal would I take it? Probably not. Now that I have a belief in reincarnation, I am looking forward to my next lives when the time comes. If I had been asked the same question about 3years ago I would be delighted to have immortality.
 
It seems to me that with a medical ability to live indefinitely, there comes a time when one actually says "I'm done" and would choose to simply no longer make the required efforts to live.


My maternal grandmother who lived a wonderful life said she was tired at 97, that no one should have to live this long, said all her goodbyes and within a few weeks she was gone (although she is around me enough to tell me how I should be doing things...and she is right!). From her standpoint it was not so much that she didn't want to keep on living but rather that all her contemporaries were dead, that the world had changed so much during her lifetime, that she was less able to be a productive member of society, combined with her sense that it was her time...and that she was dithering (something she claims I am doing way too much of!)!


For me, a procedure or drug intended to make me live indefinitely would be akin to taking a pill to make my hair grow back...it was a nice thing to have, but its gone now so lets deal with what is before us rather than what we can effect or construct for unclear and ill-defined purposes.


I, too, am looking forward to future lives of which I've gotten some tantalizing hints.
 
momof3 said:
...would you want to take advantage of the medical advances that would make this possible or would you prefer to move on to your next life? As for myself, I like the life I am living now and would have a hard time moving on. Who knows what my next life would be like?
Click to expand...
This is a subject, which causes me great interest, concern and irritation. Although I don't wish to appear as a closed-minded nay-sayer, I sometimes think that such claims of eventual perpetual health are merely part of the overall ignorant arrogance that seems evident as the Medical Community endeavors to give Medical Science credit that it doesn't deserve, and which allows Medical Doctors to treat us as mere slabs of experimental meat.


I watched a program, recently, which followed a married couple as they prepared to submit the terminally cancerous spouse to cryonic deep freeze with the sincere hope that a cure would, someday, be discovered. Although I am as compassionate as the next person, I see such wasted effort as pathetically ignorant of our spiritual nature. I don't blame those whose hopes reside in technology, so much as I blame those who push the technology and raise those hopes -- especially in view of the very real research that proves otherwise.


The reality of life is such that gives this soul hope that it will end, and I am sure that the majority of people would look forward to death, if only they could get but a glimpse of the afterlife and realize that it is far better to leave past mistakes behind and begin anew.


Although medical science may progress to such a point that life is prolonged for some, I sincerely doubt that the quality of life will be enhanced to any significant degree. Simple economics would allow only a handful of people to enjoy the fruits of such research, and the rest of us would long for the day that it will all end.
 
When you get older you get bored of life. I think the amnesia most people experience in current incarnation is to prevent that this boredom bleeds into a new life. We sometimes need a kind of a "Tabula Rasa" restart to just to be able to live.


There will be people that enjoy immortality, but I also think that a lot of people will see how insanely boring immortal life is.


Another point of contention is that as soon as you become immortal you will become more aware of how over-populated and ravaged the world is. At first the rich, who want to keep their power, will engage in population control. After a period of population control they will see that the "slave population" they needed to keep their empires is now severely drained/low on man power.


The thing is, we are very diligent at creating our own destruction if you think about it. Despite some asian countries having really high population, you must take into account that they are often highly skewed. China suffers from having way too many men compared to women(thanks to general consensus that men are "better"). Other countries are even more brutal. Not sure if it was Pakistan or India, but there we have families pay for sex reassignment surgeries for their young daughters to "ensure" that they have sons(albeit sterile).


Other countries and continents have their own problems. None are perfect in any way, whether Russian, American, European or Asian.
 
Nightrain said:
The reality of life is such that gives this soul hope that it will end, and I am sure that the majority of people would look forward to death, if only they could get but a glimpse of the afterlife and realize that it is far better to leave past mistakes behind and begin anew.
Click to expand...
I wish I had said this...
 
I am convinced that we sail through many lives on earth here.... I have no more wish to retain this body, useful though it is, that I would delight in wearing the same clothes forever..!! ;)
 
Actually at the present time diseases are increasingly becoming more resistant to antibiotics, super strains of diseases, mutations, are already here and very alarming. If we can no longer combat those same diseases which only a few years back were considered to be "wiped out", then you can be sure that immortality of the physical body is not likely to happen. Even if scientists were successful in identifying and switching off the aging gene, we would still be susceptible to diseases which are more potent than ever. Actually, switching off the aging gene would most likely cause the body to become more susceptible to disease as switching off the natural aging process would weaken our immune system over time. So imo we are never going to realize immortality of our flesh.
 
I am tired of these scientists playing God. It won't happen, and even if they were to somehow miraculously find a way for people to live forever, it still will not work. People will end their lives because no one wants to live forever. Even if all of my dreams come true and am enjoying the light that I will finally be in which comes at the end of the tunnel.. I may want to live a LONG life but not a life that is never going to end. Even if you are living a great life, you will eventually get tired and bored.. and will have to leave. It just won't happen.
 
First, as a med student i can say that we' re not even close of finding the secret to inmortality.


Second, sometimes the journalists take scientific articles and present them in a way that is more interesting to the non-medical community, for example, recently it was discovered a protein that suffers certain modification prior to some types of cancerous cells to develop, and the newspapers were saying that the cure of cancer is almost discovered or something like that.


However, back on the topic of inmortality, when we go to sleep everyday we delete (we actually DELETE, we don' t store it anywhere) things that we don' t consider important that happened during the day (for example... most of the neurophisiology class :D ) But we will remember things that we think are important or... that are related to our emotions. If i try to remember what i did in may 1993, when i was 5, i will remember as much (or less) than what i remember of may 1943. And that' s just because as we live we forget a lot of things, we just remember what it' s important to us and has an emotional attachment (and even sometimes information about the things we studied... although we might confuse them with ideas "from this life").


So, if i live 1000 years in this same body i will remember exactly the same that i would remember if i live 1000 years in 15 different bodies. I know that nobody else in the forum thinks like me on this but i don't see a difference from life to life, we' re always the same, if i die now and reborn in Japan it would be pretty much the same (in soul terms) as if i go to japan now to live with a japanese family.


Death is just an FBI agent who gives you a nice fake passport and a plane ticket.
 
Owl said:
...if i live 1000 years in this same body i will remember exactly the same that i would remember if i live 1000 years in 15 different bodies.
Click to expand...
It seems logical that each of us should remember as much from a past life as we would from our present life, if we are the same person. However, I would submit that our memories can be severely hampered if our identity changes changes significantly -- even within the framework of one lifetime. The fact is, when people change their identity, their circumstances in life, and totally loose contact with former friends and family, they also seem to loose contact with their memories. Of course, the memories are still still there, but much less accessible than before. Sometimes, however, a song or a gesture can cause a flood of memories to come back. The same holds true for past life memories to a very large extent.


In a new incarnation we are in an entirely new environment, even if that incarnation is in the same family. Our bodies are new, our sense of time is new, and even familiar faces are out of context from what we were most adjusted to. So, there is very little mystery to me that memories of past lives would remain totally buried as if we had imbibed from the waters of the Lethe.


If, however, we could live the same life continuously for 1,000 years, we would certainly be able to remember a great deal more. Frankly, I'm glad that we can't. As others have mentioned, it seems far more appealing to leave our former pain and transgressions behind to begin anew.
 
momof3 said:
I've been reading articles by respected scientists and doctors who believe that we are very close to finding a cure for aging and achieving immortality. Of course, people would still die from accidents, suicide, and murder; but the common diseases that occur as we age would become a thing of the past.
Aside from the obvious ethical and practical concerns, I wonder what the implications would be for reincarnation? Assuming reincarnation is a reality, immortality would put a halt to, or at least disrupt, the natural cycle of our souls. As the death rate dramatically drops and babies continue to be born, do we run out of souls? Or, do new souls continue to be created? Would this new technology interfere with the natural order of the universe or is this just the next inevitable step in our evolution?


Also, would you want to take advantage of the medical advances that would make this possible or would you prefer to move on to your next life? As for myself, I like the life I am living now and would have a hard time moving on. Who knows what my next life would be like?
Click to expand...
A very good and interesting question momof3.


It is something that personally has never concerned me unduly, but it is an idea which preoccupies my friend X (not just this life). Therefore it is something I have thought about and talked about quite a lot, so I hope I have a view worth sharing.


It actually is a very existential issue which comes down the the nub of the issue of 'reality' (what is it?). It is at the heart of the problem of 'who am I and what am I doing here?' which everyone gets around to thinking about eventually (I don't care who they are, it's true for everyone).


The answer is 'you are not your body'. It's simple really, but it confounds many people (particularly those who have grown up in 'the west' to think of themselves in a 'machinelike' way (as a 'prisoner' or a 'ghost' in some ways, trapped or somehow contained in a body.) But the 'soul' (however you conceive it) is larger than the body. The body does not 'contain' the soul. The 'soul' animates the body. It's a bit like the driver of a car. If/when the car wears out, you get a new one. If you love the car, you look after it... great! But you are not the car. You are the driver.


We know we are much more than just a body. We know the mind is another thing for example. We have ample evidence of 'out of body' experiences, near death experiences, dreams, memories, ghosts, premonitions, deja vu, past life memories by the thousand..... We have ample evidence (to cut a long story short) that there is 'something going on'. There is something 'out there' beyond the campfire light and it is nothing to do with our bodies, our arms, our legs, our fingers, our toes, or our noses or our tongues. It's 'the other thing'.


Once you adjust yourself to the idea that we 'bad monkeys', we 'oh so clever' homosapiens, don't know everything that there is to know, no matter how many 'machines that go beep' we might make, there is a larger reality than what we feel at the tips of our fingertips, in the corner of our eyes, in the beauty of a rainbow and the ecstasy and despair of life itself. This day, this decade, this century, this minute, this second... is not the only one that has ever been or the only one that will ever be...


There is no such thing as time. Bodies, as wonderful as they are (if you're looking after them) are in the nicest possible way, not the whole story. We won't run out of them. There isn't a universal 'economy' as we might imagine it (where bodies are like cars that might run out). It doesn't work that way.


Hope that helps.


T
 
Tanguerra:


The interesting thing is that if you look at language you never refer to yourself as the body, but that that the body is yours, ie "my body". Same goes for "my hands","my heart", and so on.
 
tanguerra said:
The body does not 'contain' the soul. The 'soul' animates the body. It's a bit like the driver of a car. If/when the car wears out, you get a new one. If you love the car, you look after it... great! But you are not the car. You are the driver.
Click to expand...
Hi Tanguerra! I've missed your posts!


Your analogy of our physical body to that of a car is perfect for this discussion!


Although it is conceivable that medical science would someday be able to prolong life, I equate this with the kind of costly effort required to keep a Model T going for the next 1,000 years. Sure, we would have to replace a fender here and a gasket there, but over the long run that Model T is going to be obsolete, and the cost of keeping it in running condition is probably going to be more than it's worth. That's great if you want a museum piece sitting unused in one's temperature and humidity controlled garage. But, who wants to be a museum piece?
 
I was researching something along these lines (i.e. human longevity) a number of years ago . I was interested in the extremely long lifetimes of the first Sumerian kings, as recorded approx. 5000 BC, as well as those recorded in the Old Testament much later, and the story of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden and what it implies. Apart from the question of why the length of lifetimes shortened with time, it appears that problems surrounding longevity arose at the very dawn of our earliest civilization. That is what we're being told in Genesis. The Sumerian texts go further, and even describe the creation of worker-slaves (proto-humans) who didn't have the ability to procreate until one of the gods intervened, and this affected things drastically and led to the extermination of civilization.


Take these stories as you will. but what is notable is that the earliest Sumerian god-kings were recorded as living for thousands of years:


Alulum = 28,800 years


Alalgar = 36,000 years


Enmenluanna = 43,200 Did the ancients have years


Enmemgalanna = 28,800 years


Dumuzi = 36,000 years


Ensipazianna = 28,800 years


Enmenduranna = 21,600 years


Ubaratutu = 18,000 years


We see the same shortening of life spans continued in Adam's lineage, until they reach a length comparable to today:


Adam = 930 years (Genesis 5:5)


Seth = 912 years (Genesis 5:8)


Enos = 905 years (Genesis 5:11)


Canaan = 910 years (Genesis 5:14)


Mahalaleel = 895 years (Genesis 5:17)


Jared = 962 years (Genesis 5:20)


Enoch = 365 years (Genesis 5:23)


Methuselah = 969 years (Genesis 5:27)


Lamech = 777 years (Genesis 5:31)


Noah = 950 years (Genesis )


Shem = 600 years (Genesis 11:10-11)


Arphaxad = 933 years (Genesis 11:12-13)


Salah = 433 years (Genesis 11:14-15)


Eber = 464 years (Genesis 11:16-17)


Peleg = 239 years (Genesis 11:18-19)


Reu = 239 years (Genesis 11:20-21)


Serug = 230 years (Genesis 11:22-23)


Nahor = 148 years (Genesis 11:24-25)


Terah = 205 years (Genesis 11:32)


Abraham = 163 years (Gen. 25:7)


Ishmael = 137 years (Gen. 25:17)


Isaac = 164 years (Gen. 35:28)


Jacob = 147 years (Gen. 47:28)


Joseph = 110 years (Gen. 50:22)


Apparently, according to the texts, longevity became a problem for the ancients, and they had to eliminate an entire race (the Nefilim) because of it. Thus the flood.


When you consider these ancient texts in their literal sense and how what they say relates to this problem of overpopulation, they start to become more understandable, and they deserve further study in this light.


Did the ancients have the means to lengthen their lives, and is this what these texts are telling us? Or did they come from another world (as Sitchin claims) where they lived under different conditions that led to a natural shortening of their lives as they acclimatized to this world?


I think that immortality and reincarnation are subjects that require some very careful consideration of a number of related things, such as the concept of karma and the soul, but also the sort of evidence that I've pointed out and the consequences that are said to have resulted from it (whether they were natural, divine, or humanly inspired).
 
Nightrain said:
The fact is, when people change their identity, their circumstances in life, and totally loose contact with former friends and family, they also seem to loose contact with their memories. Of course, the memories are still still there, but much less accessible than before. Sometimes, however, a song or a gesture can cause a flood of memories to come back. The same holds true for past life memories to a very large extent.
Click to expand...
Memories draw up other memories through their association. The proper connections in the neural network of your brain just require some stimulation. It's the overall pattern of the neural firings that make up any sensation in the mind, including our memories, which fill out as more neurons that were involved in the original experience refire together to elicit that specific memory.


I often get nostalgic for the 70s and start remembering things from back then that I hadn't thought about since that time, and I start drawing up more and more detail the more I absorb myself into it. The emotions and feelings, even the smells start coming back, and it's incredibly vivid.


When we dream, our brains are mostly shut down. We don't retain any memories of the dream except for the fleeting moment when we're waking up and the brain kicks in before the sensation of the dream fades completely. I've noticed this from years of observation.


Memories of past lives are usually only retained during the earliest childhood years, much in the way that our dreams are only fleetingly remembered when we first wake up. As other things take precedence in the mind, the sensations we still retain are quickly clouded over.


But I'm getting off topic, since this is about immortality, and not memory.


One on-topic point I can make is that with immortality you can not evolve physically. It would slow down natural development considerably.
 
What initially drew my attention was an article detailing the illnesses that afflicted Americans some 250 years ago, when average life expectancy stood at around thirty years.

The prevailing narrative attributes the dramatic extension of human lifespan to the discovery of vaccines and penicillin. This claim strikes me as shilling for the medical establishment.

Grok appeared to assume that those who distrust modern medicine are the fools, while the medical establishment represents the wise. I disagree. In my view, the fools are the establishment and the consensus it upholds. The wise are the notable exceptions. Yet ultimately, neither group determines the course of the experience; they are merely elements within a larger gestalt.

It is true that certain diseases have become curable or preventable. However, because medicine does not address the underlying reason that brought forth the disease experience in the first place, that underlying cause persists. It will inevitably manifest again—whether in the same form or in a different one, not necessarily as a health condition, but perhaps as accidents, war, or other phenomena.

The deeper insight here is that a longer life is not inherently better or more desirable. The same accomplishments can be realized within shorter lifespans—perhaps even more effectively. A longer life may simply mean more conditioning, more distortions, and a slower pace of evolvement.

The true guidance is this: it is not the length of your life that matters, but what you do during it—specifically, how much you evolve. And not you the personality, but you the essence.
 
I'll try and keep my response brief as I can get overly indulgent in the technical side of the reincarnation process and so on.

There's a finite number of souls. However, there are also a finite number of souls that the Earth can support. So with that said there are many, many, many more souls in existence than are here on the earth.

I think that the point of life here on Earth is to experience the friction of living. Or as they say the it's about the journey and not the destination.

Many people look back on the struggles and not the success so much, with nostalgia and fondness. The struggling is where the greatest learning and also emotional highs and lows occur and perhaps even meaning.

So you get to a certain point and you've "made it". It's certainly easy or understandable at least to get bored or disenfranchised And it's also not a coincidence at that point that many people may also choose to give back in some way to their communities, etc. In one way or the other.

But I think through all these discussions we can understand why the amnesia or the locked memories we have is so important, so we can experience that friction with a clean slate each time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top