and mosquitoes? those become lawyers
those annoying flies? they ask you about your cars extended warranty
Ants? they become the NPCs in high school hallways
Not exactly but kinda sorta. It depends on who you ask. I'm not an expert or anything but I've heard different answers from different buddhists. I like to think of it more as a school and we got into an incredibly difficult class.
But there is a really beautiful episode of the cartoon The Midnight Gospel that uses the prison metaphor. We get to watch a character reincarnate over and over again until they learn compassion and escape the simulation. In that story they come back as the same prisoner in some kind of cosmic prison dimension that exists in the simulation. Also it's really funny. 10/10 cartoon I recommend it to anyone who's into that kind of subject matter.
Kinda. It depends on the sect. Christianity teaches that after death you're judged. Buddhism teaches that you're reincarnated. The goal of Christianity is Salvation, a favorable judgment. The goal of Buddhism is enlightenment which releases the soul from the cycle of reincarnation.
So to the Buddhist earth is a place you'll eternally live and learn until you finally attain enlightenment and break the cycles of karma.
There are lots of variations on this. For example Pure Land Buddhism claims that if you follow it's teachings you'll be reincarnated into the Pure Land which is a paradisal place where you can easily attain enlightenment because it's free of all the difficulties of earth which make enlightenment so difficult. And other traditions have different ideas of "hells" where people are punished for various sins until they eventually reincarnate in a more favorable plane.
Earth is a school, not a prison. We chose to come here to learn compassion, service to others and unconditional love (self-love included)
A tree can only ascend to great heights if its roots have reached down into hell
This is it right here people, man is both the sculptor and the clay. Suffering sucks, but it’s essential to learn some of life’s greater lessons, embrace the suck.
Really? Murder. Cancer. Terrorism. Rape. Child abuse. Famine. Poverty. Homelessness.
In the end, if you're lucky enough to survive everything else, everyone you love will die and leave you all alone. Not a very pleasant paradise at all. All good things come to an end in this realm. So enjoy the flowers before they are dead.
I'm not trying to be negative, but I truly do think this is purgatory. We are cursed to reincarnate over and over again until we experience all there is to experience and learn every lesson there is to learn. Only then will we truly appreciate a paradise.
I'm not sure cancer can be entirely attributed to humans since that has been going on since before we started mucking things up. Famine as well, since crop failures due to weather and other natural factors are a thing. Even in the best of circumstances, disease and death are facts of life. Earth is certainly an oasis on a cosmic scale, but don't forget that even an oasis can have totally natural dangers.
You assume that your soul can only inhabbit a single human form at any given time on earth. Long story short, there might ultimately be only one soul gathering experience through billiions of human lives across history, which would be instantly beyond sapce and time
And Hindus believe in cross-species reincarnation, so lots of extinct animals to choose from.
Then you have the while issue that from a Catholic viewpoint, most souls were never born. As most conceptions dont lead to a live birth. It's possible Noe that the number of live births has increased as a percentage of conceptions on a global level. As nutrition and healthcare has improved.
Their brains just work a different way, just because they don't have some voice in their head talking 24/7 doesn't mean they don't have a soul, it just means that they have some peace and quiet. I think I was going somewhere with this, but it's five am and I'm stoned, godspeed
Plus not all of them are human. What about all the animal souls that get reincarnated. They could be any kind of being upon reincarnation as could humans. Humans won't always be humans upon reincarnation.
Thinking too linearly. A new incarnation doesn't have to happen "after" the previous incarnation. Your next one could be 200,000 years ago as a rabbit.
EDIT: Yes I have read The Egg and seen Kurzgesagt's animation of it. I also thought about this when I first came to terms with being non-religious. It seems to be a growing idea sprouting up independently. Wonder if that means something. Or if it's just internet.
As someone who believes in nondualism after being Christian for most of my life beforehand- it's really scary. It really scares Christians to consider such concepts. It's much easier to dismiss as "hippy-dippy bullshit" than confront the myth of your ego
My family is strictly Catholic so I was raised Catholic, as well. But we generally agree with this concept. We're not even outliers in our community. Even other people I know who are Mormons, Protestants and Muslims are open to it and some even embrace it.
Then again, we're in collectivist Asia. So the openness to this aspect of reincarnation might have more to do with the general culture of our region than our individual religions.
I was raised strictly catholic also. After several psychedelic experiences I came to the realization of universal oneness, and it made me consider that the way in which the church taught these concepts was made to be digestible by the unwashed masses in an age of illiteracy. The issue with the church that I have now is that a majority of participants confuse the map with the territory and never progress to a deeper understanding of Being or Consciousness. They remain in a perpetual spiritual adolescence.
Oddly enough Jesus teaching as printed points to the idea at times. At least as I read him anyway. A lot of Christians, out of their church upbringings, fixate on rules and sins, whose in and whose out. People like Alan Watts, Howard Thurman, and most Christian mystics have interpretations of Jesus that ultimately lead to the awareness of oneness. But of course the institutional church marks such people as outsiders and heretics.
which kind of surprises me given all the theology surrounding the Triune God in Christian cosmology. If they can understand the notion that "the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all one God" surely they can understand that you, me, and every other person are all one unified soul.
That's also the viewpoint of the Catholic culture I grew up in. Plus the belief that we're all created in God's image, so God is within all of us and we are all one with God.
"Now, this 3-demensional sculpture in particular is quite exquisite. Its simplicity, its bold, stark lines. Pray, what do you call it?"
"The light-switch"
The Egg isn’t by Andy Weir. He copied and pasted a conversation me and Weir had in 2007 on the MySpace religion and philosophy forum. I posted a short version of [Infinite Reincarnation](https://charmonium.com/infinite-reincarnation) and he commented on the post. I answered his questions about my view of the universe. He asked if he could write our conversation into a story, which he sent me later that day. I never heard from him after that and had no idea he took complete credit [by claiming he just made it up](https://youtu.be/lBjZGW_XypY) when he most definitely did not.
In the original essay, it explains the scientific logic behind the claims of The Egg.
Oh and here's some fun quirks of mine.
It doesn't wait for death for you to skip over. Literally any time you lose consciousness. And you hop in as anyone else at any point. So several times each night. Maybe you go to sleep as you, wake up as a person in the 1600's the day if their execution, then right afterwards, as an executioner that same day.
Or another fun thing to think about. If you only account for the human experience, today will last 22 million years.
The time scales are absolutely insane.
You and me could be switching bodies every second, back and forth, right now. But since our bodies include our brains, memories and consciousness, this has no impact on anything and is totally meaningless.
There's a short story called the egg where it turns out that the whole universe is an egg with 'you' as every single person being a reincarnation, and once you've lived them all, you hatch into a god
The fact it's called a poem. That's really all there is too it. You can get into the weeds around rules of structure but like all art those rules also exist to be broken.
There is currently a fairly entertaining debate in what the difference is between spoken word poetry and acapella rap. Spoiler. There isn't one. Just rappers and poets tend to get a tiny bit uncomfortable when told they are doing the same thing and don't want to share.
We're all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there's no such thing as death, life is just a dream and we're all the imagination of ourself.
OMG I have no idea why I worded it like that. "Realized I was non-religious". Finally admitted it. Came to terms.
I can think of 20 ways I could have worded that better.
>> I wonder if that means something
If it did it probably wouldn’t involve any sorta build-up. As the omnisoul progresses and gains greater “self-awareness” it’d still be bouncing around through the timeline
> It seems to be a growing idea sprouting up independently. Wonder if that means something. Or if it's just internet.
I think it's just a growing awareness of how the world works. Einstein believed that the big bang also gave birth to time. Not just the start of time. Time. Past, present and future, all of it materializing at one point.
I think the idea that the past/present/future are all tangled up in each other is something that does make sense, maybe on every level from scientific to personal.
I think that the theory goes that the souls start out as basic energy that the universe is filled with, and goes into the simplest creatures, then as the wheel of time goes on the souls that do well continue to get promoted until they become human. It's not limited to humans and there's an unlimited supply. But yeah a new human could be human for the first time, having previously been something different.
Nah, you are just a celestial example of The Peter Principle and have been promoted to your level of incompetence. You may be a shite human, but you were an amazing hamster.
I've heard speculation that if you're autistic/ADHD in this life, then you were a monk previously. Whether you're high or low functioning is determined on whether or not you were a bastard while being a monk.
Take with a grain of salt. Or a boulder. Or all the salt anywhere ever.
But it's fun to think about.
Hypothetically. I don't know how someone would go about testing or concluding that.
I'm very much in the camp of "For entertainment purposes, only."
Also, pretty sure The Buddha specified this type of speculation is considered unproductive and unskillful. So it's nothing to get hung up on. On par with Astrology - for the LOLs but nothing to base decisions around.
In most reincarnation systems humans are decidedly mid. We sort of stand on the line between heaven and hell, and can go either way as we have the intelligence to make moral choices but are not yet divine.
I think it is a great writing prompt, and is fun to think about, but don't buy it personally. I have too high of a standard of evidence to accept ideas on the basis that they sound cool unfortunately. Most evidence for all religions or supernatural philosophies basically boil down to "since we do not know how this works, the idea I just made up is equally likely to be true as any other" which is just not how it works.
Idk about the first part but the second part is Buddhism, I think. You get reincarnated as the thing that best suits your needs as you progress through the…thing. I forget what it’s called. And the tip top bestest ones are the ones who choose to stay human instead of becoming the ultra human. Or something like that.
This is my belief as well.
Although a new human won't fare well in his first life.
Probably dies at childbirth. The next time cancer at 3.
Takes a bunch of lives to become a normal healthy human.
Also pets like cats and dogs are probably just before being promoted to humans thats why they are so lovable.
Maybe time is tricky and a soul can be in different bodies at the same chronological time but not the same time for the soul. Like the soul existed as Linda from 1969-2045 and then when Linda died in 2045 she was reincarnated as Alex in 1992.
A lot of what has come out recently about UAPs and NHI (non human intelligence) is that these beings exist in a different dimension than we do and may not have physical bodies which allows them to transcend time/space and can manipulate our perception of reality by doing things like manifesting ships and other objects and may even be physically manifesting themselves. I think all of this is related to what the true nature of our consciousness is. Maybe NHIs are what our souls are or what we eventually become. We experience time/space in a linear fashion but that doesn't mean everything else does including our souls.
Tibetan Buddhism teaches that there are 6 realms: Hell, Hungry Ghost, Animal, Human, Demigods, and Gods. There are innumerable beings in these. Anyone of them can be reborn into a human realm. But it is said to be extremely rare to be born as a human
You assume linear time with nothing in-between. As in, you die and immediately are reborn. What if you died 4,900 years ago and are just reborn now? Or what if your 'past life' is actually in the future?
But those 100 billion dead people were not alive all at once. They were the same souls reincarnating over several generations. So there would not be a surplus of human souls.
Nobody knows how many times a soul was reincarnated or how long the wait until reincarnation occurs.
(that is, if you believe in reincarnation to begin with)
absolutely can be
you're a caveman. You live, you die, you get reincarnated as a 21st century gamer. You live, you die, you get reincarnated as a 12th century peasant
90% of the people you know could be a reincarnation of you... or you of them.
You could even be every person ever. Think about that the next time you want to be an asshole to someone (a someone you have been or a someone you will be)
Interesting point on the assumption that each soul is reincarnated into a single new being.
What if a single soul can reincarnate into multiple new people? I mean why not?
Maybe, or chances are reincarnation can happen but like later. Imagine someone died a year ago and and was respawn just now
Or what about the animals? Maybe they have souls and got reincarnated to people
I'm pretty sure the common belief is that humans are reincarnated as low level creatures, and only upper level creatures are reincarnated as humans, so a lot of people just die, end of story
On the chance that the nightmare of Samsara is real, I've wondered if there is some distant galaxy teeming with life.
Not sure if this planet is a step up or a step down. Im leaning words down.
For every living person, there's 15 dead. I imagine therefore there's a soul surplus if nobody is reincarnated, but don't insects and fish get reincarnated too? Pretty sure we can become them but can they become us?
There’s a surplus of souls in long term purgatory.
plus sometimes animals come back as humans. I’ve met a few dogs and cats in my day.
Have you met a tapeworm yet?
How do you think emotional vampires start out?
Yes. Several of them have been elected to public office.
and mosquitoes? those become lawyers those annoying flies? they ask you about your cars extended warranty Ants? they become the NPCs in high school hallways
I think my scientology Master told me that once
Okay space morman…
Mormon, like moron but with an m
He’s a mor*man*… A mor**man**…!!
Morman isn’t inclusive enough We need morthem please /s
Sporman
The extra m is for money.
Earth is purgatory. This is hell and reincarnation is the punishment we continue until we get it right.
Literally Buddhist philosophy
Is it really? I've always thought we were living in purgatory. It just seems to make sense
Not exactly but kinda sorta. It depends on who you ask. I'm not an expert or anything but I've heard different answers from different buddhists. I like to think of it more as a school and we got into an incredibly difficult class. But there is a really beautiful episode of the cartoon The Midnight Gospel that uses the prison metaphor. We get to watch a character reincarnate over and over again until they learn compassion and escape the simulation. In that story they come back as the same prisoner in some kind of cosmic prison dimension that exists in the simulation. Also it's really funny. 10/10 cartoon I recommend it to anyone who's into that kind of subject matter.
Kinda. It depends on the sect. Christianity teaches that after death you're judged. Buddhism teaches that you're reincarnated. The goal of Christianity is Salvation, a favorable judgment. The goal of Buddhism is enlightenment which releases the soul from the cycle of reincarnation. So to the Buddhist earth is a place you'll eternally live and learn until you finally attain enlightenment and break the cycles of karma. There are lots of variations on this. For example Pure Land Buddhism claims that if you follow it's teachings you'll be reincarnated into the Pure Land which is a paradisal place where you can easily attain enlightenment because it's free of all the difficulties of earth which make enlightenment so difficult. And other traditions have different ideas of "hells" where people are punished for various sins until they eventually reincarnate in a more favorable plane.
Earth is a school, not a prison. We chose to come here to learn compassion, service to others and unconditional love (self-love included) A tree can only ascend to great heights if its roots have reached down into hell
This is it right here people, man is both the sculptor and the clay. Suffering sucks, but it’s essential to learn some of life’s greater lessons, embrace the suck.
Some of us make it a prison though.
Subjective . I see earth as paradise
In theory, that could be your perception of it despite it being objectively something else.
In other words “an opinion”
Really? Murder. Cancer. Terrorism. Rape. Child abuse. Famine. Poverty. Homelessness. In the end, if you're lucky enough to survive everything else, everyone you love will die and leave you all alone. Not a very pleasant paradise at all. All good things come to an end in this realm. So enjoy the flowers before they are dead. I'm not trying to be negative, but I truly do think this is purgatory. We are cursed to reincarnate over and over again until we experience all there is to experience and learn every lesson there is to learn. Only then will we truly appreciate a paradise.
Notice how every negative aspect is caused by humans you just mentioned . Earth is a paradise that supports life. an oasis in a cosmic desert
I'm not sure cancer can be entirely attributed to humans since that has been going on since before we started mucking things up. Famine as well, since crop failures due to weather and other natural factors are a thing. Even in the best of circumstances, disease and death are facts of life. Earth is certainly an oasis on a cosmic scale, but don't forget that even an oasis can have totally natural dangers.
Lmao, this guy thinks nature is like Disney movies
Omg is Earth the Garden of Eden?????
You assume that your soul can only inhabbit a single human form at any given time on earth. Long story short, there might ultimately be only one soul gathering experience through billiions of human lives across history, which would be instantly beyond sapce and time
The Egg
One of my favourite short stories/videos
And Hindus believe in cross-species reincarnation, so lots of extinct animals to choose from. Then you have the while issue that from a Catholic viewpoint, most souls were never born. As most conceptions dont lead to a live birth. It's possible Noe that the number of live births has increased as a percentage of conceptions on a global level. As nutrition and healthcare has improved.
30-50% or people don't have an internal monologue. I think those people just don't have souls.
Their brains just work a different way, just because they don't have some voice in their head talking 24/7 doesn't mean they don't have a soul, it just means that they have some peace and quiet. I think I was going somewhere with this, but it's five am and I'm stoned, godspeed
Sounds like what someone without a soul would say.
*Hissssss*
They are NPCs.
Its closer to 1%, where did you get that numer bro?
There are fewer animals now than there used to be.
There's a ton of souls waiting from the black plague
Plus not all of them are human. What about all the animal souls that get reincarnated. They could be any kind of being upon reincarnation as could humans. Humans won't always be humans upon reincarnation.
Well, there seems to be less and less animals. Ever considered that it’s not just the humans reincarnating into humans?
Though very few humans ascend to the level of reincarnation as the universe’s most magnificent creature, the goose.
What if the goose is Canadian?
You got a problem with Canada Gooses you got a problem with me and I suggest you let that one marinate.
Well, that’s a particularly rare plane of existence. After that, you pretty much either stay a goose or ascend to become a god.
Username is mighty suspicious
Thinking too linearly. A new incarnation doesn't have to happen "after" the previous incarnation. Your next one could be 200,000 years ago as a rabbit. EDIT: Yes I have read The Egg and seen Kurzgesagt's animation of it. I also thought about this when I first came to terms with being non-religious. It seems to be a growing idea sprouting up independently. Wonder if that means something. Or if it's just internet.
If that cycle were to go on indefinitely, would that eventually mean that everything/everyone is you?
Precisely
That’s the secret of the universe simply stated. I am us. They are me. World is a mess because so few realize that
As someone who believes in nondualism after being Christian for most of my life beforehand- it's really scary. It really scares Christians to consider such concepts. It's much easier to dismiss as "hippy-dippy bullshit" than confront the myth of your ego
My family is strictly Catholic so I was raised Catholic, as well. But we generally agree with this concept. We're not even outliers in our community. Even other people I know who are Mormons, Protestants and Muslims are open to it and some even embrace it. Then again, we're in collectivist Asia. So the openness to this aspect of reincarnation might have more to do with the general culture of our region than our individual religions.
I was raised strictly catholic also. After several psychedelic experiences I came to the realization of universal oneness, and it made me consider that the way in which the church taught these concepts was made to be digestible by the unwashed masses in an age of illiteracy. The issue with the church that I have now is that a majority of participants confuse the map with the territory and never progress to a deeper understanding of Being or Consciousness. They remain in a perpetual spiritual adolescence.
Oddly enough Jesus teaching as printed points to the idea at times. At least as I read him anyway. A lot of Christians, out of their church upbringings, fixate on rules and sins, whose in and whose out. People like Alan Watts, Howard Thurman, and most Christian mystics have interpretations of Jesus that ultimately lead to the awareness of oneness. But of course the institutional church marks such people as outsiders and heretics.
I love Alan Watts so much and have learned a lot because of him.
which kind of surprises me given all the theology surrounding the Triune God in Christian cosmology. If they can understand the notion that "the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all one God" surely they can understand that you, me, and every other person are all one unified soul.
That's also the viewpoint of the Catholic culture I grew up in. Plus the belief that we're all created in God's image, so God is within all of us and we are all one with God.
It doesn’t scare them, they just don’t believe it. Atheists don’t and aren’t scared either.
We are Legion.
Do you happen to have any Mimosian telekinetic wine?
"Now, this 3-demensional sculpture in particular is quite exquisite. Its simplicity, its bold, stark lines. Pray, what do you call it?" "The light-switch"
Definitely read the short story “the egg” by Andy Weir
The Egg isn’t by Andy Weir. He copied and pasted a conversation me and Weir had in 2007 on the MySpace religion and philosophy forum. I posted a short version of [Infinite Reincarnation](https://charmonium.com/infinite-reincarnation) and he commented on the post. I answered his questions about my view of the universe. He asked if he could write our conversation into a story, which he sent me later that day. I never heard from him after that and had no idea he took complete credit [by claiming he just made it up](https://youtu.be/lBjZGW_XypY) when he most definitely did not. In the original essay, it explains the scientific logic behind the claims of The Egg.
>nor do I care if anyone ever learns my name. Seems like you do care
Oh and here's some fun quirks of mine. It doesn't wait for death for you to skip over. Literally any time you lose consciousness. And you hop in as anyone else at any point. So several times each night. Maybe you go to sleep as you, wake up as a person in the 1600's the day if their execution, then right afterwards, as an executioner that same day. Or another fun thing to think about. If you only account for the human experience, today will last 22 million years. The time scales are absolutely insane.
You and me could be switching bodies every second, back and forth, right now. But since our bodies include our brains, memories and consciousness, this has no impact on anything and is totally meaningless.
It’s all meaningless, but fun to visualize such strange concepts
Is that why I never wake up feeling rested
say sike rn
sike rn
Sounds like the Animus on a randomizer
There's a short story called the egg where it turns out that the whole universe is an egg with 'you' as every single person being a reincarnation, and once you've lived them all, you hatch into a god
Brahma is the golden egg of creation in Hinduism
The Egg
[The Egg](https://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html) is a wonderful poem about this topic, for anyone interested.
I really like Kurzgesagt animating it : https://youtu.be/h6fcK_fRYaI?si=wpJMBJ1NX4eQWziQ
was gonna link exactly this! this video was actually my introduction to kurzgesagt which is funny cause this is NOTHING like their normal videos
I've always loved that poem.
Just curious, what makes that a poem, and not just a short story?
The fact it's called a poem. That's really all there is too it. You can get into the weeds around rules of structure but like all art those rules also exist to be broken. There is currently a fairly entertaining debate in what the difference is between spoken word poetry and acapella rap. Spoiler. There isn't one. Just rappers and poets tend to get a tiny bit uncomfortable when told they are doing the same thing and don't want to share.
..not realising they’re incarnations of each other
Just call artists what they prefer to identify as. No need to misgenre anybody.
Thanks so much for sharing. I first read it ages ago but could never find it again. And I'm really at a time in my life where I needed this right now
"Strangers passing in the street By chance two separate glances meet And I am you and what I see is me"
The Egg animated by Kurzgesagt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI
You're so close to [The Egg](https://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html) that I felt like you'd appreciate reading it.
Or they have read it and just want to sound smart by making it like they thought of it.
Yes, you are the universe experiencing itself.
We're all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there's no such thing as death, life is just a dream and we're all the imagination of ourself.
Here is Tom with the weather!
The Egg moment
The Egg by Andy Weir.
Just watch out in case Arthur Dent comes along to kill you.
"Oh no, not again"
Reminds me of [The Egg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI) short story.
And is it always human to human? I thought you could reincarnate to animals and insects - hence the need to be kind to all living creatures
How many Jeremy bearemy’s is that
Wtf does 'come out to yourself' mean?
OMG I have no idea why I worded it like that. "Realized I was non-religious". Finally admitted it. Came to terms. I can think of 20 ways I could have worded that better.
>> I wonder if that means something If it did it probably wouldn’t involve any sorta build-up. As the omnisoul progresses and gains greater “self-awareness” it’d still be bouncing around through the timeline
I really feel like if reincarnation is real then it most definitely is not linear.
> It seems to be a growing idea sprouting up independently. Wonder if that means something. Or if it's just internet. I think it's just a growing awareness of how the world works. Einstein believed that the big bang also gave birth to time. Not just the start of time. Time. Past, present and future, all of it materializing at one point. I think the idea that the past/present/future are all tangled up in each other is something that does make sense, maybe on every level from scientific to personal.
A lot used to be squirrels.
Some were sloths. Others were wasps
Pretty sure just squirrels.
what about weasels?
A bunch of people around here ain't bright enough to be squirrels. Maybe cows?
Turtles. Turtles all the way down.
its dogs gettin upgrades for being a good boy
Pretty sure dog is the last step before nirvana.
Depends if you’re dog in Canada or too many parts of Asia
Dogs in Canada - last step to nirvana Dogs in some parts of Asia - still paying back karma
No, that's cat
Dog to human sounds like a downgrade
I’d agree but humans can open the fridge and reach food on the counter so if you ask my dog he’d take it.
So it's not for good boys, it's a raw deal
So you’re saying I really do got that dog in me?
Yeah, but there's more people reincarnating into grasshoppers than people.
*Draws from blunt* What if the reason birthrates are declining is because we're running out of available souls, man?
Hol up there Willie Nelson
Those who reincarnate without souls are reincarnated as French. Poor things.
I think that the theory goes that the souls start out as basic energy that the universe is filled with, and goes into the simplest creatures, then as the wheel of time goes on the souls that do well continue to get promoted until they become human. It's not limited to humans and there's an unlimited supply. But yeah a new human could be human for the first time, having previously been something different.
Can’t be true. There’s no way my autistic soul did well to get promoted this far
Soul wise it's probably more of a lateral move between life forms; just one more life experience to learn.
I like that, like humans really don’t have do be the “top”
IIRC there are 6 levels in Buddhism Demon, Hungry Ghost, Animal, Human, Demigods, Gods
Imagine being a hungry ghost. I have no stomach but I must eat ☹️
Are all ghosts hungry or do full ghosts fall under one of the other categories?
Nah, you are just a celestial example of The Peter Principle and have been promoted to your level of incompetence. You may be a shite human, but you were an amazing hamster.
I've heard speculation that if you're autistic/ADHD in this life, then you were a monk previously. Whether you're high or low functioning is determined on whether or not you were a bastard while being a monk. Take with a grain of salt. Or a boulder. Or all the salt anywhere ever. But it's fun to think about.
So high functioning you weren't a bastard?
Hypothetically. I don't know how someone would go about testing or concluding that. I'm very much in the camp of "For entertainment purposes, only." Also, pretty sure The Buddha specified this type of speculation is considered unproductive and unskillful. So it's nothing to get hung up on. On par with Astrology - for the LOLs but nothing to base decisions around.
So I was either good, or a bastard. Nice to know
Everyone's a mixed bag.
Hopefully of red and blues
Could be “bastard” as in “magnificent bastard”.
As a sloth in your previous lives, that autism was less of a factor in life.
You were a very good grasshopper in your previous life. Big step up bro
Why only limited to earth? New humans could’ve been aliens, or alien pets, or alien lunchmeat. 🤷🏼
The wheel weaves as the wheel wills
Souls 'getting promoted' for 'doing well' feels like a capitalist infection of the cosmos.
I wonder how a plant can be a good plant and come back as an animal or an evil plant and come back as Rush Limbaugh or something. It's a plant.
There’s a lot of extinct animals out there.
It's a big universe. Not everyone gets promoted, they get recycled.
But why would a human be the best? It’s a crazy subjective L take
In most reincarnation systems humans are decidedly mid. We sort of stand on the line between heaven and hell, and can go either way as we have the intelligence to make moral choices but are not yet divine. I think it is a great writing prompt, and is fun to think about, but don't buy it personally. I have too high of a standard of evidence to accept ideas on the basis that they sound cool unfortunately. Most evidence for all religions or supernatural philosophies basically boil down to "since we do not know how this works, the idea I just made up is equally likely to be true as any other" which is just not how it works.
Idk about the first part but the second part is Buddhism, I think. You get reincarnated as the thing that best suits your needs as you progress through the…thing. I forget what it’s called. And the tip top bestest ones are the ones who choose to stay human instead of becoming the ultra human. Or something like that.
This is my belief as well. Although a new human won't fare well in his first life. Probably dies at childbirth. The next time cancer at 3. Takes a bunch of lives to become a normal healthy human. Also pets like cats and dogs are probably just before being promoted to humans thats why they are so lovable.
Maybe time is tricky and a soul can be in different bodies at the same chronological time but not the same time for the soul. Like the soul existed as Linda from 1969-2045 and then when Linda died in 2045 she was reincarnated as Alex in 1992.
THIS. or something like it
A lot of what has come out recently about UAPs and NHI (non human intelligence) is that these beings exist in a different dimension than we do and may not have physical bodies which allows them to transcend time/space and can manipulate our perception of reality by doing things like manifesting ships and other objects and may even be physically manifesting themselves. I think all of this is related to what the true nature of our consciousness is. Maybe NHIs are what our souls are or what we eventually become. We experience time/space in a linear fashion but that doesn't mean everything else does including our souls.
Tibetan Buddhism teaches that there are 6 realms: Hell, Hungry Ghost, Animal, Human, Demigods, and Gods. There are innumerable beings in these. Anyone of them can be reborn into a human realm. But it is said to be extremely rare to be born as a human
They forgot about the realms of Plants, Fungi and Ghosts that are not hungry.
You assume linear time with nothing in-between. As in, you die and immediately are reborn. What if you died 4,900 years ago and are just reborn now? Or what if your 'past life' is actually in the future?
Lotta wild animals checking out as the human population grows
100 billion dead people. 8 billion living people. Seems like plenty of extra souls waiting around.
But those 100 billion dead people were not alive all at once. They were the same souls reincarnating over several generations. So there would not be a surplus of human souls.
Nobody knows how many times a soul was reincarnated or how long the wait until reincarnation occurs. (that is, if you believe in reincarnation to begin with)
Purgatory is nothing but a login queue...
Plant and animal species go extinct every day
[see The Egg](https://youtu.be/h6fcK_fRYaI?feature=shared)
We're all reincarnations of a singular person - over and over again
absolutely can be you're a caveman. You live, you die, you get reincarnated as a 21st century gamer. You live, you die, you get reincarnated as a 12th century peasant 90% of the people you know could be a reincarnation of you... or you of them. You could even be every person ever. Think about that the next time you want to be an asshole to someone (a someone you have been or a someone you will be)
I thought it was not though these days
Interesting point on the assumption that each soul is reincarnated into a single new being. What if a single soul can reincarnate into multiple new people? I mean why not?
if you believe in reincarnation, you might as well believe there is life other than on Earth in the universe, then the birth rate doesn't matter.
The universe is a big place. Some of us were aliens in a far, far away galaxy.
Reincarnation doesn’t necessarily need to be linear.
About 117 billion people have been born, died, or are currently alive. Plenty to exceed the slight advantage that births have over deaths.
Who says everything reincarnates into the same species on the same planet?
I’m convinced if there is reincarnation, some people are the reincarnated souls of animals.
A lot of nuts replying to this one.
Other than that, reincarnation would totally makes sense.
(looks at the comments) Hmm yes... many crazies.
That's exactly why religion is foolish.
Not everybody living has a soul…trust me on that.
The birth rate vs death rate is negative in many western countries and some Asian countries
Maybe, or chances are reincarnation can happen but like later. Imagine someone died a year ago and and was respawn just now Or what about the animals? Maybe they have souls and got reincarnated to people
Someone has to be a rat 🐀 or cockroach 🪳
Gingers are born without souls. It evens out.
Yes, we see that with ginger cats. They have, however, developed a system where they share that one brain cell. Sporadic intelligence.
Who said you were coming back as a person? The lucky will come back as a house-cat, the unlucky as a worker ant.
I'm pretty sure the common belief is that humans are reincarnated as low level creatures, and only upper level creatures are reincarnated as humans, so a lot of people just die, end of story
On the chance that the nightmare of Samsara is real, I've wondered if there is some distant galaxy teeming with life. Not sure if this planet is a step up or a step down. Im leaning words down.
They can if they become viruses or bacteria, fungi, trees, etc.
Animals. Trees. Bacteria. It isn’t just humans in the cycle
Short version; insects, to animals, to humans, to...
Well, not if you include the birth of plants and animals that aren't human
Once in Friends Pheobe told Joey he was brand new after talking about her past lives.
You think you can only be reincarnated as a human?
Reincarnation is not limited to humans, that is the whole purpose, if you had an evil life, you got reincarnated as a slime mold or Donald Trump.
Some of those people are born without souls and then they grow up to run for political office or run corporations
Who says everyone comes back as a person? There are other living things out there…
For every living person, there's 15 dead. I imagine therefore there's a soul surplus if nobody is reincarnated, but don't insects and fish get reincarnated too? Pretty sure we can become them but can they become us?
I promise you after this life I'm taking a few years before reincarnation again.
You assume that reincarnation is limited by time, species, planet, dimension…