Past Lives

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Just wondered if anyone else remembered/thinks they had a past life or possibly more than one past life. I am almost sure of one of mine, but what about all of you?

The notion of "past lives" conceptualizes a soul which I believe is an illusion.

There is no you or I. We are the same with different "viewpoints". Our viewpoints are randomly defined illusions that help you keep away from danger and find food and a mate so you can reproduce. Just because it is so. If it hadn't been, you wouldn't have been able to ask the question in the first place, making the universe perfect for us per definition. No point wondering about it.

But don't fret, an ultimate nothingness is another logical impossibility.

I used to tell people - as a crap joke - that I used to be the singer Marc Bolan, on account of the fact that I was born within a few months and a couple of miles of the time and place where he died. This was back in the days when I followed pop music.

But I have never seriously felt that I had a past life.
PrincessMR1899, what is this past life of yours that you're almost sure of? Does it have anything to do with your WrongPlanet name?

'Past lives' only make sense if there is such a thing as 'souls', which there is no indication of. In short, there are no past lives.

In a past life I burned a witch who believed she existed in a past life.
Thankfully I now have logic to back up my original argument this time.

When i read about the titanic, any piece of information really, i get intense feelings of deja-vu. I'm not a believer of past lifes, but if i was i'd have to conclude i was on the titanic.

Why yes it does. I believe I was Maria, the third daughter of the last Emperor of Russia, Nicholas II I've had enough dreams, and flashbacks, visions, whatever you want to call them to prove it to myself.

I haven't told many people, and those I've told are my closest and dearest friends. I've gotten into arguments with my professors in high school about it too! It's funny, one of them said, "Isn't it funny that people who say they've had one think they were someone famous?" That's always stayed with me as a little piece of DOUBT, but I do seriously believe in who I was. I don't make a big deal of it ALL the time, but I've made my peace with it.

Judge me as you will, but this is my own belief...even though I might just be insane to belive it!

I believe I've had some past lifes.
Mostly other animal ones.
I'm positive I was a wolf and more than once.

Ditto! BUT...can't get rid of my big BUT...Many, many years ago, a friend and I smoked ganja laced with LSD. I fell asleep and dreamed I was Henry VI as a child and went to visit Joan of Arc while she was imprisoned. I brought her a basket of apples and was appaled at her trying to be like a man especially when I looked in her armour to see bloody rags (her menses). She spoke to me telling me that she was no different than my French mother. I looked at a vest she was wearing and she told me she made it herself. I then left and was greeted by a very "dressed-up" gentleman who gave me great respect and affection. His face stuck in my mind. I woke up and forgot everything temporarily until I started studying the hundred years war for school. the more I read, the more real that drug-induced dream seemed. The man's face in the dream actually matched precisely to one of the men that was in Henry's the Fifth's Royal court. It was uncanny!! ! Joan of Arc DID sew and was quite proud of it too. Henry the 6th did indeed visit Joan. I tell you this...Young Henry was tricked into signing her death warrant by that handsomely dressed man. I can't remember his name! Henry felt nothing but compassion and love for Joan as did his school teacher and care taker, a man named "John".
But here's the strange part....I NEVER read English/French history before that time. My only interest was ancient Egypt and Greece. Another oddity...and this isn't drug induced...I Got SUCH a feel of exhileration when I see photos of the D-day parade and that sailor kissing the nurse. I don't know why. I often dream of living in a "soddie" (sod house) with flowers growing right out of the walls. Yellow flowers...weeds. I often dream of running in the snow and hiding among pine trees only to be instantly creamated by a soldier's flame thrower. Even though it's freaky, there MUST be some explanation because I don't believe that a memory can transcend. It narcissitic to think like that. We're only great in our own eyes. When we die, our afterlife is our children...the DNA we leave behind. When we are dead, it really is FINAL. No reward for good deeds, no punishment for bad ones. The reward for a good deed is the good that it does others. You must learn to defend what you love and fight back. God is not "goin' to get" your enemies. The secular law will.

No, death cannot be final, because that needs a soul. The soul, or your you is just an illusion.

Since energy cannot be created or destroyed, a logical consequence is that the total amount of energy in the universe is constant. Energy can only change form, so an ultimate end is impossible. In your "death", you become literally united with the universe where the energy that once was you becomes parts of everything else. The former "you" and your life become insignificant in the big picture.

Right Galaxy- Those are quite interesting- the LSD trip, and the recurring dream about the flamethrower.

The dream is especially disturbing because it so prosaic.

Imagining that you're a king in a previous life is always suspect for a number of reasons.
But dreaming that you're an ordinary peasant who lives in a sod house and being burned alive-the details - the flowers-the snow-etc. is an odd fantasy to just dream up.

What can I say- it sounds like you were a victim of a nazi atrocity in Russia in WWII.
One of countless millions of civilians who died in operation Barbarossa.

Even if its just some buried memory of something someone read to you as a child in this lifetime- still its interesting that it recurs as a dream.

Im reminded of seeing Stephen King on TV explaining that the ghosts in his novels can be taken as ghosts- or they can be taken as symbols of his characters' neurosis, and unfinnished emotional business. you're recurring dream is like a seeing a ghost- it could be taken either way ( not that im accusing you of being neurotic but maybe the unfinnished business is from this incarnation and its in disguise).

Or.. maybe it really is the traumatic memory of the end of a previous lifetime.
I dont quite know what to make of it.

Thanks for sharing.

Uncomitted on past lives, still a lot unknown about that.
Often listen to an overnight radio show "Coast to Coast AM" which discusses topics ranging all over the map. Going to be discussing efforts to create and artificial brain and then later Atlantis tonight. Reincarnation and past lives are something occasionally covered.
Debate includes 'evidence' from both sides.
I'm not sure I'll really know till this life is over and I get to see what happens next.

As souls have been brought up, that's something discussed on that program too.

Whether it's what anyone one else believes or not, I'm of the line of thought that there is the paradox of while we have unique individual bodies, minds, souls, and spirits; they (we), are all connected at what might be called the 'quantum level' materially and also with and through something which might be described as 'universal mind' outside and beyond the limits of the brain and body.

There's a whole lot about life and the universe we are still discovering and I would expect quite a bit more left to discover about what we're made of and how we work.
"Stay tuned for further developments" as the saying goes.

With or without past lives, it is my hope that eventually there is confirmation that each person has their unique soul and specific reason for being alive and being here, and being now.

(btw im aggreeing w you kenjuudo, i have a habit of being so ambigious in my replies, people assume im arguing with them )

we expect "life" to be an objective concept. so when we die, we cannot comprehend "where life went". so we invent a place thats death. when in fact, life is like the color yellow. we paint over w green. the color didnt GO anywhere, it just ceased to exist as a reality.
same goes for life, in my opinion. once life has dissapeared from someone, it has dissapeared.

"past lives" is just another piece of human poetry. such as "meaning of life" and "why are we here"...

I am not into that much. I may or may not have had past lives, but I don't remember anything from it.

Well if I had a past life, it probably involved drowning /:

I have recurrent dreams of falling off a ship and flapping my hands and screaming...trying to get the ship to come back.

The dream never ceases from this pattern of ending with a rescue crew...

Wow. That's pretty specific. I used to work with a women who thought she was a reincarnate of someone specific. I dont remember whom, but remember talking with her about it (and it was something similar to yours, in that it was a semi-obscure historical figure). I just dont see it being possible. Clearly and logically we're not all reincarnates as the population has been doubling at ever increasing rates over the written history of mankind. It just seems like, the reasoning you're giving, is self-fulfilling. You have one random weird dream and you think about it, causing more dreams.

If the possibility did exist that our conscious could pass on from generations before I'm sure I would be the reincarnate of someone who was remarkably unremarkable.