Reading some of the others' experiences/knowings suddenly makes me feel like a very childish soul, like I'm only in junior high and the rest of you are getting ready to graduate from university.
I was raised Catholic but do not believe in the Catholic version of heaven and hell. That said, I most certainly believe in an eternal soul that returns to the source after the death of the body.
I have had several experiences with loved ones who have passed and know others who have as well. I have had contact with my grandfather shortly after he passed; my best friend had (and sometimes still has) contact with her husband, who died suddenly in his 30s (and she is a scientist who veers toward the atheist/agnostic); my aunt had contact with her MIL shortly after she passed; and so on.
I tend to think we receive many signs from "spirit" (however you want to define the term -- loved ones who have passed, our spirit guides, or the source itself) but we either 1) don't recognize these messages for what they are or 2) dismiss them as "I'm being crazy" or "That's not possible" or "What a coincidence!"
If perhaps people were taught to be more connected to spirit -- not to religion, but to our spiritual selves -- from a young age, we would better recognize the signs that point to a greater reality than this physical one on earth.
In fact, I read a great book -- I'll try to find the title -- written by hospice nurses. They share what so many of their patients experience at the end of their lives. These experiences are not limited to those with dementia, or those on morphine and other painkillers, and in short cannot be explained away by rational, scientific logic. But many of them in their final days report seeing loved ones and report having a sense that the end is coming. I'll try to find it in my goodreads and report back.
oooh found it!
Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying by Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
This is an amazing thread and I've read all your posts with great interest. I do have my own thoughts, experiences and questions however.
I have read books on reincarnation written by Dr. Jim Tucker, Dr. Ian Stevenson, Dr. Brian Weiss and others. I also read one of Michael Newton's books.
And I've done quite a few of my own experiments. As a pre teen I used a library book to hypnotically regress a friend of mine into a past life. It was a terrifying experience, her voice went up several octaves, she began to cry and scream and describe bombs falling and soldiers murdering her family. Once I woke her up she continued to cry on my shoulder for another half hour.
As an adult I've done past life regression meditations at least 5 separate times and each time has been extremely interesting and unexpected. I've been a Roman soldier circa around 70 C.E., a middle eastern villager (couldn't place where exactly) around 500 B.C.E., a hunter gatherer (that one sucked - I felt greasy and stinky), a Prussian peasant in the eighteenth century and I've had sparse glimpses of other lives.
Now is any of this true or just a figment of my imagination? I have no idea, absolutely none, all I can do is relate my experiences which have been extremely strange. I was choked to death as a Roman and it felt very very real, I couldn't breathe, my throat contracted it felt like I was really dying until I came out of it. I starved to death as a middle eastern farmer and that felt very very real too - up to and including the absolute despair and grief I felt at being in that situation. As a hunter gatherer - man did that suck, I felt extremely dirty, my whole body felt icky, my hair greasy, I was hungry, skinny and just yuck I hated it. As a Prussian peasant I was male (for some reason most of my past life recall is of me being male) and I had a very strong sexual attraction to a village woman, and today I am a very straight female who has never looked at a curvy young woman and felt unbelievable lust - but I did in that meditation.
The thing is all of these experiences don't answer the question of what if anything happens after death. The work of people like Jim Tucker and Ian Stevenson suggests that reincarnation occurs almost spontaneously and without much input from the soul - but then the work of people like Brian Weiss and Michael Newton suggests that we all have guides and plan out our lives ahead of time.
And then there are wider questions as well - how do we define morality - nature from observation doesn't appear to exist with any moral framework of right and wrong. If we accept the premise that humans reincarnate - then what about animals, plants, insects etc.... If we also then stretch that acceptance into a belief in moral principles for which we will have to atone if we transgress them (murder etc...) then what about the absolutely vicious things that happen in the animal kingdom between species that have no realization of our human concept of right and wrong. How can we conceptualize an afterlife where our bad deeds are punished when other species have no such beliefs or restrictions on their behaviors?
This is why the whole question is extremely difficult for me - I do accept that there is more to reality than meets the eye - my own experiences justify that belief. But I am very careful not to place human ideas of right and wrong onto a universe that doesn't appear to care about that.
In regards to hell I also have some thoughts and they tend to be more psychological in nature. People like the orange clown currently residing in the white house are deeply disturbed people - they live in their own mental hell. Anyone who has dealt with a narcissist for any length of time can recognize the deep pain they are in underneath the exterior they put up. What happens to these people is that as they progress through life things get worse and worse for them (even if they are monetarily successful) in regards to human relationships. They leave so many bodies in their wake that the time comes when they are fully alone and most of them die in the knowledge that they won't be missed.
After death this continues - if a life review happens where they must feel the pain they inflicted, they will also feel the fear of being accountable for their actions. This fear will cause them to retreat from the light and live in their own pit of misery, despair, fear and anger for as long as it takes them to realize what they've done - which sometimes is forever. What happens to people like Hitler or Stalin after death for example? I think we are as we are - our personalities are not very different from life to life, therefore the emotions we have in life follow us afterwards. Hell then to me is self constructed - it exists because we make it so.
All of this is just me speculating - I really don't know what happens but this is my assumption and of course all of those unanswered questions.
@sistermoon, thank you for the book title! I try to grab it for a read. Interesting that you note signs. It is true that a lot of people are closed off to the spiritual side of things. If you can/are willing to answer; did your grandfather appear with a reason? Was it for comfort or something you hoped? Or out of the blue? (this happened to my mother, who was afraid and thus my grandfather disappeared again).
@Natalie. Wow that is quite a journey you've had as well! Did you do the regression meditations on your own? It might be interesting to keep a log of dreams and imagery of these situations. If you can remember names or villages you can trace back if what you saw was real. As long as you do not know of anything beforehand so you do not 'corrupt' your brain/memory/soul etc. with knowledge of the situation.
As for reincarnation and the why. You are correct that nature doesn't have morals, it just is. It can be cruel, but also beautiful. However, it *does* have purpose. That said if we believe in reincarnation there needs to be a purpose to it/it needs to 'fit', otherwise it wouldn't be 'natural'. If you just hop into another life after death, then what is the use? I think due to that reasoning, *if* (again, I also have experience of past lives, but I keep it at if due to lack of proof) reincarnation is real I think it is:
A. entwined with karma (Hinduism is a very old religion and I think it knows what it's talking about) ergo: cause and effect of your deeds in this life give you your life in the next. Who knows, the orange one might come back as a skunk?
B. reason. If there is such as thing as a soul or spirit etc. It sounds most logical to me that life is a learning experience for souls until you've grown enough or if you choose to go back again and again to help other souls.
With A (reincarnation in animals) also comes the question if animals are animals or simply souls like all of us. Christianity believes that animals have no souls, Hindus are vegetarians. There even is a sect that believes breathing in dangerous because you might harm a tiny living organism! This has great repercussions if you look at all the slaughterhouses around the world.
Last note on what you already said about 'hell'. There has always been a form of this notion in many religions, but Christianity turned it into fire and brimstone. I am not sure where I read it, but seemingly before that it was a cold place devoid of hope. I do believe what you said: it is what we make of it and sometimes we make our own hell here on earth, which can be done in many different ways.
To make it more complicated though; where does the meeting of loved ones take place if this is real? Do you get a long time in the afterlife before jumping into reincarnation again?
Thanks so much for your thoughts!
Newton does briefly talk about non-human life-forms because at least one of his clients asked his/her "guide" about that, but the answer was short and not very satisfactory to me. The client was basically told that animals do have souls, but they are on a different evolutionary track with different parameters and goals, so it's not comparable. Because of that (if I remember correctly), they were told that it isn't possible for an animal soul to come back as a human and vice versa. I kind of think that's a bit convenient and simplistic, but what do I know?