How to explain away 'Re-Birth'?

[Dorothy]

My thought on reincarnation may be strange, but I think it’s a valid argument:

We believe that the Saints are in heaven. We believe that Mary is Mary, Joseph is Joseph, etc. Mary is not Mary, Frank, John, Louisa, etc…She has only been and ever will be Mary, the mother of Jesus. That is her identity.

If I get to heaven and see my parents there, I will recognize them as my parents…not just spirits who in one lifetime came to earth as my parents.

I too believe that stories like the one you mentioned are deceptions from the one who roams the world seeking the ruin of souls. We may wonder at many things, but Jesus is the only true light who gives God’s truth to the world, and we need to keep our eyes on him and believe in his word.

Thank you!

 

[Vico]

How do we explain away stories like this? How do people have this knowledge? Isn’t just saying “It’s from the devil” too simplistic?

And it’s also a double-edged sword, because if she knows all of that but was never actually re-born, then that means we can know things outside of sense perception.

buddhanet.net/e-learning/qanda05.htm

*But during the last 30 years parapsychologists have been studying reports that some people have vivid memories of their former lives. For example, in England, a 5 year-old girl said she could remember her “other mother and father” and she talked vividly about what sounded like the events in the life of another person. Parapsychologists were called in and they asked her hundreds of questions to which she gave answers. She spoke of living in a particular village in what appeared to be Spain, she gave the name of the village, the name of the street she lived in, her neighbors’ names and details about her everyday life there. She also fearfully spoke of how she had been struck by a car and died of her injuries two days later. When these details were checked, they were found to be accurate. There was a village in Spain with the name the five-year-old girl had given. There was a house of the type she had described in the street she had named. What is more, it was found that a 23-year-old woman living in the house had been killed in a car accident five years before. Now how is it possible for a five year- old girl living in England and who had never been to Spain to know all these details? *

Swiss psychaitrist and psychoanalyst Gustav Carl Jung proposed the idea of collective unconscious which has been described as a storehouse of latent memory traces inherited from man’s ancestral past.

"The existence of these archaic strata is presumably the source of man’s belief in reincarnations and in memories of “previous experiences”.
The Essential Jung: Selected and introduced by Anthony Storr By C. G. Jung, p. 223.

 

[Dorothy]

How do we explain away stories like this? How do people have this knowledge? Isn’t just saying “It’s from the devil” too simplistic?

And it’s also a double-edged sword, because if she knows all of that but was never actually re-born, then that means we can know things outside of sense perception.

buddhanet.net/e-learning/qanda05.htm

*But during the last 30 years parapsychologists have been studying reports that some people have vivid memories of their former lives. For example, in England, a 5 year-old girl said she could remember her “other mother and father” and she talked vividly about what sounded like the events in the life of another person. Parapsychologists were called in and they asked her hundreds of questions to which she gave answers. She spoke of living in a particular village in what appeared to be Spain, she gave the name of the village, the name of the street she lived in, her neighbors’ names and details about her everyday life there. She also fearfully spoke of how she had been struck by a car and died of her injuries two days later. When these details were checked, they were found to be accurate. There was a village in Spain with the name the five-year-old girl had given. There was a house of the type she had described in the street she had named. What is more, it was found that a 23-year-old woman living in the house had been killed in a car accident five years before. Now how is it possible for a five year- old girl living in England and who had never been to Spain to know all these details? *

Ben Sinner,

See post #18 - it is excellent!

The spiritual explanation says it all.

 

[JHC]

Hi

I don’t think rebirth and reincarnation are the same thing in Buddhist philosophy. The terms aren’t exactly interchangeable.

From my understating rebirth just means change. Reincarnation is a soul entering a different life form. And really a lot of Buddhists don’t believe in reincartion. They don’t believe in a soul. Rebirth is a fundamental understanding though.

Buddhists say we a reborn every moment, since we are constantly changing.

Catholics believe we reborn through baptism.