This is a very weak defense of your beliefs. As a Buddhist you should
already know that the Buddha's rationale for teaching hinged on the fact
that he became enlightened - and the nature of his enlightenment.
According to the Buddha himself, at the moment he became enlightened he
saw all his previous lives and all his future lives and the pain and
suffering he had already endured for eons and the pain and suffering he
was to endure in the future. And, he saw in one fell swoop all the
suffering that all humans will endure, past and present and future. At
that moment he realized the truth of suffering (samsara), action (karma)
and rebirth (reincarnation) and how to end suffering following an
Eightfold Path.
The Buddha at that moment realized that everything happens for a reason;
because of this, that occurs. Just like in a game of billiards depends
on cause and effect and gravity sucks. It's not complicated.
So, we know that causation rules the physical world, but is there a
moral reciprocity as well? It's always best to err on the side of
caution. That's why Buddhists are supposed to be compassionate and to do
no harm. You left out the reason why you were seeking the spiritual
life! Is it for you own gain or for the benefit of others? That's the
real question.
. And what was the On 11/13/2013 1:17 PM, TurquoiseB wrote:
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote:
>
> If you had a flashback that convinced you you were Jack the Ripper
in a previous life should you hand yourself in to the police?
> Could you count on the statute of limitations getting you off the hook?
> Could you claim in mitigation that you weren't yourself when you
committed the murders?
I'm going to comment on this, and leave the musings below to others.
No offense, but the above stuff is way funny, and creative, and that
tickles my funny bone. But -- having kinda been there done that with
this experience -- theorizing about it doesn't really float my boat.
I'm like that with many of my most interesting spiritual experiences.
I was there. I experienced these things, some of them that fall into
the Blade Runner "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe"
category. But I can't tell you definitively what they were. Heck, I'm
still trying to figure many of them out myself.
Maybe it's a Buddhist thang. They were never all that interested in
the "why" things are happening, only in *that* they are happening, and
how to make the best of that. I'm kinda drawn that way myself.
> No one picked up on my alternative suggestion that memories of
previous lives could be explained not by any one individual going
through a serial succession of different life stories but rather could
be explained as someone accessing our common, racial memory.
> By what mechanism?
> 1) Occultists talk about "shells" of the dead left behind in the
astral realm. Really, though, the shells are used to explain what
mediums access when they contact the recently deceased. The shells
dissipate over time so wouldn't explain distant memories.
> 2) Memories are passed on through our DNA by some unknown mechanism?
(This wouldn't work for Michael's recall of being a pious hermit in
medieval France - unless he had a relapse into sinful passions - monks
don't have kids.) Of course, the further back in time you peer the
more common ancestors we all have.
> 3) All human (and non-human) life experiences are stored in the
Akashic Records. This looks the most promising line to take.
> The advantage of this theory - that past-life memories are simply
people accessing the Akashic field - are:
> (i) It explains why more than one person can claim to have memories
of an historical figure.
> (ii) It fits better Buddhist ideas of anatta.
> (iii) It explains why Cleopatra pops up so much; her "thumbprint" on
the Akashic field is bigger than most peoples.
>
>
>
> ---In fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@ wrote:
>
> fwiw, I figured we had all been in a previous life together and then
a healer mentioned that out of the blue about a month ago. My
intuition says Atlantis but I've not had any experiences to confirm.
Hope we get it right this time around (-:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, November 13, 2013 10:47 AM, TurquoiseB turquoiseb@ wrote:
>
> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote:
> >
> > Sounds like a dream while being awake. Any slippage into another
time dimension makes it seem probable these dimensions exist
simultaneously with the present.
>
> Personally, I suspect this is the case. That is, that all of these
events are happening simultaneously, and that something just
occasionally enables us to step from one pseudo-timestream to another.
>
> > I wonder what it is in our brains or in the frequency of the
dimensions called "time" that causes a momentary ability to be able to
see sine past event. And are you sure it is a former you that is
participating or simply the current you who has slipped, temporarily,
into another time frequency and can simply see what happened back then
in that spot?
>
> Again, I cannot speak to anyone else's experience, or to theory or
hypotheticals. For me, this experience (whatever TF it was) always had
a strong sense of "I" being identified with the person whose eyes and
ears I was using to witness the scene.
>
> > Whatever the case or the reason it is something I would like to
experience as long as it didn't freak me out too much or the event
wasn't too violent.
>
> There have been the occasional violent flashback, but for some
reason they didn't really freak me out. Probably the most violent was
in a basement room of the Papal Palace in Avignon, realizing that I
had not only been there before but been tortured (probably to death)
there. My "point of view" within the room remained the same (standing
in the same location against a wall), but in the "here and now" I was
just standing there with a few other tourists, and in the "then and
now" I was strapped to the wall and the other people in the room (all
in monk's robes) were doing fairly nasty things to me. There was --
interestingly -- no real sensation of pain. What freaked me out the
most about the flashback was seeing the look in the eyes of the people
doing this, and realizing that they firmly believed they were doing it
for the Greater Glory of God. They were ECSTATIC, as if torturing a
heretic was GETTING THEM OFF.
>
>
> > ---In fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@ wrote:
> >
> > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, s3raphita wrote:
> > >
> > > I was going to say this: If I was to find myself suddenly in a
> > past-life - let's say in Elizabethan London - I'd take careful
note of
> > what clothes the people around me wore, what food they ate, what the
> > houses looked like, etc. and then when I returned I'd check
against the
> > best-available historical evidence. Here's the thing though: if
you were
> > to have a past-life recall can you alter what you're thinking or
doing?
> > If it's a far-memory of "you" in a previous life is the you that's
"you
> > in the 21st century having the recall" able to change anything?
> >
> >
> > I cannot speak to hypothetical situations like yours. I can only say
> > what it was like for me.
> >
> > For me it was *not* like lucid dreaming, which I have practiced and
> > gotten good enough at that I could change things in the dream to suit
> > myself. The flashes I've had were all short-lived -- thirty
seconds to
> > at most a couple of minutes -- during which I was completely
immersed in
> > the scene. I *did* seem to have some volition, in that I could
decide to
> > try to talk to someone, and pull that off, but it was not the "I'm in
> > control of this vision" kinda thang one experiences with lucid
dreaming.
> >
> > I never sought any of these flashes, nor am I interested in doing so
> > now. They just happened, almost always when I was in the physical
> > location where the original events took place. That's the part
that's so
> > much FUN about whatever it is. I'm in the same room of a castle,
or in
> > the courtyard of a large city like Carcassonne, and one moment I'm
"here
> > and now" and the next I'm "here and then."
> >
> > The overall scene doesn't change, just the details -- like what
people
> > are wearing, eating, etc. I guess I could have been more Sherlock
> > Holmes-y about it, but frankly each time it's happened it's come
as such
> > a surprise and been so thoroughly entertaining that I just allowed
> > myself to be entertained.
> >
>
