As in, does anyone here on this forum know they are on their last life? I read this book a year ago saying mostly everyone is on their last life. Is there any factors to indicate this? I would maybe like for more soul growth if I haven't, but at times I cannot stand this world.
How about you guys?
No matter what anyone here, or elsewhere, will tell you, I believe that no one knows this very point you raised, although it has been raised in the past, even centuries ago it was obviously a pertinent question, in regards to reincarnation. In fact, Plato wrote about this very point, reflecting, we suppose, Socrates' view on it. In the Phaedrus dialogue, Plato gives a hint and addresses this very point as to the soul ending its reincarnation cycles. However, this point of limiting reincarnation cycles is based on the assumption that this physical world we incarnate in is not our ideal and it also assumes that it is somewhat of a disadvantage and a sort of admonition. So it seems from this perspective of this one dialogue, although reincarnation is addressed as somewhat a necessary and a natural occurring phenomenon for the soul in some of the others. Here is a little excerpt of the Phaedrus, as to when a soul may terminate reincarnation, and how to achieve it, presumably.
........................................................The divine is beauty, wisdom, goodness,
and the like; and by these the wing of the soul is nourished, and grows apace;
but when fed upon evil and foulness and the opposite of good, wastes and falls
away. Zeus, the mighty lord, holding the reins of a winged chariot, leads the
way in heaven, ordering all and taking care of all; and there follows him the
array of gods and demi-gods, marshalled in eleven bands; Hestia alone abides
at home in the house of heaven; of the rest they who are reckoned among the
princely twelve march in their appointed order. They see many blessed sights in
the inner heaven, and there are many ways to and fro, along which the blessed
gods are passing, every one doing his own work; he may follow who will and can,
for jealousy has no place in the celestial choir. But when they go to banquet
and festival, then they move up the steep to the top of the vault of heaven. The
chariots of the gods in even poise, obeying the rein, glide rapidly; but the others
labour, for the vicious steed goes heavily, weighing down the charioteer to the
earth when his steed has not been thoroughly trained:–and this is the hour of
agony and extremest conflict for the soul. For the immortals, when they are
at the end of their course, go forth and stand upon the outside of heaven, and
the revolution of the spheres carries them round, and they behold the things
beyond. But of the heaven which is above the heavens, what earthly poet ever
did or ever will sing worthily? It is such as I will describe; for I must dare to
speak the truth, when truth is my theme. There abides the very being with
which true knowledge is concerned; the colourless, formless, intangible essence,
visible only to mind, the pilot of the soul. The divine intelligence, being nurtured
upon mind and pure knowledge, and the intelligence of every soul which
is capable of receiving the food proper to it, rejoices at beholding reality, and
once more gazing upon truth, is replenished and made glad, until the revolution
of the worlds brings her round again to the same place. In the revolution
she beholds justice, and temperance, and knowledge absolute, not in the form
of generation or of relation, which men call existence, but knowledge absolute
in existence absolute; and beholding the other true existences in like manner,
and feasting upon them, she passes down into the interior of the heavens and
returns home; and there the charioteer putting up his horses at the stall, gives
them ambrosia to eat and nectar to drink. Such is the life of the gods; but of
other souls, that which follows God best and is likest to him lifts the head of the
charioteer into the outer world, and is carried round in the revolution, troubled
indeed by the steeds, and with difficulty beholding true being; while another
only rises and falls, and sees, and again fails to see by reason of the unruliness
of the steeds. The rest of the souls are also longing after the upper world and
they all follow, but not being strong enough they are carried round below the
surface, plunging, treading on one another, each striving to be first; and there
is confusion and perspiration and the extremity of effort; and many of them
are lamed or have their wings broken through the ill- driving of the charioteers;
and all of them after a fruitless toil, not having attained to the mysteries of
true being, go away, and feed upon opinion. The reason why the souls exhibit
this exceeding eagerness to behold the plain of truth is that pasturage is found
there, which is suited to the highest part of the soul; and the wing on which
the soul soars is nourished with this. And there is a law of Destiny, that the
soul which attains any vision of truth in company with a god is preserved from
harm until the next period, and if attaining always is always unharmed. But
when she is unable to follow, and fails to behold the truth, and through some
illhap sinks beneath the double load of forgetfulness and vice, and her wings
fall from her and she drops to the ground, then the law ordains that this soul
shall at her first birth pass, not into any other animal, but only into man; and
the soul which has seen most of truth shall come to the birth as a philosopher,
or artist, or some musical and loving nature; that which has seen truth in the
second degree shall be some righteous king or warrior chief; the soul which is of
the third class shall be a politician, or economist, or trader; the fourth shall be
a lover of gymnastic toils, or a physician; the fifth shall lead the life of a prophet
or hierophant; to the sixth the character of poet or some other imitative artist
will be assigned; to the seventh the life of an artisan or husbandman; to the
eighth that of a sophist or demagogue; to the ninth that of a tyrant–all these
are states of probation, in which he who does righteously improves, and he who
does unrighteously, deteriorates his lot. Ten thousand years must elapse before
the soul of each one can return to the place from whence she came, for she
cannot grow her wings in less; only the soul of a philosopher, guileless and true,
or the soul of a lover, who is not devoid of philosophy, may acquire wings in
the third of the recurring periods of a thousand years; he is distinguished from
the ordinary good man who gains wings in three thousand years:–and they who
choose this life three times in succession have wings given them, and go away at
the end of three thousand years. But the others (The philosopher alone is not
subject to judgment (krisis), for he has never lost the vision of truth.) receive
judgment when they have completed their first life, and after the judgment they
go, some of them to the houses of correction which are under the earth, and
are punished; others to some place in heaven whither they are lightly borne by
justice, and there they live in a manner worthy of the life which they led here
when in the form of men. And at the end of the first thousand years the good
souls and also the evil souls both come to draw lots and choose their second
life, and they may take any which they please. The soul of a man may pass
into the life of a beast, or from the beast return again into the man. But the
soul which has never seen the truth will not pass into the human form. For
a man must have intelligence of universals, and be able to proceed from the
many particulars of sense to one conception of reason;–this is the recollection
of those things which our soul once saw while following God–when regardless
of that which we now call being she raised her head up towards the true being.
And therefore the mind of the philosopher alone has wings; and this is just, for
he is always, according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection
to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He is.
And he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated into perfect
mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect. But, as he forgets earthly interests
and is rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him mad, and rebuke him; they do
not see that he is inspired.