Do you believe we have past lives??

[RevolvingPivot]

Inspired by my other thread....

Places you have visited with a strange vibe http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/amiibeingunreasonable/4260839-places-you-have-visited-with-a-strange-vibe

I believe energy and matter is endlessly recycled in to different forms.

That's the theories of conservation of mass and conservation of energy, that the universe is a closed system and within it we have all the energy and matter we're ever going to have. We may change its form, but there's never more or less of either in total. The same theory has been applied to information - that we have all the information we're going to have, so we may change its form - eg when we process information new to us, when we think about things and reach a conclusion - but the total amount of information in the universe is constant.

When I was 12, I had a very vivid dream and for the first and only time in my life I talked in my sleep, waking up the entire household. I dreamed that I was a Victorian era teacher in a school chemistry lab, giving a chemistry lecture in French. My parents confirmed that that's what I was saying out loud. The spooky thing - both the chemistry I was teaching, and the French language I was using, were way more advanced than anything I'd done in either subject at school. And I still remember that lecture, and the lab, and the clothes I was wearing, as vividly as ever.

It is the million dollar question

Do out souls go on ???

A necessary precursor question would be 'do souls exist'?

And it's a big 'no' from me. I think the concept of the soul is a relic from before we understood more about how the brain works.

@Zzelda

The stories on there are jaw dropping - little children who describe in great detail their previous life as people who have been proven to exist

Amazing how people who claim to have had past lives never seem to have been an obscure nobody previously.

Well, those stories of obscure nobodies wouldn't be remembered of course, would they? Because no 'proof' would have been able to be found.

Yesterday's children is a fantastic book about an English woman's memory of having a past life in Ireland. Dr Ian Stevenson is also well known for his books and findings on reincarnated children, worth a read if you haven't

@Zzelda

The stories on there are jaw dropping - little children who describe in great detail their previous life as people who have been proven to exist

Amazing how people who claim to have had past lives never seem to have been an obscure nobody previously.

That’s not true at all. I have a lot of experience in this field . The vast majority of people have had very mundane lives but the emotional resonance is powerful. Poverty, abandonment, struggles and health issues are far more routine.

But why are you trying to police their opinions? Nobody is trying to argue that it is all factual.... Just sharing thoughts and ideas. Youre just shouting people down. You didn't answer my last question....were you a tyrannical king?

Why is asking someone to expand their thoughts and ideas considered ‘policing’? Posters are perfectly able to reply and challenge anyone in the discussion.

I will assume I have never been a king in a previous life, tyrannical or otherwise, until I receive good evidence to the contrary.

@MasterBeth You have indeed just asked people to expand their thoughts and ideas, in some posts, but in others you have been rather insulting.

That's exactly what a long dead, tyrannical king would say....

@Feedingthebirds1

I believe energy and matter is endlessly recycled in to different forms.

That's the theories of conservation of mass and conservation of energy, that the universe is a closed system and within it we have all the energy and matter we're ever going to have. We may change its form, but there's never more or less of either in total. The same theory has been applied to information - that we have all the information we're going to have, so we may change its form - eg when we process information new to us, when we think about things and reach a conclusion - but the total amount of information in the universe is constant.

When I was 12, I had a very vivid dream and for the first and only time in my life I talked in my sleep, waking up the entire household. I dreamed that I was a Victorian era teacher in a school chemistry lab, giving a chemistry lecture in French. My parents confirmed that that's what I was saying out loud. The spooky thing - both the chemistry I was teaching, and the French language I was using, were way more advanced than anything I'd done in either subject at school. And I still remember that lecture, and the lab, and the clothes I was wearing, as vividly as ever.

I got goosebumps at your dream

@MasterBeth I was just using aliens saying 'gotcha' as in, imagine they admitted we were a petri dish of experiments started 3,000 years ago and everything in our history up until then had been a hoax. It wouldn't disprove evolution but it would create new hypothesis / theories.

Just being as outlandish as you pulling Santa Clause out

Anyhoo.

That’s why I’ve asked people for the good evidence they have for the existence of the extraordinary things (like the existence of a soul beyond the body or their constant rebirth and past lives) which they claim or suspect exist and which, if they did exist, would run counter to all our current understanding of the universe.

I'm not sure anyone ever claimed to have evidence they were hiding away from you? The thread is literally titled "do you believe"

Some posters (including me!) said what made them / makes them believe that it's possible. Or might be possible.

I have no evidence in the existence of a soul, but neither do you have evidence that it doesn't exist? Unless science has suddenly produced something concrete since the last time I read up - in which case, I'm open to believing that too.

But I'm not sure what you mean by "would run counter to all our current understanding of the universe"?

And I'm not sure we could ever debate it here because there's too much and too many theories. But.

We don't actually understand the universe? Or rather, we don't currently agree on an understanding of the universe. We haven't agreed on how or why it started. We don't know how life started. Have scientists even agreed exactly what life is yet? Nope. How are we conscious? Why are we conscious? If we are just a brain functioning as a coded computer, with inputs, processes, outputs, why are we experiencing it, and the computer, as far as we know, isn't? Because we're alive? Define being alive? They can't.

If you take one of those questions, how did life start? Reproduction first theory? Metabolism first theory? Compartmentalisation first? A combination of two? Everything first? But then you are hypothesising that the chicken and the egg happened at exactly the same, in exactly the same place, with exactly the materials needed to create the chicken and the egg.

What are the chances? When you think about that exact "life" recipe in the relation to the massive chain that started who knows how long before the big bang... it's hardly preposterous to think that other theories might have merit?

When you get into entanglement, the theory that reality isn't particles and strings but instead the entire universe, the 'many worlds' theory... and then the theory on top of them all - that they're actually just different ways of perceiving exactly the same thing. The person observing would see many worlds, but what's actually happening is quantum monism. So there is a theory in scientific existence that you can look outside your window and perceive that nothing is connected, but actually it's all connected. You are just perceiving that it isn't, because we are human and we can't actually perceive all that much of what exists.

So when someone says 'show me the evidence that a soul can jump bodies into another life'... how when we can't perceive it, and nobody is really claiming we can? How can a scientific theory exist that everything outside your window is connected, but to theorise that humans might be connected in ways we don't understand "runs counter to our understanding of the universe".

If they can theorise that the everything needed to make the chicken, the egg, and the nest got together in a shallow pond with the exact metals needed to create life brought to us by a meteorite from a universe we don't understand, then a bunch of mumsnetters can theorise about souls.

This was a fairly 'lighthearted' thread on what people believe and somehow I've got into trying to explain quantum theory that even quantum theorists don't understand... but that's why I felt the need to reply -- we don't really understand that much of anything in relation to the universe! And we might never, because how can humans ever comprehend that much? I cannot see how this belief harms you or anyone else in any way, so what is your problem?

It's a nice story but nope

Yes. I have a mild form of epilepsy and sometimes before a seizure I feel and very momentarily sort of peripherally visualise sequences which I'm increasingly convinced are related to past (life) experiences.

I know that doesn't really make sense and sounds odd but it's the only way I can explain it.

Science builds on previous understanding to corroborate or reject theory. We don’t have to fully understand what happened in the first split second after the Big Bang to have developed a very good idea of what has happened since.

It is completely disingenuous, @winched, to use our incomplete understanding of the universe to pretend that no-one knows anything and that the Mumsnetter who dreamed she was a Spanish peasant girl is as likely to be correct as to the function and nature of the brain as the hundreds of thousands of smart scientists who have studied it seriously.

All those who are dismissing peoples theories as "bollocks" spouted by "gullible idiots" should take a closer look at our historical beliefs.

Not that long ago, people would laugh in the face of evolutionary science, or the idea that the world is round not flat and all other manner of things that we now regard as flat.

We really aren't all that advanced and we absolutely do not understand everything, and a lot of what we "know" will turn out not to be true.

People far more intelligent and well-researched than any of us on this thread believe in the possibility of all sort of "bollocks" - it would be unbelievably arrogant to state that we have discovered all the facts.

So very true.

@HedgeVeg

All those who are dismissing peoples theories as "bollocks" spouted by "gullible idiots" should take a closer look at our historical beliefs.

Not that long ago, people would laugh in the face of evolutionary science, or the idea that the world is round not flat and all other manner of things that we now regard as flat.

We really aren't all that advanced and we absolutely do not understand everything, and a lot of what we "know" will turn out not to be true.

People far more intelligent and well-researched than any of us on this thread believe in the possibility of all sort of "bollocks" - it would be unbelievably arrogant to state that we have discovered all the facts.

Although we have not discovered “all the facts”, we have discovered enough of the facts to know that “consciousness is energy” is bollocks and that feeling uncomfortable in a roll-neck top doesn’t mean you were a victim of strangulation in the 19th century.

Absolutely. I remember visiting Skipton Castle for the first time when I was 20. And I knew , without a shred of a doubt that I had lived in, or around it once.

No

Dust to dust, ashes to ashes and all. There’s more chance of aliens coming down to earth tonight from a different galaxy, than the likelihood of there being any sort of previous/past life.

A different universe never mind galaxy!

Can memory be passed down by our DNA and inherited?

Do we have a genetic memory?

Simple sounds forming a basic language are thought to be encoded in genetic memory.

Some stress responses, traumas and phobias, anxiety, PTSD etc are thought to be able to be inheritable.

Weren't things like the Bloxham Tapes/More Lives Than One book debunked - since the "real life" tales told could be linked to stories of fiction etc

@PandemicAtTheDisco

Can memory be passed down by our DNA and inherited?

Do we have a genetic memory?

Simple sounds forming a basic language are thought to be encoded in genetic memory.

Some stress responses, traumas and phobias, anxiety, PTSD etc are thought to be able to be inheritable.

There is certainly evidence that this happens in animals and birds and we are effectively also animals. I suppose it also contributes to the nature/nurture debate, are some of our behaviours hard wired?

MY DS2 made some comments about a tower that is nearby our house, he was 2 going on 3 at the time (he was a very early talker so pretty articulate by this age). Anyway, he pointed at it and would tell me things about the master that used to live there and how he was a nasty man to the lady and that he had attacked him with an axe. He was very definite about it and gave loads of details. However the tower is a monument that has never been occupied, it's basically just a tower with a space for exhibition on the ground floor and a staircase to the top.

If you didn't know that then he could be very believable as having lived before.

Or the tower reminded him of a tower he remembered from a past life and he got confused!

@baroqueandblue

Consciousness energises and directs our decisions and actions. There's still no indisputable evidence that the mind is a by-product of matter like the brain, although it seems that in order to remain conscious in the world the brain must be relatively intact and functioning. But that doesn't logically mean that the mind and/or consciousness in some continuing form can't inhabit other forms/worlds that this world and its laws/conditions inhibits and limits our awareness of - under routine circumstances.

Yeah but unfortunately the fact that we’re not conscious when we’re asleep kind of ruins that one for me.😴

@cakewitch

Absolutely. I remember visiting Skipton Castle for the first time when I was 20. And I knew , without a shred of a doubt that I had lived in, or around it once.

Again, people never "remember" living in bog standard semis, terraced houses, labourers' cottages or whatever.