Do You Believe In Reincarnation?

I don't know. Earth is a strange place. I think I'd kind of know if I'd been here before. I've read a bit of Buddhism and Krsna literature, but I couldn't say I'm that knowledge about the subject. I'd like to discuss the ethical, philosophical and scientific rationales behind the concept. Is reincarnation possible, or is it just the fantastical daydream of an archaic culture. What do the ancient texts say, and for those that do believe in it, would you say it is better to escape the cycle of rebirth by fulfilling your karma in this lifetime, or would you like to keep coming back to Earth or higher planets in order to keep experiencing sense-pleasure?

 

no

 

Yes it's real and I suppose I would like to escape the cycle of rebirth. To be on Earth means some lesson needs to be learned. People always think they were someone famous before and that makes me laugh. It's just not statically likely if you were here before you were probably one of the 99.9% of people who lived pretty poor. A middle class life is a very recent thing.

 

People always call me an animal. I like to think its just because they subconciously see something of a former life.

 

I suppose I believe in a sort of reincarnation

I believe that we are all one consciousness fragmented into smaller parts,so when your body dies your consciousness does not, you merely gain awareness in another body

Or something like that anyways

I tried to study Buddhism a few weeks ago but it didn't appeal to me. No religion really does (not that Buddhism is necessarily a religion but close enough). I am more interested in what we are finding out about our universe and beyond through scientific research

 

No, but then I think...if energy can't be destroyed and only transferred, then where does our energy go when we die? So, hmmm...not sure, really.

 

It seems like a definite possibility.

Not only eastern religions that have the idea - Plato, some of the late empire period Gnostics, and the medieval Cathars all had some version of reincarnation.

 

The mind is, by definition, nonphysical. What if, as most schools of the philosophy of phenomenalism posit, that mind is more real than the physical reality we think we perceive. If the world is a hologram, as more and more scientists are considering, it is the mind that shapes physical phenomena into the reality we understand. It is easy to imply from all of this that the mind is of a higher dimension than the 3 physical dimensions we perceive as our reality.

If this is the case, then it would make sense that not only do we survive our physical demise, but that we could also return to the physical dimensions multiple times. It would also make sense that while experiencing the physical realm, we do not have much, if any, memory of anything else, otherwise it would take the meaning out of our experience in this life. If we knew we could come and go, and we did not like our lot in life, then why continue with it? It would be better to end it all and start over, rather than to learn from the struggles, and benefit from the rewards, and the memories of pain, happiness, ecstacy, and so forth. If we were immortal to any kind of extent as a higher dimensional being, it would be incredibly boring and meaningless to exist knowing you had an eternity to do so if that was your only reality. No matter how great things were in that higher dimension, we would crave an existence where we were challenged, and we struggled, and understood happiness as fleeting and had to make the most of it.

On the other hand, if we had only this one life, imagine the horrible travesty when someone's life is cut short by another. If we only had one life, is there any punishment that is great enough to inflict upon someone who has taken another life? All the potential experiences for that person, and the potential experiences for the people around that person to be shared with. Then there is the cruelty of disease and natural disasters, and so forth. What about all those unfortunate souls that reach a certain age, and realize that they have never really lived? As the Modern world sinks into plutocracy, what satisfation is there in a life spent working for meager wages, struggling one's life away to make it from paycheck to paycheck, and falling ever deeper into debt, while CEO's and top executives pay themselves multimillion dollar bonuses. If we have only one life to give, what a cosmic crime these executives and business leaders commit.

There is evidence of reincarnation if we accept it and do not write it off as a strange coincidence, or some kind of illusion we must create to make life mysterious, or even just the musings of those hoping to take advantage of the gullible.

People have stories---like my mom, who used to always get a tightness in her chest---the doctors concluded it was psychosomatic. Then on her first trip to Europe, when her and my aunts and uncle took my grandfather back to visit his homeland. They got on the wrong train and when it stopped in a mountain village, my mom recognized it somehow and they all got off the train. She insisted that she had lived there as a little girl in another life, and that there was a landslide that had covered much of the town and killed her. They asked around and discovered that there was a landslide that had covered half the town in the 1800's. She knew then that the tightness was a memory of that horrible event. She never had that tightness again.

In the early 2000's I was going through the Hindustan Times online, and ran across a story of a little boy who always insisted that he had been killed by his brothers. As he got a little older and was able to articulate the story better, it was so concsistent that the parents decided to take it to the police. He told the story giving what he knew, which included his previous name, his brother's names and how and why they killed him (they had an interest in a very succesful business he owned and wanted to take it over from him). The police tracked the story down to a village several hundred miles away and when they approached the brothers they immediately confessed.

I have heard other similar stories out of India, where reincarnation is commonly accepted. There are stories and folk tales about such things in Japan and other Nation's around the region.

There are some high profile cases in the West too, which are generally dismissed by academia, yet still leave questions of how the person knew such things they described in detail.

There is a case of a woman 10 or 15 years ago that had suffered brain injury. She went into a coma--if I remember correctly, or she lost the ability to speak. Whichever case, when she was again able to speak, she spoke French in a perfect French accent---the problem is, English was her native language, she never learned French, and she had to relearn English in French.

Dr. Stanislav Grof did extensive clinical research of LSD, and collected thousands upon thousands of case histories of clinical LSD experiments, and when he could no longer do that, he developed a technique he called holotropic breathing to induce certain aspects of the LSD experience, and used that to further his research with many more case histories. He had quite a few examples of possible past lives, and in many of these cases, the person related information about history, the time period, or whatever that they otherwise would have no way of knowing. (He also recorded many examples of people experiencing what it was like to be another species, or other living things---again, in many of these cases, the people shared things that they themselves could not have known.) He used experts to back up such information.

I have had numerous experiences, beginning in the Philippines in the early 90's, and continue to have experiences today through Native Ceremony, that convince me that there is life after death. If there is life after death why shouldn't there be reincarnation as well. There are some Native stories I could share as well, but...


MeAgain and I have talked about this subject before and he knows that I disagree with him about Buddhism. It could be that there is a Folk understanding which is not so sophisticated and allows for reincarntion, and then there is a deeper understanding that the monks and priests have that refers to what he said. I think that this is how he saw it when we talked about this a year or two ago. Taoism certainly has a folk understanding (the typical Taoism of the villages and temples around China and in Chinese communities) and a deeper understanding that is what the West is more familiar with (the Taoism of Lao Tzu). However, in Buddhism I think it may also have something to do with the specific school. This is based on my observations of living in Japan, and my study of it, but I would not consider myself as expert on the matter as MeAgain.

But the Japanese do believe in Buddhist heavens and hells, and there is a common belief in reincarnation. As I mentioned earlier, there are plenty of folk tales and stories of reincarnation. There are also many ghost stories and a definite belief in life after death. In the fall there are harvest festivals all over Japan where it is believed that the dead return to visit the living, and Japanese have stories about the visits. One college student told me that his dad would always sprinkle ash from the incense burner on the entryway the night before the O-Bon festivals begin. More than once the grnadfather's footprints were found to have entered the house.

In Japan, birth, protection of the young, and such things as marriage are handled by Shintoism, while such things as death and the ancestors are in the realm of Buddhism. My first wife was Japanese, and we stayed in a house that was in the garden of her parent's house. A priest would come over at certain times of the year and sit in front of their Buddhist shrine and read sutra for the grandfather, that died shortly before we were married, and their ancestors. I remember one time we talked about death after he had finished the ceremony. I don't remember specifics but I think it involved the karmic chain of physical existence until one achieves enlightenment and breaks free. This was back during my agnostic period in life.

I was once introduced to the head of a Buddhist cult in Japan. He would make some kind of a sustained whistling sound that would waver, and his followers would meditate to it. He told me that in my past life I lived in Japan, which is why I came to Japan, and liked Japanese girls. He told the girl that introduced me to him that she lived in the West in her past life, which is why she liked American guys. (I though it had something to do with the fact that I had a penis and she had a vagina---but I guess I was wrong...)

Anyway, the common Buddhism of Japan, or at least, many schools of it, does maintain a tradition of reincarnation.

 

i believe there are infinite possibilities and reincarnation in several forms are among them.

i was also born with a certain familiarity with certain things that did not yet exist on this earth at that time,
some of which now do, some of which have yet to and might not in what remains of my this life.

i believe i have lived previous lives on other physical tangible worlds,
orbiting other suns, in this and possibly other galaxies.

i know no more then anyone else about what if anything happens between physical lives,
but i find no logic in assuming death, or whatever comes after it, to be any more eternal then life.

non-physical forms of sapient existence, are of course another possibility as well.
as are, well infinity minus the handful i've mentioned, of possibilities none of us have as yet imagined.

------------------

one critique i would offer mvw: a dimension is simply a vector (or 'direction' in some conceptual space) possesing a veriable quantity (in the arithmatic sense)

there is no "higher or lower" of them. though there are certainly more then the familiar three cartisian spacial coordinates.

and there are certainly other frames of reference then that of familiar physical space.

i understand intuitively that frames of reference (a perhaps less familar term) are what is meant when the term dimension is misused in this mannor,
it still sets me teeth on edge a bit, every time i see or hear someone doing so.

-----------

(also, if i appear to be claiming any sort of universal wisdom as to all beliefs, this is unintentional. i simply reply to whatever conversation is being headlined (most recently responded to) at the moment in 'philosophy and religion' that happens to catch my eye or feel my perspective has something to contribute to, without first checking to see which of the several sub-forums it might happen to be from)

 

I think one has to be very careful not to form any kind of rigid opinion or dogma with regard to any kind of notions of immortality, existence of the soul or related matters.

I myself had what seemed to be an authentic past life experience some years ago under the influence of lsd. I don't want to go into detail, but it was a very significant experience for me, probably among the most significant of my life. Obviously some would dismiss it a merely a 'drug' experience, but when it occcured it did seem completely authentic. I wasn't really interested in past life experiences, and it came out of the blue. One important aspect of it was that I got healed of a persistent and severe pain I'd had for months,(it had died down before I took the acid - but came back after I'd swallowed it) so that in one way helped authenticate the exp for me. Unlike some of Stan Grof's subjects, I didn't see anything that I can say with absolute certainty I hadn't picked up albiet unconsciously during the course of my life, but when I read deeper into the events I experienced I came across one or two things that did tend to confirm it.

My 90% conclusion after the experience was that there is indeed something deeper inside us which for convenience sake I call 'soul', or even 'individual soul'. The other 10% can see how it could be some form of psychodrama, or even that with psychedelics one can connect with pretty much everything or anything. However, it did have importance for me and still now, a long time after the event, that continues. I do tend to think there was some reality to it - but one always has to be careful with such things, and if anything it helped me to become less opinionated than I had been previously. Even if one were to say the thing was simply a construction of the mind, that still appears to me as somewhat significant. At the time it seemed as real as any other experience I've ever had, with or wthout chemical stimulation.

As Wolf mentioned, Grof recorded many such experiences of subjects under the effects of lsd and holotropic breathwork. To anyone who is interested I'd recommend his book 'LSDoorway to the Numinuous'.
During the exp, after the past life part, I went into about the deepest state of mystical ecstacy I have ever experienced. It certainly had a numinous quality.

You could say 'it was only a drug experience'. And of course that's right. But to be honest, given the magnitude of it, it may be better that it doesn't just occur spontaneously in most people, as it was initially both very frightening and somewhat disorienting. Many spiritual teachers say that it's a mistake to focus too much on previous lives, and really I'd agree in general. But as I said, it wasn't at all in my mind prior to the session.I had no intent to go back to a past life. It felt like something that was being 'done' to me for my own understanding and development.Something like a gift or initiation or even a blessing. I did psychedelics numerous times, but that particular occaision stands out, and I can still recall some of it quite clearly unlike many other sessions where the memory has faded over time.

 

But in my younger days I dated a girl who was killed on Christmas Eve in a very bad traffic accident. I felt very bad because I was going to ask her out that night and didn't, so she went for a ride with her brother and died the next morning.
That night, Christmas day, I met her in a dream. A lucid dream in which we sat on chairs and talked. It was extremely real and she told me about death and what it was like. I was told that it wasn't final and she still existed in another realm. This upset me greatly and I said that if you're not really dead, then you can come back as if nothing ever happened, and she agreed, except she said it wasn't allowed....they wouldn't let her.

Now, was it just a dream? Just something I made up to comfort myself, or was it real?

Who knows?



This is very interesting, but begs the question for me, at least, who are "they?".....It is hard for me to believe there are keeper of souls,so to speak.....that predetermine everything....but because i find it hard to believe, doesn't make it not true, as no one knows really.....just my first initial thought to this.

It is also very sad she died like that...maybe she was telling you, too,...she would have gone out with you, but the car accident made it not let her.


As far as reincarnation goes, I don't know. I find comfort in believing it to be so at times.....nothing is ever wasted....recycling, so to speak...nothing is for naught philosophy.......refuting the life is pointless and meaningless philosophies.

I tend to really feel that the 3 cats that i have now are reincarnated cats I had before. They are all older souls......you can see it in their eyes...Spanky was always a younger soul I never knew before.

but with these three....the stories all vary but are eerily something to me.....

When Chico was run over by a car in our last house, i was devastated.......the night he got killed......the door bell rang probably after he was run over, and no one was there....that never happened before or after.......he was a tiger cat and.grumpy....and I cried and railed to the heavens, so to speak to send him back...


About 6 months later, a lady walked into the SPCA with a little tiger kitten, as we walking out....as we were there to look for another cat and did not find a cat for us. The lady, who was walking in, dropped this kitten into my arms, not knowing why I was there.....and said to me..."Are you looking for a kitten? You can have this one, if you are"...and of course, i took him bypassing all of the SPCA protocol....but we did donate to them after that...and walked out with Finnegan......

After moving here to this house, Finnegan, went back and forth many times one day across the dirt road out of here over and over again like a lunatic, and kept looking at me, as if to say..."I won't get hit by a car here...."


and he is the same as Chico in every way.....it is so uncanny.

Minxy.....little light buff orange female here with stomatitis.....

I had a cat named Chi Chi at the last house. he was the same exact color as Minxy.....and was also hit by a car......Again, I was devastated....he was only around 2 years old, if that old...and did not grow to be very big...........I carried his lifeless body in the rain for half a mile.....to bury him in our yard at the last house......

A year later, a little buff light orange kitty, who looked just liked Chi Chi moved into our house unnannounced....as we used to leave the garage door open there that was in the basement of that house....for the cats to have access to in and out.....and this little kitten was living as a phantom kitten in our house for quite awhile, before I discovered him running across the floor like a bullet and caught him finally to feed him properly.....and to bring him in....We named him Houdini, as he was just like Houdini...the places he could get and out of....were amazing....i thought then that that was Chi Chi come back.....


Then we moved to this house, and Houdini came in one day with half of his tongue bitten off......he lived with that, as there was nothing to be done about that.....but then he disappeared again one day never to come back, He was a small cat, too.


Then Minxy came here.....and she is small with stomatitis mouth problems and so small....not even 7 pounds at full growth........and smarter...and does not want to venture outside too far with no one there to watch out for her....i believe she is Chi Chi and Houdini come back again....and she just jumped up here while I am typing this,.,....



Grayson....i never thought about gray cats much.....but before I adopted him...i saw his face in my dreams......and there he was at the SPCA waiting for me.....
We had a gray cat named Zee.....he also had longer fur, now that I have had time to think about it, like Grayson.....

I found Zee sitting outside of a liquor store on the steps one day on my home from work, in a blizzard, so i picked him up and took him home to give him warmth and food. This is before i ever moved to this area of upstate New York, around the time, I was first seeing Stan....i lived alone in an apartment there with an orange cat named Petey and some cocakatielbirds.

i took Zee home....but Petey and him did not get along at all....so i carried Zee back to where I found him the next day, on my way to work. and left him there.....
I went to work.....and was there a good 8 hours...and that cat Zee, waited for me the entire day outside the bookstore and followed me home....I had to bring him back in and give him a good home after that....but Zee was always the cat i could never get rid of...i felt sorry for him more than anything.....i did not quite love him the way he wanted...as my feeling sorry for him overshadowed that kind of a feeling...and Zee was always waiting for someone to really love him......He died here...at this house, when they talked us into putting him down one day...i never forgave myself for that......and felt badly since he died in 2009.....and now, i think he is back as this cutest kitten....exacting his revenge on me! LOL


Also, the morning before I found out my mom died.......I had a dream of a boy and girl sister and brother team doll set...and the message to me was so loud and clear to take care of my brother.....After I woke up, I found out later that day that my mom was gone.



These kinds of things do make me wonder....if not just wishful thinking.

Ok, Lucky Lou, Petey, Crusher, Willy, Mew, Spanky ,you can all come back now, too...

 

we know why the mind gives us dreams, and i think we really need them.
i like to think they connect us to something,
and yet i can observe they are often composed of bits and peices, rearranged, from experience and experienced imagination.
i like to think this is like the client-server software of an mmo, that somewhere, there is a server side host,
that the client side in running on our own relaxed brains interprets with these familiar and unfamiliar assets.

experience tells my the people i meet in them, are not the same as the people they look like when i'm awake,
although with someone not living in our awake world, well since you're not going to run into them and their differences
from their self your dreams have idealized, it might not matter that they're not, or even, i suppose it quite possible,
that the non-physica aspect of themselves could be 'live' entirly in/on that parallel server/universe.

then also of course, however we feel or interpret what we see, well of course then its also us doing so.
i agree with avoiding pretending to know what we can only ever speculate about,
i just conceptualize in a somewhat technoistic, context as a way of making sense,
not in an absolute anything has to be that particular way sense of it.

what all this has to do with 're' incarnation, is of course, that 'running' on 'the server side'
might be something we could actually experience as a kind of vacation between lives,
or quite possibly they're completely separate or equally possible there's nothing between lives,
a nothing that is not experienced, though millions or billions of years as well as distance,
may pass between our each, however brief, physical lives.

so yah, what we imagine could be real, whether or not how we see it
is just in our own mind's way of seeing.

buckets of cold water and butterflys, are for when we really do need to be doing something else,
lol, like getting up and doing all the things it takes to sustain this life.

 

Don't think reincarnation is a rebirth.

Death is continuum.

The soul is part of that continuum.

That is neither a good or bad thing.


Ever been caught in the dilemma?

Easy to kill yourself, but hard to live it to the end.


Believing in reincarnation is just the ego telling itself it thinks it knows.

 

belief IN anything, is that. the several forms that reincarnation can take, are just a handful out of the infinity of possibilities, most of then unknown. but they are as much possibilities as any other.

 

I appreciate the feedback. Let me try to explain why I use dimension rather than frame of reference. And certainly I appreciate further feedback if you see my reasons unjustified or you don't think I am using it correctly.

I should point out to everyone else that I believe that Themnax is responding to several threads here in the philosophy section that deal with my philosophy, which I have labeled Archephenomenalism. This response would probably fit better in one of those threads but I did respond to the OP of this thread in terms of my philosophy without referring to it, and the point was brought up here. I apologize if this post temporarily hijacks the thread, but it is connected to points I made in my post above.

My use of dimensions, particularly in reference to the 3 physical dimensions represents our existential perception of spacial reality. I would refer to the first dimension as the lowest of these dimensions representing one of the vectors of forward-backward, left-right, or up-down. It doesn't matter which of these 3 vectors is the lowest dimension, all that really matters is that being only 2 directions, it is the most limited, we could describe it as a single line, infinitely small (because any size would add an additional vector), which stretches across the universe. If we were to add another dimension, the combination of these two new vectors allows for an infinite number of new directions. Therefore the 2nd dimension is higher than the first. Which vector, again doesn't matter as long as it is different from the first. But these 2 dimensions are infinitely thin in the direction of the vector we have not yet used.

To illustrate, let’s say that the first dimension is a front-back vector and the 2nd dimension is the left-right or side-side vector. We now have an infinitely thin 2-dimensional plane. Let’s say that this plane is in fact the universe of a 2 dimensional sentient being. If suddenly a 3 dimensional object were to pass through this universe than it would only perceive two of the dimensions of that object---in other words it would only perceive an infinitely thin slice of that object. However the object in its totality is, of course, much greater than the infinitely thin slice that represents the area in which it passes through the plane. Therefore this 2-dimensional being would have no concept of what the object actually looks like, as it would only know this thin slice of it. By the same token, to this 2 dimensional sentient being, the whole universe is only 2 dimensions and it would have no way of knowing in what directions the 3rd dimension would lie. This might seem difficult to imagine, but just consider that this being would not be able to look up or down in any manner. Therefore we can define the 3rd dimension as a higher dimension relative to that 2-dimensional universe.

When we add a 3rd dimension we have an additional infinite directions between the combination of the 3 dimensions (additional as in directions, not as in quantity, because infinite is, well—infinite). This is the perceived spacial reality of the world around us. No matter which way we turn, point, look, or move, it is in a direction we can coordinate within these 3 dimensions. These 3 dimensions are so fundamental to our reality, that we find it difficult to think outside of this context. For us, dimensions are simply vectors, because we come from a context where every single direction we can imagine is accounted for. And such ideas as a 2-dimensional reality are nothing more than silly conjecture, or fantasy. There is no direction we could point to that would represent another dimension. Mathematicians can therefore take the mathematics of 4 or more dimensions, draw a representation of it in 2 dimensions (because it is on a piece of paper), and declare that no dimension is higher than another, because all three dimensions we use every day are interchangeable just by simply tilting our head, for example.

But then Einstein’s theories add another dimension—the 4th dimension representing time, and now the physical dimensions can be placed into a space-time context. But the problem now becomes, where does this vector lie? Which direction does tomorrow come from, or which direction did yesterday go to? At first scientists thought that this 4th dimension was a mathematical formality to make the math work out. Some might still argue that this is the case. But most scientists now understand it to be so fundamental that it really is a thing.

This points out the problem with the argument that dimensions are only mathematical and do not apply to reality. The problem with this argument is that the accepted math of physics, even the very strange math of quantum mechanics, very consistently predicts actual results, down to the very structure of reality itself, indicating that it does represent the reality of the universe we perceive. Or we could argue that time simply represents a frame of reference—after all, time seems to move in only 1 direction. But there is a problem here too, when we add in the math of entropy, we discover that time can move in both directions, and the theories of relativity hint to this as well—in other words there is a direction, we just cannot see where it is.

But remember how I demonstrated a few paragraphs above that the third dimension is higher than the second from the perspective of a reality limited to 2 dimensions? I did this by demonstrating that the higher dimension is present in the lower dimensions by way of an infinitely small peek into that higher dimension. What if the 4th dimension appeared from our 3-dimensional reality in the same manner? As it turns out, it does—it is the infinitely small moment of now. We cannot be talking about a frame of reference, because we simply cannot turn and look into the direction of tomorrow or yesterday, which also means that one individual cannot be sitting in a reference point of a frame of reference of yesterday, while another sits in a reference point of right now and another in a reference point of tomorrow. Archephenomenalism posits that physicality only exists in the present. Therefore the only frames of reference that can exist within this philosophical framework without changing dimensions are in the present moment.

Archephenomenalism also states that time as we understand it does not exist—only the present exists. So the 4th dimension is not really one of time, but the quantum wave. Einstein’s special theory of relativity defines time in terms of the universal constant—the speed of light, but light moving at the speed of light is our perception of light as a quantum wave. The light wave represents zero-time, zero-space, but from our perspective it is in ‘all’ time and space. This is no different than the superpositioned quantum wave which simultaneously appears through all time and space. Now that we have added quantum mechanics into the picture, trying to define a frame of reference for a superpositioned wave becomes very problematic, even from the standpoint of classical physics. It makes far more sense that this superpositioned reality represents a reality of a dimension higher than the three physical dimensions, and we say higher, because the wave is only present in our dimensions as a collapse into a particle---an infinitely small moment of Now. Scientists, like everyone else, naturally see everything in terms of the 3 dimensions of our reality, and so they haven’t even stopped to think of it as of a separate dimension, or as a nonphysical.

I should probably point out that what Archephenomenalism defines as physical is to have a specific position in space-time (though since time doesn’t really exist: space-present, the point at which the 4th dimension and others intersect the 3 physical dimensions). Light as a wave is not physical, but light as a particle (a photon) is physical. An electron, or a proton, is a particle with a specific position in space-present, but in motion it is a quantum wave and therefore non-physical (mind transcends the physical because mind does not exist only for the moment but is always present---therefore we do not perceive reality in terms of infinitely small moments, but perceive and experience it from the phenomena of continuous moments, and time---mind is also nonphysical).

In some of my other threads I talk about light and the present moment. If only the present moment exists in the physical sense, then for you only those photons of light present in your present now (in the vision cells of your eyes, for example, or being absorbed into atoms within your skin, or likewise being emitted from atoms in your skin), in other words, every quantum wave that interacts with another quantum wave and creates a photon and another particle, or subatomic particle, has a defined position and therefore represents physicality within your physical Now. All the other light that is heading towards you, is in your future, or that moving away from you is in your past.

For example, it takes light 8 minutes to go from the sun to you. Classical science treats that light as actually moving through space from the sun to you. Einstein’s theories pointed out that even if it is moving through space to you, each point of light in that 8 minutes of wave, represents a different time. For example, if we were to imagine a photon that is headed towards you, but halfway between you and the sun, in other words, about 4 light minutes away, there is absolutely no way to identify that photon. If we tried to identify it, we would have to send a signal out to that photon, but that would take 4 light minutes to get there, and then it would have to bounce back, which is another 4 light minutes, so whatever photon we were trying to see had already reached us, about the same time when the first signal was meant to reach it. Therefore, that light at that halfway point is about 4 light minutes into your future, and there is absolutely no possible way to detect it until it is in your present moment. But classical science treats it as if it is there, halfway between you and the sun, in that moment, even though you cannot ever detect it, and that for you, it is in your future. Therefore scientists treat each point of light as having its own frame of reference. You are in your own spot at a given time—your own frame of reference, but that point of light is 4 light minutes into outer space in that same moment---in its own frame of reference.

Quantum Mechanics however tells us that there is no point of light halfway between you and the sun, because the light at that point is a wave, not a photon, and that this wave is superpositioned all over the universe. Archephenomenalism places the wave of light as part of the 4th dimension, which, according to my philosophy, is nonphysical—having a physical presence only as it was emitted from an atom on the surface of the sun, and when it was absorbed into an atom within a vision cell of your eye (the two points where a position was defined). Everywhere else, because it has no physical presence, it could not represent a different frame of reference, rather it is in a nonphysical dimension.

Archephenomenalism states that in any given moment, there are simultaneous quanta: particles and subatomic particles, existing with a brief defined position clear across the universe. Therefore there is a single Now, clear across the universe. In other words, this universal point of Now (lasting for the near infinitely small duration of 1 Planck Time) would represent the hologram of the universe. Because it recognizes that each point of physicality is relative to every other point of physicality Archephenomenalism is not contrary to Einstein’s theories, which did away with the older concept that it is the same now across the universe. Therefore each point perceives the Now from its own unique perspective; each point has its own unique frame of reference. But all potential particles, that are not manifesting in that moment, are of a higher dimension, until they do represent a 3 dimensional particle.

This is not to say that all dimensions are higher than the 3 physical dimensions, but certainly the fourth dimension, and the dimension where individual mind is centered in are higher dimensions. If one believes in a higher being or cosmic mind, then it too would also represent a still higher dimension. Mind would also include the quantum information that allows particles to manifest in the spot that they do. All of these dimensions intercept at that point of physicality---in the Quantum Now (as I refer to that point of Now).

I might also add----In, Deconstruction of the Physical, I talk about taking a box and placing it in another dimension by which it completely disappears from our physical dimensions. Neil De Grasse Tyson has also talked about placing something in another dimension and having it completely disappear from our physical dimensions.

One thing that has not occurred to me before is that you are right in the context of the dimensions one currently uses as his/her reference. Our a priori reference is of a 3 dimensional world—so those 3 dimensions are nothing more than vectors, and within those 3 dimensions there is no higher dimension or lower one---they are all one and the same, and we can only separate them in an abstract manner. But the 4th dimension is different---we only have an infinitely small peek into that dimension. We perceive that moment as time, but it is really the infinitely small moment of existence (the manifestation of particles). As an example I will refer to light, but this applies to all particles---light exists everywhere in our reality, but science demonstrates that it is more of a ghost than a physical thing---it is physical for the briefest of moments, otherwise it is a wave---and that moment of course is the Now. Otherwise it represents a zero-space zero-time reality. We understand the barrier to this dimension is the speed of light, and we simply cannot get past it, let alone even reach it. But what if we were then looking from the perspective of the 4th dimension? Then all 4 dimensions become mere vectors. Einstein treated this 4 dimensional perspective by putting our three dimensions into a geodesic (which is really how it is---3 dimensions create an ever-expanding globe all around us from our own center point). From a 4 dimensional perspective everything is simply a matter of different directions, and wave particle duality coincides as opposite directions, and all 4 different dimensions seem to blend into each other—perhaps this is the space-time as Einstein envisioned it. The next dimension is probably that of individuated mind, including quantum information. If we consider the perspective of the wave, which exists, as we see it, through all time and space, then mind, as it expresses its intentional object (a thought)—which happens in the individual moment, must seem infinitely small… and so it goes, additional dimensions representing that point beyond reality we cannot fathom, but have an infinitely small peek into. (Science also refers to dimensions folded within other dimensions and so forth. I don’t deal with such cases, but apparently there are many dimensions we have to work with.)

Anyway-----that is how and why I use dimensions. Let me know if you see anything wrong with me using dimensions rather than frame of reference.


-----
To keep this post in line with the OP on reincarnation, let me explain how it fits in---The Arche (Greek for First Cause) in Archephenomenalism is Mind. Physicality exists only for an extremely small moment of time, and during that moment, nothing but the present exists, but then that moment is gone and a new present moment exists. Each point of physicality lasts only for 1 Planck time and exists at 1 Planck Length—just long enough to create the phenomena of existence (and if this is the case, mass exists for an equivalent light time to light length, which means that all particles are like light---representing zero-space and zero-time----in other words, as the first Phenomenalist, George Berkeley said, esse est percipi (Existence is perception)).

The universe, then, is nothing more than a hologram. The mind creates it into the universe we believe to be real, and because mind transcends the physical moments of Now, it is therefore transcendent of physicality. We are therefore higher dimensional beings, but we do not realize this, because as Jung defined the ego, it naturally filters out anything that suggests such a reality. I believe our purpose here is to experience life, and I agree with Jung, that it is to achieve individualization. I therefore believe that we are individuals at the higher dimensions as well.

But if mind is the First Cause, then it must be far more than just what we humans existentially understand it to be. Quantum Information, which determines when and where a quantum wave will collapse into a particle, would be a form of mind as well. After all, Quantum Mechanics explains that it maintains a history (has a memory), it cannot be destroyed, but it can be transferred, and it can gain new information and be altered. The implication here is that every particle manifests through intention in a specific time and place. Therefore, every particle in the universe has meaning and value, which I think is very important in today’s nihilistic world where, at a cultural level, all meaning, value, and truth has been lost.

Anyway, because we are more mind than physical, I argue that we do survive death, and can choose to return here to experience more life.

 

well my perspective, i don't consider mind to be first cause at all, if anything mind is a very secondary, possibly even accidental phenomina.
it is, well our minds are our first causing in our percieving of them of course, in OUR perceiving of anything.
but really a whole heck of a lot of everything else had to be there, for US to have minds, which are basically software, requiring the hardware of a brain to run on.
that's why i seperate mind from soul, or true self, which might be likened to an end user to the mind+brain system

now some sort of awareness outside of time and any requirement for physical aspect, in principal, could have had something to do with causing
physical existence in any sense to come into being. i once, when young thought the arguments favoring its requirement convincing.

i no longer find its requirement convincing, but find no objection to its OPTIONAL existence.
arguments requiring there to even BE a 'first cause' invariably end up chaising their own tail.

spirit, or true self, being entirely non-physical, and like all non-physical things, should they choose to exist,
can boldly go, where no memory, because of memory's reliance upon a physical substrate of brain,
or so our current science seems to tell us, never can.

so the same spirit, can be born many times, each life otherwise unique,
and random as to what physical world, with its own unique properties,
in this ever so diverse universe, in which billions of suns, the majority of which,
have their own families of planets orbiting them,

and again many, if not most, having on or several of those planets,
within its solar system's 'goldylocks' zone.

there could be nine dimensions, there could be eleven, there could be any number,
withing our physical univers's fraime of reference.

beyond the physical is not beyond possible or even probable 'concrete', meaning well and completely defined and or experiencable, existence.
but it is, by deffinician beyond provable knowledge.

existence cannot be proven to depend upon knowledge, and from my perspactive, a very good thing it cannot.

now there are several ways in which multiple dimensions can exist beyond physical time-space as we think we know it, or to the extent that we do.
essentially it involves other frames of reference which while possibly occupying overlapping conceptual space,
are unconnected to each other, and even time can have its own multi-dimetional frame of reference which in space appears as a single vector.
spirit, being completely non-physical, can also likewise have entirely its own.
and it is thus in the frame of reference of the nonphysical, that spirit might endure, in the absence of life in any physical sense,
or as we might define it.

'meta' physics optional, but not required, other then in the sense of as a label for non-physical frames of reference.

so reincarnation; a new life on a new to that spirit world is born, in the bodies and physical forms of that physical world.
what happens in the non-physical after the death of one life and before the birth of the next,
well any of the possibilties imagined exist, including the complete abscense of any experiencing by that awareness.

 

I kind of agree. Rather than being a first cause, I'd say mind as we have it is something like the latest production of nature here on planet earth. I don't say a 'final product' because who can say what modes of consciousness may emerge in the future. Prior to the emergence of mental beings (us) it would have been impossible for any creature on earth to imagine what mind might be like. Similarly we can't picture to ourselves by thinking what a state beyond mind would be.


So - a soul or true self which uses mind as a vehichle in this life, and possibly beyond it in future lives or some other form of existence.

Of course, I could be entirely wrong about this. The situation is one where we seek with our linear and one track thinking processes to map out what may be non-linear and multiple.If we're lucky we may now and then get a flash of intuition which conveys more than rational thinking. In the end I suppose it comes down to how one defines mind. I tend to think of mind as we know it as something constructed and conditioned by cultural accidents. It existed as a potential when we were born, and took shape under a mass of conditioning. If we could keep a child in complete isolation (I'm not saying we should of course) so they learned no language, what would their mind be like? Would they even be capable of thought?

Some, such as Stephen Hawking, say they want to know the 'mind of God'. I'm not sure though that God relies on mind. It seems to me like a projection of our own limited faculties onto the infinite and unbounded.

 

they would absolutely be capable of thought, and mind can be present before birth, though not long before or the child would be born insane. their thoughts would merely be uninfluenced by enculturation.

i'm not sure in what context hawking intended that. i doubt if his meaning was literal as western thought conceives the idea of a god. but then i don't really know.

well all of us are capable of being wrong about everything. even a god would be.

basically i am aware of nothing that would require a god or god like being, to have anything to do with anything anyone has ever come up with, to believe they know about or even define them.
souls, heavens, and multiple lives are all equally capable of existing, with or without god-like beings doing so also.

we've just come up with these beliefs that tie them together.

maybe some humans have been choosen in times past by a god or gods to channel them.
maybe every belief was started by one, or maybe well meaning people who wanted to encourage others to want to avoid causing harm, came up with them on their own.

my own thoughts often do not begin or end with words, but with concepts expressed by them, that only require words to communicate them to someone else.
that's why i think paget was mistaken in perceiving language as the basis of thought.

non-human species, without complex vocal languages, clearly and unambiguously 'think', and many, almost certainly, imagine as well.
that they lack our level of motivation to express what they imagine creatively remains something of a mystery, but one from observation i've been forced to accept.

humans who similarly reject their own imaginations i can perceive no distinction from sentient but non sapient creatures.
no reason to assume the true selves of all living things, or at least all chordata, aren't also souls, though perhaps less imaginative ones are less complex.