What is the appeal of reincarnation?

Question

If you do not remember who you are it seems to me that there is no advantage to it over just dying. I am not trying to be a smart ***, I just wonder what your thoughts on this are, if you believe in it. Thanks.

Answer 1

What is the appeal of reincarnation? - You can marry the same great woman you found in your previous life. Instead of a stranger.

Your season tickets at the stadium are still good, for your next life, at the grandfathered in price.

You can finish longer projects than people with only one life time, also by finishing their work gain more awards. possibly run university??

Many more advantages I am sure...

Answer 2

A few points are important here, though I actually have no strong feeling one way or the other about reincarnation.

1) Reincarnation alone is meaningless, but with the concept of inevitable enlightenment, it takes on importance. A deity associated with such beliefs (if one is) for instance, would be seen as letting us repeat experiences in the world until we get it right. This is far different from 72 years and then heaven or hell.
2) As far as memory, this depends on what you mean. A hole dug in the ground is, in a sense, a memory of a shovel. In the same way, the state of the physiology of a newborn could be seen as the "memory" of the end of a previous existence, even if nothing is recalled on the surface. For instance, people say that circumcision has no psychological affect on infant boys, because they do not remember. But the experience creates a set point in the nervous system from which to compute all future experience, so in a structural sense, there is a memory, with psychological consequences that are well documented.

Answer 3

Maybe going through school again and the trauma's associated with growing up - no, doesn't appeal to me! Who knows who or what you will be reincarnated into anyway? What if you became a cow in the next life - then you live for a couple of years and off to the butcher you go! Let's hope for a better deal next time, if you've been a real good cow in this life!

Answer 4

The search for enlightenment.

Only when you have crossed over will you realize the full impact of the knowledge you have gained from each lifetime.

Say, for instance, a Downs person. That soul chose to live this life in the body with Down's Syndrome. Can you imagine the knowledge learned by that soul?

I am sure you have known people who are just a little more naive or immature than most people for their whole lives. I believe those are young souls.

I read somewhere that all fundies are young souls because they have not matured spiritually.

Answer 5

I believe in reincarnation. I've heard stories of children that remember things from a past life that they could not have learned. It is nice to believe that something happens after life if you do not believe in god. It is good for encouraging people to help the environment because it will be their problem in the next life. Also, I figure that it is nice to believe something and reincarnations helps me find motivation to try and make the world a better place. I'm also a Pagan and that is one of the common Pagan beliefs. Hope that helps.

Answer 6

Some are so self-centered that they can't take an interest in anything outside their immediate vicinity unless there's some 'reason' to do so.

If there is a possibility that they were some other form in a previous life, then that provides some impetus to explore the wider world.

You and I don't fully understand this, because we explore as a default, not in hopes of getting 'in touch' with our past lives.

Answer 7

I find great comfort in "Maddie Mae", our new cockapoodle. When we get a new pet, I look at them and determine what deceased being they look like to me and I try calling them by that name. If they pay attention, I immediately process in my head that at least part of the soul of that passed individual is in this creature. I recognized my mother in "Maddie Mae" who answered to my mother's name who passed on a few years back.

In my faith, Forgive Affirmed Spirit, everyone goes to heaven. So this creature is a gift from heaven and it gives me great comfort and I try to show it any love that I might not have been able to show the human in their previous life, and I try to accept love from the creature as best I can in this fashion.

Heaven is about avenging all the perceived inequities in our lives from whatever sense we can gather about life and life's mean ing. So it gives me great comfort to metabolize afterlife into reincarnation, and place my soul there.

Healing be unto you and yours and me and mine
In Forgive Affirmed Spirit
~skahhh

Answer 8

I beleive in reincarnation. but I also beleive that inbetween this life and the next you do remeber who you were. not just in the last life but in all the lives befor that. and i beleive that you plan your next life befor you live it. so the appeal for me is that my soul ( not my mind where a lifes worth of memories are storied) my actual soul gets to gain more knoweldge and more experinces

Answer 9

It's like being caught in a satellite loop. You keep coming back until you figure your way out of the loop. Ascension comes from awakening.

Answer 10

Reincarnation and going to heaven = immortality. No one wants to be told this life is all there is to it. They want to live forever.