Scott wrote:What do you think about reincarnation? Do you think that belief in reincarnation compatible with most major religions or not? Do you think a non-religious person can believe in reincarnation?
I guess it depends on how we define reincarnation. In some ways, we get memories (i.e. information and knowledge) passed down to us both genetically and culturally, most notably as instincts. But most people think of reincarnation as more metaphysical than that.
What do you think?
Very nice topic.
Below are my views based on a personal belief system (that I adopted from others by adapting them). I'll try to keep it as short as possible.
Given the topic, let us just postulate the classic dualist view in which we are a soul (or spirit, as I'll call it) temporarily linked to a biological body, that is,
incarnate. Of course this can be contended, but there is no point considering re-incarnation without that.
First, let us consider an extreme generalization of what we humans do, separating the essence of our actions from the
medium through which these are carried out, and let us imagine what would be the form of these actions if we don't have a biological body (what disincarnate spirits do).
One of the things we humans do, perhaps the most basic of all, is communicate and socialize. We can do that face-to-face, drawing on a cave, sending a telegram, or writing on an Internet forum; forming a circle of friends, a family, a club or a nation. The medium (or channel) of communication, as well as the social structures, changed through the several thousand years we've been here, but the essence remains the same, and it seems simple enough to imagine disincarnate spirits equally communicating and socializing.
Something else that we do is breath, eat, drink and sleep. But all these can be considered to be actions needed to keep our biological body up and running.
The belief system that I'm presenting here includes the proposition that spirits do have an "ethereal body". It is through that body that spirits sense and communicate, and it is
in that body that spirits exert their will, that is, express their intent actualizing actions.
While this ethereal body is not physical, hence has no organs, cells, atoms, etc.. it is nonetheless
a body, the primal vehicle for the perception and expression of a spirit. Hence, it poses its own set of needs. So, while an incarnate spirit needs to take care of its biological body (and the needs of such a biological body become basic physiological human needs), a disincarnate spirit, also and even more fundamentally, needs to take care of its ethereal body.
On a higher level, other things that we do are go to school and to work. These again can be seen as a human-tailored form of structured interaction. I go to school so I can learn to produce something, which then to produce I go to work, and when I go to work I get money, which in turn allows me to get what other people produce, in exchange for what I produce. Once more, this can be generalized as structured cultural forms of interdependency, and it can be imagined that disincarnate spirits, even in a world without atoms, without water and corn, without heat and cold, are equally interdependent and so construct whatever social structure that better fits that ethereal world.
On an even higher level, we try to make sense of our existence and the reality we are in. Anything we do has an irreversible impact, and as a consequence, at each action we are either closer or farther from whatever it is that we want to be. So we make mistakes and we learn from them as we gain experience and understanding. We try to make sense of everyone else and how what we do affects them, which in turn affects us, and viceversa. This high level of "doing" can even more easily be imagined in the non-physical world of disincarnate spirits.
Now...
Figuring out what to make of ourselves and others, gaining experience and, from that, understanding. Making mistakes and learning, is easier said than done.
According to this belief system, each and every spirit is constantly in its path through that. If, somehow, we measure the distance from where we want to be and where we are, and call that
progression or evolution, we all have a timeline that could be visualized as a curve. For some, the curve might consistently go up and up (steady progression). For all the rest of us, the curve goes locally up and down and up and down, and only in the long term, it tends to go up [*1]
Also according to these views, there is a non-physical world populated by spirits and a subset of them
choose to incarnate as fast-track to progression.
Since that occurs at a certain moment in time, the spirit that chooses to incarnate has a timeline before that. What is it doing before? whatever spirits do when disincarnate.
According to this belief system,
the disincarnate "life" is the norm, and the
incarnate life is the exception. So, once a biological lifetime ended (we die as humans), the spirit, now disincarnate, just goes back to its "normal" life, where it continues progression by the normal means.
Each and every time a spirit "lives a human life", it does so because it chooses. Usually, that's multiple, hundreds of times; but it can be just a few, or none at all.
Since the very purpose of living a human life is to fast-track progression, a sequence
(always finite) of human (re)-incarnations can be viewed as a straight path to some "high level" of progression or evolution. In practice, it usually is, and spirits transition a finite number of human lives then reach what might be called "purity". However, many spirits just never incarnate at all, either because they have not progressed enough yet to see the point, or because they choose different strategies. Others have "tried" incarnation and decide to do otherwise. Most, however, do fast track straight to "purity" (whatever that means) by sequencing a human life after another.
One important proposition in this belief system is that spirit always incarnate as humans, never, ever, other animals.
Animals, plants, simpler organisms and even matter itself is also incarnation (and re-incarnation) of spirits, except that in this case, these are "fractional spirits" and not "whole units" as in the case of humans.
[*1] I presented the curve as it is usually given, where up is better, yet I mentioned the distance from our desired state to our current state, so, the proper mathematical curve based on that metric would be reverted and go down as we progress further.