svmonk,

I am not really sure I will be reborn, especially that I do not really know what this "I" would be. This is just an assumption I made, here is why. Let's consider two scenarios:

Scenario A - Atheists are right, there is nothing after death for us, as we die we cease to exist. All ideas about life after death are created by wishful thinking, fear, and mind's abstract thinking ability. If that's the case, there is no problem. There is nothing left to be aware of anything, end of story.

Scenario B - There is much more to life than meets the eye (and other senses). The amount of individuals throughout the world and history claiming this is so high, that it is at least worth to consider.

In this thread we play with scenario B, and here is why I think reincarnation would make a lot of sense: life is evolution and this is clearly seen in nature. It's all about growth, progress, improving interaction with other life forms and generally being better adjusted to the reality. IF life was all random, it wouldn't make sense and would be a mess. But our known universe is definetely not a random mess: there is order.

So seeing how the life forms are about growth and evolution, in the bigger picture, it just wouldn't make sense for individuals to be random. A human is born, with random traits, skills, level of understanding and intelligence, lives for a while, dies and that's it? What would be the point? Evolution seems to be the point of life. And in this case, reincarnation makes great sense. Birth and death are not pointless and random, there is growth and progress.

If I was totally convinced with scenario A I would either end up a shallow materialist, or most likely kill myself. Scenario A would be fine for animals and ignorant people, but eventually person gets to a point where they are bored with mundane, see the futility of it, and start to wonder: what's the point? Who am I? Is there more to life than meets the eye? When these questions come, if I was somehow convinced in this scenario, I would've just killed myself because why struggle with pointless life when you can skip to the end right now.

But since I'm here I'm obviously more into scenario B.


tl;dr: reincarnation just makes sense to me, considering bigger picture of reality.

I always find it ironic when meditators question life after death.  I think it's because from my own perspective, life after death seems less strange than the idea that repeatedly sitting on a pillow with legs in a pretzel shape while contemplating breath would somehow lead to neverending ecstatic happiness!  That second belief always seemed far more weird to me than the first!  ;-P  And in fact you REALLY have to believe in the pillow belief to spend countless jillions of hours sitting on that thing!  OK, obviously, that was an oversimplification, but you get the idea.  It actually continually amazes me that many people devote that much time on power of their belief often not having much evidence or even promise that it will work for sure.  

Whereas for life after death, I think there are more clues that it might be so.  First, there is the fact that scientists can't figure out awareness or how it develops and can't localize it.  But there are many instances of psi research that shows somehow the mind can learn things it should not be able to know, ie somehow it has access to nonlocal information.  To me it makes the most sense that if awareness can do that, then it is not locked inside the body.  If it is free to wander from the body, then I would logically expect it could live without the body.  That's from a logical perspective.

From a personal perspective, I have had enough weird experiences in my life to lend credence to life after death.  There was a period of time when I would fairly regulary dream I was someone else with an entirely different personality and living situation.  The experiences were hyper real and detailed.  I actually learned a ton about what other people think in their heads that I didn't know before.  I learned about about other peoples' perspectives, both bad and good and their individual mental traps that they create for themselves.  At the time, I did not assume they were past lives though, and I still don't know, they could have just been random people that had something for me to learn from.  One interpretation is that I have a super amazing imagination, but if that were the case, I have to say that level of imaginative still would seem more amazing to me than just regular out of body travel.  But sure, people could assume that if they wanted, it's just not what I think is the most logical  answer from my own perspective.  Back in those days, there was no internet and I had not even heard of anything like it yet, so it was just something I mostly kept to myself . 

Plus in my sleep, in recent years I sometimes talk to my parents who have passed on.   At first when I saw them, I would be like all, "Wait, aren't you dead?!?" but after a while I got over the weirdness and we could talk a bit.   My mother has tried to tell me a bit of what it is like there but to be honest, I don't seem to be able to understand it that well.  Of course, I am sure many would say it's all just wishful thinking to make myself feel better and who is to know for sure!  But you'd think I would at least have the common sense if I was making it all up to have her say things that I like more often or that I can understand better even!

Anyway, it could be all just that I am a delusional nut job, or maybe someone with an overactive self agrandizing imaginative ego problem, but the third option is that IMO, there is a fair amount of evidence to lend weight that awareness survives after death.  I am not as sure about the multiple lifetimes because I have no special evidence that the other lives I experienced where actually mine, but last time I spoke to my dead mother, which was ironically just recently, she was saying how she did NOT want to go back there (ie here to life) and there was a strong feeling of dislike for here and preference for there where she is now,  Interestingly, i found myself arguing that wouldn't it getting boring after a long time like say 50 years?  To have it so easy and not have many challenges?  Wouldn't easy get boring?  But she was pretty adamant that the answer would still be no!   Anyway, her saying she didn't want to go here again makes it sound like that is at least an option.  Since her body has been cremated, if she comes back, I don't think she will be in that sanme one anymore!  ;-P 

I have read with other sources that the dead supposedly often try to talk to the living friends and relatives in dreams but usually the living will freak out, are scared, or just cry and are too sad to have conversations with.  Of course that is just hearsay and could be total baloney just like anything else, but I suspect one of the main criteria for being able to do it, besides just basic dream recall and a modicrum of lucidity skills, is just the ability to accept the concept and the contact and content without freaking out over it too much.  The times when I did freak out, even just a tiny tad, the contact dream immediately ended.   Which is in stark contrast to my regular negative dreams like the one where there are 100s of rattlesnakes everwhere ready to bite me, or the one where there is a 6 foot long bee chasing me and trying to sting me, of course those kinds of dreams do not seem to end easily despite copious amounts of freaking out on my part, which is just so not fair!  ;-P
-Eva 

Pawel, is your assertion then that we do not carry any of our individuality with us past death but instead blend back into something like the universal consciousness? 

Using the ocean-wave analogy: I think myself to be a wave in an ocean, and you say that actually I am the ocean. Obviously both are water and  a wave is the ocean just as the ocean is a wave. But how can I really claim to be the ocean? If the witness is clearly placed in the middle of a specific wave, and experience only stuff surrounding that specific wave, how can I claim to be the ocean? Even if it makes sense to me, because wave clearly is the ocean as well, I can't say that I am the ocean and NOT just the wave because in order to say that, I would have to be able to exprerience EVERYTHING at once. Are we just playing with words here, or you have gained some insight/experiences of this nature first hand?