Over at Lover of Strife, Evn made the following aside:
Speaking of perspectives, my personal perception of reincarnation is spherical rather than linear. As such, I sincerely hope [Steve] Irwin comes back as a crocodile in ancient Egypt.
The problem with perceiving reincarnation as linear or spherical is that any perception of reincarnation is de facto a perception of time. If time is an illusion, as physicists and philosophers increasingly agree, then a shape for time, like a line or a sphere, is also an illusion. Or, more accurately, a construct that we use to help us perceive it. And to keep our brains from hurting.
What if time is really simultaneous? What if all of the moments of now are co-existing in a way we can’t perceive?
I like to compare time to space. When you enter a room, you reach the lamp, then the couch, then the table, then the TV. So objects in space can be perceived as linear, occuring one after another, and indeed, if you are born blind, this is how you perceive them. But if you can see it, you can know space is really simultaneous.
I think past and present and future are couches and floor lamps and television sets. Crocodiles in ancient Egypt exist simultaneously with Pagan bloggers and swashbuckling pirates (who are, after all, eternal).
It’s a very informative view of reincarnation, really, because instead of having past lives that influence future lives, we have many simultaneous lives influencing one another. Which is cool.
When I first met Eric it was distinctly non-magical, from a sensation-al point of view. I remember saying it; that this friendship felt nice and NOT magical, NOT karmic.
As we grew closer and the intensity increased, it shifted and it WAS magical. And I had, for the first time, the following notion:
We just changed history.
When we first met, no, I don’t think we had a past.
But at some point it changed, and we did.
And I’m certain I was right, both times.
The living room/blind guy thing is cool.
That’s very cool about knowing you changed the past. And I think true. Like somewhere in the 1400s two people connected as a result of you.
Oh, I actually think it was us. I think we hadn’t met in the 1400s as of July, 2005, but as of December, we had.
And then sure, other things changes around that as well…
That’s what I meant. I don’t see any reason that the chain of events has to be tipped-off by a causative event further in the past than the rest of the chain, because past is an illusion.
jyes.
Not being a spiritual I’ve never spent much time thinking about reincarnation… but when I did it was always linear, with past lives and being reincarnated as a future life. It was just moments ago, after reading this thread, that it occurred to me that one could be reincarnated into an earlier chronological life…. and that Steve Irwin could be reincarnated as the ray that killed him. Which is a little … bendy …..
See, the whole “all realities at once” idea was what I wanted to get across… and then my brain started doing that thing it does when I read Tom Robbins novels late at night, so I went with spherical.
But yeah, you nailed it on the head. And I still hope Steve’s in Egypt now/then/tomorrow.
Bendy. So Ken, instead of “reincarnated as,” try “is.” Weirder but less bendy.
Evn, when you said spherical, I thought you meant…a track. Like moving in a spherical manner. Rather than just…being.
“and then my brain started doing that thing it does when I read Tom Robbins novels late at night”…. long way of saying “bendy”…. 😉
Sounds very much like a movie I just watched “what the *bleep* do we know?”
Interesting with the room analogy. Just to expand a bit, generally when I explain this I use a tapestry analogy.
When you are pulled back from it, you can percieve the whole of the tapestry simultaneously, all occurring together, all happening at one time. You can see how this section influences that section and how this part blends into that part, complementing and supporting it.
Then you move in (as you would with a life) and you lose your perspective on the whole of the work. You start seeing details of the tapestry, the little minutae that makes such a microsocopic examination interesting. Seeing the bugs eating at the threads, seeing the individual fibers, the way of pulling the broken parts back in. You may not see the colors any more, but you can see more of the details, instaad of a general overview.
When moveing from one area to another on the tapestry, it is percieved linerally. When thinking of where you were on the tapestry and where you are now, that is shown as a linear shift, and that means there is a “future” and a “past”, bringing the concepts of past lives and so on.
It is only with that perspective you get when pulled back that the distinction of “then” and “now” and “tomorrow” become meaningless and interactive.
Just my tuppence.
The tapestry is nice, it implies meaning; a “picture” that ties it all together. I was really just going for the simultaneity without coming down on the side of meaning or lack thereof.
The room is good too, it shows how different things can be in the same place at the same time while meaning different things. I may have to use it one day in one of my classes.
The way I see it, it’s linear as long as we’re here, and it’s simultaneous whenever we die.