Would You Want a Return Visit?

TheVat said:
I need to read Ballard - you're the second person to mention him to me in the space of a few weeks. And swerving back to topic, I have wondered if there were inflection points in one's life where people would want to roll the tape back to, porting the wisdom of a lifetime back to that moment. As it is, all we feel we can do is look back occasionally and think man was I young and stupid! Usually mixed with a yearning for youth and innocence and a simpler worldview. It would be interesting to have a do-over where one loses all the memories of the later life, except for one crucial piece of information, planted as a kind of unsourced intuition.
Click to expand...
And last week I discover there is a British novelist, Kate Atkinson, who basically takes that do-over with unsourced intuition idea and runs with it.

en.wikipedia.org

Life After Life (novel) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Also a BBC miniseries.
 
North Cali Sammy said:
Reincarnation, would you want to do it again? If you could, and if you had a choice, which next life would you want to live? Suppose you could model your fortunes and failures for the return visit. Perhaps you would come back as an animal or some other form of life, something not of this world?

Myself, I wouldn't mind repeating this life, but with insight into where I could do better. All things considered, it's been a good life. I could do it again.
Click to expand...

Nope, last time for me.

I have learnt enough... mind that might well change when I'm thinking crystal clear when I leave Dave, the human that has housed me for 50 years. This is why you should try and love yourself, humans are special, we're not nothing in a universe that is so massive as some of these scientists, more specifically astrophysicists say.
 
North Cali Sammy said:
To start again without

To start again without the memories of your previous life, fresh and new, life would be an adventure again. A journey of mystery and discovery.
Click to expand...
Ah, okay. I wondered if there were some parameters, here.

So, I'd be interested if I didn't have to relive any of the trauma I've been through in this life. If I could be guaranteed somehow that it literally would be an "amazing new adventure", possibly. Maybe I'll come back as a butterfly, and I could soar above the noise whenever I wished. Although, my life span would be really short, so there's that to consider. And, I wouldn't want to start out as a caterpillar though, so scratch that. lol

I suppose though, every day is a 'new start,' as cliche as it sounds. We might not be able to change our circumstances, but we can manage how we handle it, and how deeply we let things out of our control, affect our well-being.
 
TheVat said:
I liked your takes on this, CC, as provoking a fair amount of reflection on what any sort of continuity would mean. Even eastern mysticism seems to be divided on this, with some groups favoring a reincarnation with memories that linger from before - (especially in small children - much researched by Ian Stevenson) - while others see a more generic kind of consciousness (as in the Buddhist koan "who were you before you had a face" where one meditates on a Self deeper than our quotidian thoughts and ego desires) that follows some karmic path but without any memory transfer. The whole notion of any leap between corpse and womb tends to pare off into wild imaginings. For me it conjures some kind of interlife bureaucracy, where metamind clerks process the newly dead and follow karmic criteria to shunt them on to waiting wombs. IOW, it collapses into incoherence or whimsical Tim Burtonesque parodies of metaphysics.
Click to expand...
and ...
Reincarnation exclaims that it is the childs fault for being born sick and suffering terribly and dying and that those children and babys deserve it.
 
RainbowSingularity said:
Reincarnation exclaims that it is the childs fault for being born sick and suffering terribly and dying and that those children and babys deserve it.
Click to expand...
That's one interpretation of the doctrine. There's also the one where you are sent back to a lower lifeform, if you behave as a lowlife. POTUS reborn as a toad, perhaps.

Theologically, the appeal of karmic justice to Hindus is likely similar to the appeal of divine justice for Abrahamic religions - if scoundrels escape justice in this world, there's a realm where justice finally catches up.
 
TheVat said:
That's one interpretation of the doctrine. There's also the one where you are sent back to a lower lifeform, if you behave as a lowlife. POTUS reborn as a toad, perhaps.
Click to expand...
You're suggesting all those critters more primitive than a toad are all people somehow lower than POTUS?

Maybe he should come back as an amoeba. Or a living urinal.
 
TheVat said:
That's one interpretation of the doctrine. There's also the one where you are sent back to a lower lifeform, if you behave as a lowlife. POTUS reborn as a toad, perhaps.

Theologically, the appeal of karmic justice to Hindus is likely similar to the appeal of divine justice for Abrahamic religions - if scoundrels escape justice in this world, there's a realm where justice finally catches up.
Click to expand...
Во всех религиях есть стремление к справедливости. Откуда это у людей?

"Возможно, президент переродился в жабу"... возможно, наоборот?
 
ольга said:
All religions have a desire for justice. Where do people get this from?

"Perhaps the president has been reborn as a toad"... perhaps the other way around?
Click to expand...
It is a deep part of human psyche - there are experiments in which even 2 year olds show a desire for fairness and justice, they get upset when some treat is not shared fairly. These kinds of behaviors are important to social animal species, where cheating or falseness or injustice threatens the integrity of the group.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top