As Mark Twain said, "I am not afraid of death. I was dead for billions of years before I was born and it didn't inconvenience me one bit."--dr hill and janine prompted this thread
what were we before birth?
As Mark Twain said, "I am not afraid of death. I was dead for billions of years before I was born and it didn't inconvenience me one bit."--dr hill and janine prompted this thread
what were we before birth?
Last edited by billyjack; 01-01-2009 at 06:04 PM.
I've always had this image of reincarnation wherein we were past living entities prior to death, then are reborn. The process of conception erasing our memories in the warm womb. Just a thought. B
"I am glad to learn my friend that you had not yet submitted yourself to any of the mouldy laws of Literature."
-John Muir
"My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends - It gives a lovely light"
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
If you accept the science of biology, the question is near pointless. Physical bodies die and regrow constantly, even memory is subject to change as the brain changes with age, making the issue of identity a tricky one, since celluar viability is under constant flux. I cannot remember my stresses as a premature infant who was supposed to die, probably because the mind disregards this survivalism as we age. My first memory is this: I am in the mist of swirling clouds, and then I am on the sidewalk, five years old, having fallen out of my beach chair and split my lip, crying. My mother and her neighbors yell at me and pick me up. Why the swirling sky? Maybe just because the brain is a very complex processing unit. Is the memory real? Falling out of the chair, probably, as pain is important and the mind remembers injury so as to avoid it in the future, but time probably changed what I really saw, sensed. What I was at five, I wasn't by 16, and wasn't again, by 35, and at 46, I am more altered still, and as a physical entity I never was anything before my body successfully grew to its temporary stability. Temporary being the key point, but we are never aware of the constant particle changes in ourselves. Am I the spaghetti I just ate? Do we flush the residue of ourselves in the sewer? What identity amounts to is a complex issue, and I do not think it survives the constant dialectic between death and birth.Originally Posted by billyjack
The wind is low the birds will sing
That you are part of everything...
for those, probably the majority, of you who didn't know, this is from a Beatles song titled "Dear Prudence."
But yes, and the answer to the question lies in understanding our relationship with everything, or...everything else. We are born and eventually we die, and we think it is all linear, but actually it is not linear at all. Time is misunderstood and doesn't actually go from one point to another. As Nietzsche wrote, all that recurs, recurs eternally. Life is eternal, is infinite.
In this instance we are illusioned to think that we are this body. We are also unaware of our previous lives.
Last edited by NikolaiI; 01-02-2009 at 02:39 AM.
Do I have to start from the platform that I was something before birth? Can't I be nothing? A non-entity? Can I assume the way I feel before birth is precisely how I will after death and inbetween that gap is existence? My philosophy is very green.
In point of fact all of us here are not mortals. We are this world, the microcosms of the universe. We have originated from the earth and will thaw into it.
The difference between ourselves and the earth is a sheer illusion and nothing else.
There are no differences at all. All beings are part of this universe.
I never subscribe to the idea that we become nonexistent and only a matter of transmutations only.
There were never moments we did not exist and never will moments when we will not be.
This is an intricate idea and no scientific methods can reveal this to us, nor anyone can convince us. It is through contemplations that we can come to understand this truth.
“Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature””
“If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.
No - by all means and of course you can start from anything and conclude whatever seems most true to you. There are people hailing from all corners of the world and all philosophies that come online.
There is nothing that all people believe in or any standard they all hold to.
I believe in reincarnation because I believe that consciousness follows body, and body follows consciousness.
Interesting..so do you believe that when a person dies, that person rebirths as an entirely new human being, or is it something else?
Yes, depending on the karma and desires a purson has unfilfilled when they die. We are given a body suitable to our desires. A human could come back as a human, an animal. If a person has unusually good karma, such as like created by attempting to take the path of devotional service, then they will get a life in a family where brahminical life is led, where the family follows the rules of religion. This life is one of the best possible births in the universe.
Thats is incredibly intriguing. Is it karma that rules who will be living in priviledged lives where as some others wont? And what kind of people will get reincarnated as an animal? It would be interesting to know if all animals were once a human being. Could I also ask can a human being get created without first becoming reincarnated?
you may
i wonder what the least green metaphysical perspective about pre birth and death would be?
Last edited by billyjack; 01-03-2009 at 08:46 PM.
I don't think any of us here are new. I think the soul transmigrates, through bodies, for millennia, before we get a human birth. I believe the transmigration of the soul happens at the time of death and into womb in its new life. Yes it's karma, but it's also simply our desires. A person would be reincarnated as an animal if they created the consciousness of an animal in this life. Also it's said if you kill an animal then you'll be in the same way in the future by that animal. The only way to get out of this ocean of birth and death is to worship the supreme personality of godhead, govinda.
lilac wine ~
Jeff Buckley
"He was nauseous with regret when he saw her face again, and when, as of yore, he pleaded and begged at her knees for the joy of her being. She understood Neal; she stroked his hair; she knew he was mad."
---Jack Kerouac, On The Road: The Original Scroll
Is the transmigration of the soul from time of death and conceiving of new life simultaneous? I often hear from people that when they see someone, lets say a celebrity from the media or neighbour across the street, they think they have met them before, share some connection before and know them very closely, yet it is the first time in their life they have met them. Do you think it is your belief that governs these feelings?
I think we are eternal, yes. So we have had births on every continent and in every country. And I cannot prove this, but it is my belief, because when I experience deja vu it feels like I have pre-knowledge about events, which actually feel like they happened millennia ago.
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