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Mainstream believe

smac2012

smac2012

New Member
HI

I have been a member of this site for a few weeks and it's an excellent site. I am really enjoying it. I have a question and wondering what other people's throughts are.

I was reading Carols interview that someone posted in a thread that i started. Here is the excert from Carol:

C: After my first book, Children's Past Lives, with published in 1997, which was a great time to have the book published because of the Internet, we had a website and I had e-mail address in the book. So I started getting many many cases from all over the world from parents who found the website or found the book and wanted to share their stories with me. This was because, especially in the U. S., in the west, parents didn't want to talk about this, because it goes against the *** mainstream belief ***. So I was finding that people would write to me and say, please don't think I'm crazy, but I think my grandmother who died ten years ago is my 4 year-old. And this is why I believed this. They would go through whole list of the child's behaviors, every idiosyncratic thing, unique things that matched the grandmother. Or the three year-old would say something about the grandmother's life that the three year-old couldn't possibly know. Or the three year-old would look at the old family album, and look at the family picture with the grandmother and say, "Oh, remember when we were on that picnic and uncle Ted fell off the boat?" You know, they would just know things that they couldn't possibly know.

My question is:

1 - Why are so many people so closed minded to the concept of reincarnation and past lives?

2 - I am really surprised that people who believe in God are so closed to this idea. To me - the notion that a creator would judge you based on 1 life - sometimes only 12 to 15 years makes NO sense.

The concept that the purpose of many lives is to mature our soul makes a lot of sense.

What do other people think about questions 1 and 2?
 
smac2012 said:
My question is:
1 - Why are so many people so closed minded to the concept of reincarnation and past lives?


2 - I am really surprised that people who believe in God are so closed to this idea. To me - the notion that a creator would judge you based on 1 life - sometimes only 12 to 15 years makes NO sense.


The concept that the purpose of many lives is to mature our soul makes a lot of sense.


What do other people think about questions 1 and 2?
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Hello smac2012. I agree completely that it would make more sense that we get more than one shot at life. Our beliefs about life after death in the West are shaped mostly by Christianity since it has been the source of almost all religious authority for the better part of two thousand years. Belief in reincarnation was ruled as heresy many centuries ago. The Church wanted the people to depend on it for their salvation. That's hard to do if the people don't fear going to Hell when they die.


Personally, I also believe that many, if not most people don't want reincarnation to be true. They want to live once, be a good person, go to heaven, and live happily ever after. Life is hard and they don't want to think they have to do it again and again.
 
smac2012 said:
1 - Why are so many people so closed minded to the concept of reincarnation and past lives?
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Reincarnation is a concept, which, along with telepathy and other "psi" phenomenon, is totally threatening to people who rely only upon what they can see, hear or feel. Western culture came out of a very tough period before the renaissance when reality rested solely upon the authority of the church, and thinking out of the box could get someone burned at the stake. During the renaissance, however, Isaac Newton offered the world something concrete with empirical science and materialism. Followers of the renaissance saw this as a time of enlightenment in which the shackles of ignorance were taken off.


To this day, most scholars have pledged their lifelong purpose and allegiance to prevent the world from lapsing back into that period of ignorance which has left some kind of millenial scar on society. However, I believe, these people, who now hold sway on our society, have imposed another form of religion, which has continued to shackle our thinking, and has reinforced the age-old ban on "psi" phenomenon. So, now it seems that many of us are besieged from two opposing sides whenever we speak of anything that is not specifically taught by the bible or science text books.

2 - I am really surprised that people who believe in God are so closed to this idea. To me - the notion that a creator would judge you based on 1 life - sometimes only 12 to 15 years makes NO sense.
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Your observation is meaningful and shared by countless people, who have been enjoying a new period of enlightenment which has been brought about by a proliferation of books, the advent of the internet and new medical technologies. We are now being bombarded by countless reports of Near Death Experiences, after death communication, telepathy and clairaudience; and it is becoming progressively difficult for science and religion to answer all the questions that are being raised. I think that these phenomenon set the stage for a greater acceptance of Reincarnation.


Were it not for the heroic research by Dr. Ian Stevenson, many people would have to swallow their unexplainable memories, and there probably would not have been adequate interest for anyone to discover that Carol Bowman's children had such memories, and there probably would not have been any books on the subject.


Of the two camps -- religion on one side, and science on the other -- religious people seem more amenable to the concept of reincarnation. Scientists, however, seem less likely to accept the possibility of any "psi" phenomenon and view reincarnation as the least likely of all phenomenon, because it cannot be tested in the laboratory.


Philosophically, your argument, that reincarnation presents a model that is most logical and just, is shared by many scholars. And, the broadened awareness of Quantum Theory has encouraged a great many scientists to reason that psi phenomenon might not be much stranger.
 
Truthseeker said:
Personally, I also believe that many, if not most people don't want reincarnation to be true. They want to live once, be a good person, go to heaven, and live happily ever after. Life is hard and they don't want to think they have to do it again and again.
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I agree with Truthseeker. I know a lot of skeptics would like to say that I'm a "wishful thinker" for believing in reincarnation. I think the only thing I'm wishful about is that God and/or the Universe is FAIR. I imagine a lot of those skeptics probably find the idea of actually being held to account for their failings and having to do the hard work of living in order to learn from their mistakes a difficult pill to swallow.
 
Even though I am a Christian, in identity and beliefs, I am deeply ashamed at what mankind has done over the centuries, in the name of Christ.


These atrocities are not of the teachings that I studied as a child, of the beliefs of such persons as St. Frances, St. John and so forth.


These men, in my opinion, epitomized the true meaning of Christianity, both at it's beginning and now.


Not wanting to preach a sermon, I also believe strongly in Reincarnation and Past Lives (PL) and can find no conflict between the two in my mind.


As I've said before here, they fit together as a hand fits a glove.


Perhaps because I've always been open minded and tolerant of others, makes it very easy for me to believe in Reincarnation.


And having dreams and memories of other lives in other bodies, also made it easy for me to believe! :)
 
More information


I am spritual, believe in a creator, believe in recarination, however - not religious. I was reading a book - and in the book - it was asked what is with all the different regilions.


The answer was on the other side (aka - heaven (i personally do not like that term due to the regilious connections it implies) there are no different regilions.


It's not like there is a clerk saying that Mulism go to the left, Christains go down the hall, Jewish faith, go right, etc. There is not a separate Muslim heaven, christian heaven, etc.


It does not work this way. In the end - we are all equal - no matter what reglion - if any - we observed during an incarnation.


The point is more and more real evidence is starting to appear that really suggests that is the reality and how it works. I never bought into the concept that you are only gonig to heaven if you believe in Jesus, etc.
 
smac2012 said:
I never bought into the concept that you are only gonig to heaven if you believe in Jesus, etc.
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One thing that really supports what you're saying is the phenomenon of near-death experiences (NDE's). People of all faiths (and even atheists!) have been having them for centuries, and they all describe very similar experiences. Plus there's plenty of evidence to back up the claims of the near-death experiencer's "leaving the body" as many are able to describe events that they couldn't possibly have witnessed while they were "dead" (or unconscious, etc ...)
 
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