A couple of weeks ago, the TV show Ghost Hunters re-ran an older episode of the series. (Ghost Hunters is an American paranormal reality television series featuring paranormal investigators who explore places reported to be haunted.) In this particular segment, they attempted to generate some EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) by baiting the potential spirit, asking her “Are you in your room, Princess?” When they played back the tapes, you could distinctly hear a woman’s voice saying, “Of course I am. Where are you?”
The hosts of the show apparently felt they had definitely captured some “paranormal activity.” I am assuming they thought it was a spirit voice. But what if…
What if it wasn’t? What if it was a time warp, an anomaly of time of some sort? What if Princess was sitting in her bed reading late one night in 1870, or whenever, and heard an odd voice asking her “Are you in your room, Princess?” A perfectly acceptable response would be to say exactly what she said.
So what if time is not quite the “river” we believe it to be? What if it can flow both ways?
In January 2010, author and theoretical cosmologist Sean M. Carroll published From Eternity To Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time. He is examining & questioning the “arrow of time” concept, the generally accepted understanding that time only flows in one direction.
So what does this have to do with reincarnation? As it is popularly understood, reincarnation is based on a pretty straightforward linear sequence. You have a life, you die, and then as time goes by, you have another life in a new body, to carry on. Repeat as necessary.
Somehow that seems a little too bare for me. If time actually flows in more directions than one… well then… what does “past” life mean, anyway? What if your “next” reincarnation goes from the 21st century back to the 8th century? What if your immediately “preceding” life was in the 34th century? Could you have more than one life at a time? Maybe I am a 56-year-old New York male, and at the same time, I am an 8-year-old girl in Helsinki, Finland and a 72-year old aborigine in Australia?
What if our so-called “past” lives are not finished? What if our “past” life mistakes were not locked in stone? What if we could go “back” and fix them? What if one of your “next” lives is calling back to you, trying to fix you, right now? What if the idea of “karma” actually implies the need to balance out and heal all your lives literally? Not just by behaving better and more evolved now, but by learning to evolve “back then,” too?
What if all our lives are happening at once? What if our past & future lives are all current, but we need to see them as linear?
I can’t swear any of the above is true. The concepts feel right to me though. And if nothing else, it might be fun to play with these ideas. See what you come up with…
“[T]o think of a thing as being in any way other than what it is, is not only not knowledge, but it is false opinion widely different from the truth of knowledge. Consequently, if anything is about to be, and yet its occurrence is not certain and necessary, how can anyone foreknow that it will occur? For just as knowledge itself is free from all admixture of falsity, so any conception drawn from knowledge cannot be other than as it is conceived. For this, indeed, is the cause why knowledge is free from falsehood, because of necessity each thing must correspond exactly with the knowledge which grasps its nature.”
-Boethius
I didn’t create myself. Where do you suppose I came from? There must have been a greater being than myself that deigned I exist.
Now we’re back where we started….
Why is it that I, as a co-creator, can’t choose to destroy or cease creating? I obviously have limited power. I can’t even choose the way in which I utilize my authority. I’m a lame demigod. :/
You are a multi-dimensional being focusing on only 4 dimensions. What makes you believe you cannot choose the way you use your authority, other than your pre-conceived notions?
You existed before you got to this world, too. And you co-create this reality all the time with everyone else.
I am a pantheist. I see all of reality as one thing that we all co-create together all the time. I do not believe in an objective singular reality.
I believe all of us exist.
I didn’t say faith had to be founded in reason. I said religion consists of both and both are necessary.
So what you’re saying is that gravity, air, earth, and other people are all only in existence so far as we perceive them? By this reasoning I may not even exist at all, as for as you are concerned. You simply believe that I am actually here. I reject this, as it would require me to take on faith the idea that I can prove nothing. Yours is the philosophy of Descartes, almost word for word. This way of thinking requires that one reject all things except one’s own existence. Everything else could be a ‘trick of the mind’, in which case you waste your time talking to me here or blogging at all because no one other than yourself can be confirmed to exist.
I hold that there is reality beyond perception. The world existed before I got here and will go on when I’m gone. It operates under observable restrictions that are in accordance with reason and we can predict its future behavior based on the past. To hold that truth is based on perception makes truth relative, because I could perceive that grass is blue or that killing is ok and you couldn’t hold that I’m wrong. After all, it’s all opinion.
@Donna
I do not mean to imply that all spiritual matters can be rationally proven. However, the fundamental principles on which they are based must be. A religion with no rational basis is simply nonsense. Faith obviously has a large role, but faith and reason go hand in hand. If I believe that Jesus rose from the dead, then that’s faith. However, it doesn’t take faith to come to the conclusion that there is a nonphysical power greater than myself. Reason leads to truth. The above post not only does not reasonably work, but is directly contrary to reasonable principles…fundamental facts of reality.
Also, truth in quotation marks does an injustice to the word. It is not relative to the individual. There is true, and there is false. Truth remains the same whether I believe it or not.
If faith is based on reason, then it is not faith. And I believe that perception is reality. We all, everyone of us, see what we want to believe, even when we read all the meters and instruments we have created to measure what we believe is there to measure.
this is for Sneagan….
truth is in the eye of the beholder.
much of life cannot be proven rationally, but may still be “truth” for those who believe it.
can you tell a catholic that Jesus did not rise from the dead ? can you prove that heaven or hell does or does not exist? or that a loved one’s appearance after death was “just a dream” ?
not all truths can be proved. if you live your life according to only things that can be proven in the here and now, you are living without hope, without dreams, and most likely without a sense of spirituality.
sadly, i believe you missed the point of this post.
I’m not asking for rationale. Just offer a single thing that cannot be proven rationally, but is true. For instance, the existence of numbers. Is there such a thing as a ‘one’ or is it simply a word we invented for cataloguing? I don’t need an answer to that question and arguing it is more of a mental exercise than a proof of reason. But please offer a single truth that exists outside of reason.
“The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it Intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.”— Albert Einstein
Sneagan, I dedicated my next blog to this discussion…
Ok… a couple of points… 1) Yes you are right about reincarnation vs multi-carnation… the prefix “re” implies a time stream of past, present & future… but 2) Which aspects of reality do not have their basis in reason? I’d say about 50%. Intuition plays a strong role in the creation of reality, and there is nothing reasonable about intuition. We can choose to apply a reasoning response to intuition or inspiration… or not. Some of us follow our intuition regardless of rhyme or reason and do quite well.
I’m finding it hard to believe that 50% of reality isn’t based in reason. What in particular? What precept or fundamental idea was not derived from reason?
So let me get this right… you want me to supply a rational explanation for the irrational? This is like fighting for peace, an oxymoronic concept. I can only state the results of my observing and experiencing the events of my life. I cannot prove or disprove anything for you.
If there was a time warp, we’d hear people from other times talking to us a lot more often. Also, we can’t exist in different times indifferent places at any one time. Aside from the simple law of noncontradiction, which one would be the ‘me’ that is me. This isn’t reincarnation. It’s multi carnation or parallel universe theory. Doesn’t work very well with the whole, reason thing. 🙂
Some of your restraints are invalidated in quantum physics… As for “reason,” in controlled doses reason can be very useful… but it is hardly the sole basis for reality.
Pray tell which aspects of reality do not have their basis in reason?
This is brilliant! If our past lives are not linear, then we are not doomed to any particular outcome of any previous life, and would have the ability, through current enlightenment, to correct or rewrite our own history!
Amazing post!