Pre-existence, Reincarnation & Christianity

reply to post by windword


Inb4 "Ourselves"....

Seriously, humanity is capable of becoming sovereign over their own actions, which in turn demands it's own accountability for responsibility of those very same actions. People know right from wrong, regardless of religion. It's external influences or factors that either make them not care or choose otherwise. That demands responsibility to be taken, good or bad.

This will be the age when we start to govern ourselves and our own consciousness. Sovereignty comes with that. We live in a world today, where we are not free to explore our own consciousness. If I am not sovereign over my own consciousness, then I am sovereign over nothing.

reply to post by pthena

Somehow, I feel that even then, we aren't alone, but are in the company of other empaths, and 10,000 angels dancing on the head of a pin. I know you said that as a joke, but that's how I see myself, not an eternal discrete soul, but rather the soul that is carrying within itself the building blocks of 10,000 souls.

No. I was serious, not joking.

I have an idea spinning around in my mind that DNA may be the image and expression of some mega over-soul, that appears to us to be fractured, in all it's various incarnations of multiple life forms, and their evolutions and extinctions.

reply to post by adjensen

And how do you know what his "actual meaning" was? Are you claiming that you are Jesus or Nicodemus?

Are you? Shh, careful not to stray too far into the bounds of hypocrisy in your arguments.

Originally posted by templar knight
My problem with reincarnation is that there are more people alive today than have died, so some mathematically cannot be a reincarnation. Unless 1 previous soul can occupy more than one new soul.

I think there is more souls that are existing in the Spiritual realm than there is inhabiting bodies here on earth.

When I remember pre-existing, I was asked by 3 other souls to come to "earth" and be "born" and to help others in away I can.

I didn't know what earth or born meant, so I asked for clarification and a preview. So then I was show what it is to be born in a body and to live on Earth and I was DISGUSTED!!!!! Hatred, wars, evil, ego, murder, rape, greed, diseases, suffering, death, molestations, pollution ........ I almost couldn't handle the preview itself and even then saw that this place is like a realm of hell, a prison. That's why Jesus taught, "Do not Love the World or Anything In It."

So I know it's my first time here on earth. I don't know about reincarnation if it's true or not, but definitely believe it is possible even as a Christian.

I think the only way to graduate here and never come back is ego death, spiritual rebirth, enlightenment, etc. you graduate and your done. Also I do think certain souls come back here to help others.

Originally posted by LadyGreenEyes
That has nothing to do with reincarnation. Jesus is talking about sin, and the consequences of sin (disobedience to God). What Jesus is saying is that the sins are there so that God's work can be made manifest - meaning that they can be forgiven by His sacrifice for us. That the disciples considered reincarnation doesn't mean that Jesus did, if indeed that is what they meant.

Hebrews 9:27 has nothing to do with reincarnation either, but you sure were quick to throw that verse out there to defend your point.

At least 8 people were raised from the dead within the bible only to die a second time. How would you explain that?

reply to post by wildtimes

Seems like quite a few folk are getting on board with this "New Age hocus-pocus garbage" lately....which was until very recently resoundlingly dismissed (as so much garbage) among MANY members....

or, maybe it's just me.
Anyway, a much more united front we seem to have here.

Not so fast there! I've got much experience with heresy (the actual practice thereof) And I'm here to challenge the new age orthodoxy. I am the voice of the old Epicurean Atomic Theory.

reply to post by FriedBabelBroccoli


What's the difference between reincarnation and eternal life exactly? If we reincarnate for eternity, that means we never "experience" death, only life.

Just because we experience life from a new perspective after each death does not mean it's not life.

reply to post by pthena


*giggles*
pthena,
there's nothing "New" about "new age" thinking. It's simply a recognition that the Eastern (Oriental) thoughts (which pre-date "Occidental" religious thought) regarding outlook on life, death, and the mysteries of the universe have some very valid points.

Our society is a mish-mash of belief systems. The "New Age" stuff began a LONG time ago - you know that - and it's recent resurgence into mainstream awareness is the only "new" thing about it. It's actually an outcome of Buddhist and Hindu thinking coupled with Western philosophy and reason.

Have you ever come across The Urantia Book?

I first was introduced to it at the tender age of 20 - after I had already decided that Episcopal doctrine was inadequate for my personal understanding of "why I am here."

I feel it's sad that "New Age" has gotten a bad rap lately. I think it's because people don't really understand what it means. It's a conglomeration - or aggregate - of many different 'faith-based' systems, and I personally find it is the most useful in the modern times for making sense of things.

You know I've also studied shamanism, Native American, Celtic, Wiccan, Buddhist, and other "less prominent" religious tracts. I just don't believe any ONE of them have the answers. Like you, I have a "personal" system.
And it works fine for me.
I was being sarcastic when I called it by it's "hate-mongering" adjectives of 'voo-doo' and 'garbage.'

reply to post by windword


Death. That is what scripture teaches. Not hell. That is a a false doctrine. Jesus saved mankind from death. It's a done deal. It's good news. Unlike the false doctrine of the modern day church that has married pagan beliefs with it. The human race has been saved from DEATH according to scripture. The bible DOES NOT teach HELL no where in it what so ever! The teaching of hell was introduced by Dante' writing about a fictional fiery place of torment. The Catholic Church embraced this teaching and used it cause fear and keep people in line. At one time I didnt believe that last sentence. Then I actually did the research. I got serious about it placing all bias aside. If your claiming to be a Christian and you still believe in a literal fiery hell or place of eternal torment than you are believing a lie and if you search the scriptures(get a literal concordant version it's the most accurate translation ever to be compiled) you will not find the teaching of hell anywhere in it. At the fall of Adam .. guess what no mention of hell.. in nearly 600 laws of Moses guess what? No mention of hell anywhere(and to this day people that practice Judaism do not believe in hell ask yourself why not if Christiantiy is Judasm 2.0 so to speak?) In the entire old testamant there is no teaching what so ever on Hell. Ok the new testament when Jesus uses the word hell in the phrase so popular to qoute about the rich man and lazarus he is talking to the Jews about a place they understand a place of shame.. a great dived between a Jew and the promised land held a massive place in there heart. Every Jew with in ear shot of Jesus knew what he was talking about as he told about the rich man and lazurs being in a place of shame and a place where there was a great divide between where lazuras was and where all his relatives where. It's not a teaching on a literal hell like so many seem to wish it was.. It's just NOT. Period. It's not up for debate. And furthermore the Apostle Paul was given the words that we are to follow. The apostle Paul was given the mesage that goes to the rest of the world that were non-Jews. In Pauls message you will find a message of 100% grace. Period. There is not one mention of Hell from Paul not in one single place. The Modern day teaching of Hell is a total LIe and all those who teach it should be ashamed. Ashamed that you try and paint our Loving God to be worse that the worst and most vile sinner you can think of. Many people throw out hitler about now. I prefer to throw out more modern poloticians but I leave it to your imaginations to decide on that finer point. At any rate you get the point.

I had to write the above so we were clear on a few teachings before I answer the OP directly about the topic of re-incarnation.

Any religion that denies death is a false religion system. Including modern day Christianity.
Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam all deny death. They are all a false religion. True followers of Christ are the only ones who have it right. That death is real and that when you die.. your DEAD unless you have resurrection..lucky for us or blessed I should say that it just so happens that God soo loved the world that he gave his Son so that we may be saved.from hell? Nope.. Saved from Death and given life eternal.

Only Christianity teaches that death came into this world by one man (Adam) and death was conquered by one man (Jesus). No other religion lays it out like that at all. Not even close. Also on top of that little nugget there is another.. All other religion have texts that try and describe God from mans point of view. Not Christianity it describes God from God's point of view himself. The above 2 things alone set Christianity as far as from the East is from the West in contrast to other religions. Those two things are mind blowing and a slam dunk as far as contrasts!

As far as Re-incarnation. Most likely genetic memory simply recalling things from ancestors but not an actually previous life that person has lived. That makes it valid information but that does not confirm that the conduit in which it is realized is also actually FROM that time period. It's all recorded through the blood.

Further more belief in reincarnation denies everything Christ came and died for. It denys the very reason Christ came into the world. So that we may have Life and to turn around the Judgement that followed Adams actions i the Garden, and that judgement was death.

The big lie from team Satan is the lie that all false religions embrace.. the lie that there is no death after we die here.. even the modern day Christians have jumped on the bandwagon. It's a shame they don't even know why Jesus came and died on a cross for the entire world. What's even more of a tragedy is that the modern day church is supposed to be the representation of Jesus.

reply to post by firegoggles

The teaching of hell was introduced by Dante' writing about a fictional fiery place of torment. The Catholic Church embraced this teaching and used it cause fear and keep people in line.

Um....Dante didn't live until the 13th-14th centuries. Dante Alighieri

The Catholic Church was established nearly a thousand years before that. He was writing in the middle ages.

reply to post by firegoggles


You don't think Jesus dying for our sins to "give" us eternal life is a religious teaching? Come on! The only reason Jesus died is because he said too much, not to save us from eternal death.

His death was only a consequence of what he taught, not the end goal as many believe. He taught eternal life for all, but only if they believed/understood what he taught would they realize it.

We already have eternal life, but this world tries to teach us otherwise through religious indoctrination and fear. Jesus' good news was that we all have eternal life already and if only we believed it would we "receive" it.

How does one man's torture and death bring life to billions? The idea is ridiculous and steeped in religious dogma.

reply to post by firegoggles

Many people throw out hitler about now. I prefer to throw out more modern poloticians but I leave it to your imaginations to decide on that finer point. At any rate you get the point.

I really wanted to use Dick Cheney as an example, but I thought it too close to home, and Hitler would be an easier and more acceptable stereoptype to use an example of how rebirth can be a lesson as well as more of a self inflicting punishment, by someone who feels guilt for their actions, when seen from a higher vantage point, after death.

I don't believe that "God" created a place called for those who fall out of his grace.

reply to post by windword

I really wanted to use Dick Cheney as an example, but I thought it too close to home

Yeah, Cheney has a long row to hoe. MANY, many, many more lifetimes to suffer through.
Him and Rumsfeld, both Bushes, and our current duplicitous POTUS of "hope and change."

Originally posted by templar knight
My problem with reincarnation is that there are more people alive today than have died, so some mathematically cannot be a reincarnation. Unless 1 previous soul can occupy more than one new soul.

Well I don't know, as the Children of God were told to be fruitful and multiply so that the process of incarnation could increase. Was there a limit on how many new souls God could create? Perhaps you interpreted it as God created all new souls who then have reincarnated since the beginning, but if one studies the Theosophical teachings, one can learn that not all souls incarnate at once. They incarnate in time periods. These incarnations were described as "root races", not to be confused with the races of today. Lemurians and Atlanteans are two separate root races.
Toltecs, Akkadians, and Semites are among the sub-races of the Atlantean root race.

According to Theosophists, Hindus, Egyptians, Sumerians, and Europeans are all members of the 5th root race, the Aryans.
It is unfortunate that a certain dictator was steeped in esoteric teachings and thus gave all this stuff a bad name because he badly abused it for power.
But the point is that souls incarnate over periods of time with their soul groups, and then when the next root race begins to take incarnation, these are new souls which are created, but the older souls keep reincarnating, till they hopefully make their ascensions as Jesus did. Jesus demonstrated this publicly so we could have the record of it in the physical.
Apparently the various divisions of souls overlap the newer ones incarnating. Today, we apparently have people of the 4th and the 5th root races developing at the same time. The 6th is yet to come, after the 7th subrace of the 5th incarnates.
It is said the 7th subrace will incarnate in South America.
Here is a link to all this Theosophical material

www.kheper.net...

One has to open one's mind to accept new ideas and not be stuck in one mode or another.

One more thing, is that some of the Theosophists had a vision of a government of good will watching over all the inhabitants of the earth, and so some of them signed on to the original concept of the UN, but those who would pervert everything into a mechanism of personal control for money and power have used this UN World Government as a mechanism. Many of them know full well this plan for the incarnation of souls and instead of promoting the well being of the incarnating souls and their parents, they have dumped toxic chemicals and presently employing depopulation to keep the populations down. They feel they can control all of this stuff. They also feel they can control the world's resources. This is mad scientist kind of stuff, of which Holdren certainly must be a part. It does involve eugenics, and abortion to control earth's population, and control of resources.
This is why so many cannot understand what these people at the top are doing and why they are doing it. It is too nuts to even believe. Those at the top have some kind of peculiar idea they have a right to make decisions affecting the whole world according to their desire.

reply to post by wildtimes

The "New Age" stuff began a LONG time ago - you know that - and it's recent resurgence into mainstream awareness is the only "new" thing about it. It's actually an outcome of Buddhist and Hindu thinking coupled with Western philosophy and reason.

Maybe, just maybe, something got lost in translation into the Western ego driven system. It seems to me that Western thought has been far too hung up in Neo-Platonic thought. "The individual soul is immortal". "I insist that I am immortal" Such sentiments seem to hinder evolution rather than further it.

"Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it will be alone, and bear no increase." paraphrase of Jesus.

Have you ever come across The Urantia Book?

I'm aware that such a thing exists. The only parts I've read were quoted passages on ATS threads. It strikes me as a retelling of things within a different framework of doctrine. Kind of like the new "Simon the Waterbearer" with his "Gospel of Simon", except the Urantia Book has a very much more intelligent author.

"how TRUE is the reflection to its ORIGINAL"



NAMASTE*******

reply to post by pthena

authorS. No one has claimed authorship.
There are parts of it that make sense to me, and others don't. It does deal with ET input and thought - but also the "nirvana" concepts.

It's a HUGE book. You might enjoy checking it out.
Readily available online.

reply to post by ThirdEyeofHorus


*head explodes*
No really.
Who are you and what did you do with ThirdEye???

Were you, like, my 'pissy' sister or something?
(jk - I don't have any sisters this time around - not biological ones, anyway.)

Originally posted by windword
reply to post by Murgatroid

 

We need Jesus to save us from what?

Separation, death, obliteration.

Jesus upholds not only a standard of Justice and Mercy, but also envelopes an evolutionary process of death and resurrection wherein we are reintegrated and made whole. It's an intercessory grace which fills our gaps.

Because of Jesus' work, we have the freedom to freely choose to reincarnate for all the right reasons, whether here there or wherever is appropriate to our soul's continued development and for the sake of what's in everyone's mutual best interest (are we to leave everyone behind?).

This evolutionary principal is not unlike a type of cosmic clamshell wherein the process of pearl formation takes place through an aggregate compounding of the spirit around what was otherwise an irritant or an unwanted speck of dirt.

The human being is intended to be so much more than we are, or take ourselves to be, so Jesus functions as a model of perfection that people can move into where the spirit of truth and life and love never changes.

Jesus Christ is an evolutionary principal of growth, wholeness and integrity, and the invitation goes beyond the cross (willing to suffer for the sake of what's right) and into the resurrected life, which is a domain of eternal freedom and new possibility wherein death no longer has any meaning. Thus to "grok" it (eat, integrate it), is to know the eternal life already now, and forevermore, which is the kind of thing that can allow a person to relax and have peace and become like a child again, with time to learn, even if the body ages and crumbles, and as to the future life or form, whether in reincarnation or as a body of light, or an alien on another world, that's up to God, it matters not once you're already in God. It's like a joke told by life at death's expense, allowing one who understands and re-cognizes, to laugh at death and say "oh death where is your sting now?"

From the POV of a materialist monism (matter alone is primary) none of this makes any sense, but from the POV of a personal, spiritual experience, it makes perfect sense.

"I am the resurrection and the life!"

Best regards,

NAM

Another thing that devout Christians are unable to accept is that Jesus himself would have reincarnated until his soul was tutored enough to become the leader he was in his final embodiment. It is thought that Jesus was incarnated as King David.
The Church has cleverly hidden these things that they might have control over the masses and subjugate them instead of enlightening them. For if the masses ever knew that Jesus was much like them but more advanced, they would understand why he was there to show us the way, that we may follow. This is all teaching in the Bible we know, but cleverly disguised. Why would Jesus announce he is the "the Way, the Truth, and the Life" only for just himself to ascend? Whatever would be the point of that? He said "and greater works shall YE do because I go unto my Father". The Father is the Creator of us all in His image and Jesus acknowledged himself as a Son of God. He told us that all the things he did we could do also, and that would include making our ascension.
But the Church could not have this, as they would lose control of the masses and they thought themselves to be the wise ones.
Of course Jesus would have known many things, karma being one of them. As one person said, he didn't speak of karma, but that only means the Hindu word for karma would not be in the lexicon of Hebrew tradition, so it was spoken of in other terms. I'm sure the translations also would not show the term karma, and Origen taught the pre-existence of the soul, but was anathematized so the masses would not have as much access to the material.