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@LordFall Reincarnation is a fact. There are techniques to verify this for yourself. Yoga Nidra and Kundalini meditation are the ones I do. You must be careful, want, and be ready for postcards from the past. We don't remember previous incarnations for anything. Anyway, even from this life, you will remember about three months, distorted by the narrative of the ego mirror. Then you will discover that what has happened doesn't matter as you are here. The water in the river is always fresh

Reincarnation and parallel realities are fascinating subjects. I hope we come to a point where we can explore this and document it. I have the feeling I've lived my life many times, many things feel familiar.

hopefully in my next reincarnation I will become such an entity

The thing is you don't know, and you have to accept that. It might be the case, that it would have much more upside than downside, or the opposite, but you don't know that, so you are committing yourself to the unknown. Maybe there is such a thing as reincarnation, maybe there isn't. Even if there is such a thing as reincarnation, why would it be guaranteed that your next life would contain less suffering than the previous one? There are many other assumption baked into your questions. Why would you assume, that if there is such a thing as reincarnation, that you would only reincarnate to Earth, or that you would only reincarnate as a human, or that your suicide won't have any karmic consequences?

So I'm interested in how valid the Buddhist view of Reincarnation is and to a lesser extent, Hinduism's. I just don't see the validity of the teaching is and would like some opinions on it.

Namasté, After adoptiong the idea of enlightment, i started doubted my beliefs about reincarnation. Because from my view, becoming enlightned means that you are going back straight to the source.

I mean if reincarnation is real then it has always been real so nothing really changes that much.

@Leo Gura So then all these spiritual masters, Ramana Maharshi, Sadhguru etc etc are just bsing about this reincarnation stuff!!!?

How do you know death is infinite love? What if just wakens you up to another dream? What about reincarnation?

"Communion with God" by Neale Donald Walsch. It's about 6 hrs long and read by three individuals. Contains an explanation of the illusions of humans - a concept that previously mentioned in "Conversations with God", also by the same author and also a recommended audiobook. Note: it is kind of heavy on metaphysics and on the concept of God but very empowering and interesting. When I listened to it - the time flew by. "Journey of Souls" by Dr. Michael Newton. His first book and follows the journey of the soul as presented by thousands of hypnosis induced patients which were regressed to the "between lives state". The book heavily relies on the concept of reincarnation. Enjoy!

What you lecture Scholar for you do it yourself. How many times have people brought up deities, reincarnation, chakras, etc., and your response to that is, "it is imaginary", or "it is a dream".

Nothing changes after death. You are very literally already dead. To the extent the ownership-taking / seeking energy has not dissolved, "you" will keep attaching yourself to other apparent objects. How'd you like to live 100 years as a window? A week as a piece of toast? Or another stint as a human? Go for it. This is "reincarnation". Take salvia for a preview. Enlightenment is the recognition that there is no you and there never was, and gets "you" off the wheel of seeking and attachment forever.

Reincarnation is in your direct experience. It is the belief in the reality and ownership of a self / selves.

The thing here where I think Buddhism is wrong is still the belief in a separate self that keeps reincarnating, like how you can somehow forever get out from the world of form. God will never ever stop experiencing form, it will never permanently stop all manifestation for good, it will keep taking on different forms forever. But God also simultaneously is also resting in pure nondual consciousness, the world of unmanifest form. In a way when you realize you are God you get infinite reincarnation, but also infinite "liberation" (I don't like this word - but you get what I mean). In fact when you realize that time does not exist, then every single experience will be repeated infinitely.

Agreed. Even reincarnation is an unfounded belief. Where is reincarnation in your direct experience? If there is no past and no future, then there are no reincarnations of Buddha or of you.

Most of you probably have read the book autobiography of a yogi, handed out by steve jobs at his funeral. In the book yogananda describes how through his life he met many high consciousness human beings, how he experienced miracles in his life, and how his guru sri yukteswar resurrected and described afterlife. As you can see in the picture below, it was highly likely another lineage of ascended masters resurrecting/working together again. So what do you guys think of this afterlife story written by Yogananda? What are your opinions? ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ “As prophets are sent on earth to help men work out their physical karma, so I have been directed by God to serve on an astral planet as a savior,” Sri Yukteswar explained. “It is called Hiranyaloka or ‘Illumined Astral Planet.’ There I am aiding advanced beings to rid themselves of astral karma and thus attain liberation from astral rebirths. The dwellers on Hiranyaloka are highly developed spiritually; all of them had acquired, in their last earth-incarnation, the meditation-given power of consciously leaving their physical bodies at death. No one can enter Hiranyaloka unless he has passed on earth beyond the state of sabikalpa samadhi into the higher state of nirbikalpa samadhi. Swami Sri Yukteswar “The Hiranyaloka inhabitants have already passed through the ordinary astral spheres, where nearly all beings from earth must go at death; there they worked out many seeds of their past actions in the astral worlds. None but advanced beings can perform such redemptive work effectually in the astral worlds. Then, in order to free their souls more fully from the cocoon of karmic traces lodged in their astral bodies, these higher beings were drawn by cosmic law to be reborn with new astral bodies on Hiranyaloka, the astral sun or heaven, where I have resurrected to help them. There are also highly advanced beings on Hiranyaloka who have come from the superior, subtler, causal world.” My mind was now in such perfect attunement with my guru’s that he was conveying his word-pictures to me partly by speech and partly by thought-transference. I was thus quickly receiving his idea-tabloids. “You have read in the scriptures,” Master went on, “that God encased the human soul successively in three bodies—the idea, or causal, body; the subtle astral body, seat of man’s mental and emotional natures; and the gross physical body. On earth a man is equipped with his physical senses. An astral being works with his consciousness and feelings and a body made of lifetrons. A causal-bodied being remains in the blissful realm of ideas. My work is with those astral beings who are preparing to enter the causal world.” “Adorable Master, please tell me more about the astral cosmos.” Though I had slightly relaxed my embrace at Sri Yukteswar’s request, my arms were still around him. Treasure beyond all treasures, my guru who had laughed at death to reach me! “There are many astral planets, teeming with astral beings,” Master began. “The inhabitants use astral planes, or masses of light, to travel from one planet to another, faster than electricity and radioactive energies. “The astral universe, made of various subtle vibrations of light and color, is hundreds of times larger than the material cosmos. The entire physical creation hangs like a little solid basket under the huge luminous balloon of the astral sphere. Just as many physical suns and stars roam in space, so there are also countless astral solar and stellar systems. Their planets have astral suns and moons, more beautiful than the physical ones. The astral luminaries resemble the aurora borealis—the sunny astral aurora being more dazzling than the mild-rayed moon-aurora. The astral day and night are longer than those of earth. “The astral world is infinitely beautiful, clean, pure, and orderly. There are no dead planets or barren lands. The terrestrial blemishes—weeds, bacteria, insects, snakes—are absent. Unlike the variable climates and seasons of the earth, the astral planets maintain the even temperature of an eternal spring, with occasional luminous white snow and rain of many-colored lights. Astral planets abound in opal lakes and bright seas and rainbow rivers. “The ordinary astral universe—not the subtler astral heaven of Hiranyaloka—is peopled with millions of astral beings who have come, more or less recently, from the earth, and also with myriads of fairies, mermaids, fishes, animals, goblins, gnomes, demigods and spirits, all residing on different astral planets in accordance with karmic qualifications. Various spheric mansions or vibratory regions are provided for good and evil spirits. Good ones can travel freely, but the evil spirits are confined to limited zones. In the same way that human beings live on the surface of the earth, worms inside the soil, fish in water, and birds in air, so astral beings of different grades are assigned to suitable vibratory quarters. “Among the fallen dark angels expelled from other worlds, friction and war take place with lifetronic bombs or mental mantric vibratory rays. These beings dwell in the gloom-drenched regions of the lower astral cosmos, working out their evil karma. “In the vast realms above the dark astral prison, all is shining and beautiful. The astral cosmos is more naturally attuned than the earth to the divine will and plan of perfection. Every astral object is manifested primarily by the will of God, and partially by the will-call of astral beings. They possess the power of modifying or enhancing the grace and form of anything already created by the Lord. He has given His astral children the freedom and privilege of changing or improving at will the astral cosmos. On earth a solid must be transformed into liquid or other form through natural or chemical processes, but astral solids are changed into astral liquids, gases, or energy solely and instantly by the will of the inhabitants. “The earth is dark with warfare and murder in the sea, land, and air,” my guru continued, “but the astral realms know a happy harmony and equality. Astral beings dematerialize or materialize their forms at will. Flowers or fish or animals can metamorphose themselves, for a time, into astral men. All astral beings are free to assume any form, and can easily commune together. No fixed, definite, natural law hems them round—any astral tree, for example, can be successfully asked to produce an astral mango or other desired fruit, flower, or indeed any other object. Certain karmic restrictions are present, but there are no distinctions in the astral world about desirability of various forms. Everything is vibrant with God’s creative light. “No one is born of woman; offspring are materialized by astral beings through the help of their cosmic will into specially patterned, astrally condensed forms. The recently physically disembodied being arrives in an astral family through invitation, drawn by similar mental and spiritual tendencies. “The astral body is not subject to cold or heat or other natural conditions. The anatomy includes an astral brain, or the thousand-petaled lotus of light, and six awakened centers in the sushumna, or astral cerebro-spinal axis. The heart draws cosmic energy as well as light from the astral brain, and pumps it to the astral nerves and body cells, or lifetrons. Astral beings can affect their bodies by lifetronic force or by mantric vibrations. “The astral body is an exact counterpart of the last physical form. Astral beings retain the same appearance which they possessed in youth in their previous earthly sojourn; occasionally an astral being chooses, like myself, to retain his old age appearance.” Master, emanating the very essence of youth, chuckled merrily. “Unlike the spacial, three-dimensional physical world cognized only by the five senses, the astral spheres are visible to the all-inclusive sixth sense—intuition,” Sri Yukteswar went on. “By sheer intuitional feeling, all astral beings see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. They possess three eyes, two of which are partly closed. The third and chief astral eye, vertically placed on the forehead, is open. Astral beings have all the outer sensory organs—ears, eyes, nose, tongue, and skin—but they employ the intuitional sense to experience sensations through any part of the body; they can see through the ear, or nose, or skin. They are able to hear through the eyes or tongue, and can taste through the ears or skin, and so forth. “Man’s physical body is exposed to countless dangers, and is easily hurt or maimed; the ethereal astral body may occasionally be cut or bruised but is healed at once by mere willing.” “Gurudeva, are all astral persons beautiful?” “Beauty in the astral world is known to be a spiritual quality, and not an outward conformation,” Sri Yukteswar replied. “Astral beings therefore attach little importance to facial features. They have the privilege, however, of costuming themselves at will with new, colorful, astrally materialized bodies. Just as worldly men don new array for gala events, so astral beings find occasions to bedeck themselves in specially designed forms. “Joyous astral festivities on the higher astral planets like Hiranyaloka take place when a being is liberated from the astral world through spiritual advancement, and is therefore ready to enter the heaven of the causal world. On such occasions the Invisible Heavenly Father, and the saints who are merged in Him, materialize Themselves into bodies of Their own choice and join the astral celebration. In order to please His beloved devotee, the Lord takes any desired form. If the devotee worshiped through devotion, he sees God as the Divine Mother. To Jesus, the Father-aspect of the Infinite One was appealing beyond other conceptions. The individuality with which the Creator has endowed each of His creatures makes every conceivable and inconceivable demand on the Lord’s versatility!” My guru and I laughed happily together. Swami Sri Yukteswar and Paramahansa Yogananda “Friends of other lives easily recognize one another in the astral world,” Sri Yukteswar went on in his beautiful, flutelike voice. “Rejoicing at the immortality of friendship, they realize the indestructibility of love, often doubted at the time of the sad, delusive partings of earthly life. “The intuition of astral beings pierces through the veil and observes human activities on earth, but man cannot view the astral world unless his sixth sense is somewhat developed. Thousands of earth-dwellers have momentarily glimpsed an astral being or an astral world. “The advanced beings on Hiranyaloka remain mostly awake in ecstasy during the long astral day and night, helping to work out intricate problems of cosmic government and the redemption of prodigal sons, earthbound souls. When the Hiranyaloka beings sleep, they have occasional dreamlike astral visions. Their minds are usually engrossed in the conscious state of highest nirbikalpa bliss. “Inhabitants in all parts of the astral worlds are still subject to mental agonies. The sensitive minds of the higher beings on planets like Hiranyaloka feel keen pain if any mistake is made in conduct or perception of truth. These advanced beings endeavor to attune their every act and thought with the perfection of spiritual law. “Communication among the astral inhabitants is held entirely by astral telepathy and television; there is none of the confusion and misunderstanding of the written and spoken word which earth-dwellers must endure. Just as persons on the cinema screen appear to move and act through a series of light pictures, and do not actually breathe, so the astral beings walk and work as intelligently guided and coordinated images of light, without the necessity of drawing power from oxygen. Man depends upon solids, liquids, gases, and energy for sustenance; astral beings sustain themselves principally by cosmic light.” “Master mine, do astral beings eat anything?” I was drinking in his marvelous elucidations with the receptivity of all my faculties—mind, heart, soul. Superconscious perceptions of truth are permanently real and changeless, while fleeting sense experiences and impressions are never more than temporarily or relatively true, and soon lose in memory all their vividness. My guru’s words were so penetratingly imprinted on the parchment of my being that at any time, by transferring my mind to the superconscious state, I can clearly relive the divine experience. “Luminous raylike vegetables abound in the astral soils,” he answered. “The astral beings consume vegetables, and drink a nectar flowing from glorious fountains of light and from astral brooks and rivers. Just as invisible images of persons on the earth can be dug out of the ether and made visible by a television apparatus, later being dismissed again into space, so the God-created, unseen astral blueprints of vegetables and plants floating in the ether are precipitated on an astral planet by the will of its inhabitants. In the same way, from the wildest fancy of these beings, whole gardens of fragrant flowers are materialized, returning later to the etheric invisibility. Although dwellers on the heavenly planets like Hiranyaloka are almost freed from any necessity of eating, still higher is the unconditioned existence of almost completely liberated souls in the causal world, who eat nothing save the manna of bliss. “The earth-liberated astral being meets a multitude of relatives, fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, and friends, acquired during different incarnations on earth, as they appear from time to time in various parts of the astral realms. He is therefore at a loss to understand whom to love especially; he learns in this way to give a divine and equal love to all, as children and individualized expressions of God. Though the outward appearance of loved ones may have changed, more or less according to the development of new qualities in the latest life of any particular soul, the astral being employs his unerring intuition to recognize all those once dear to him in other planes of existence, and to welcome them to their new astral home. Because every atom in creation is inextinguishably dowered with individuality, an astral friend will be recognized no matter what costume he may don, even as on earth an actor’s identity is discoverable by close observation despite any disguise. “The span of life in the astral world is much longer than on earth. A normal advanced astral being’s average life period is from five hundred to one thousand years, measured in accordance with earthly standards of time. As certain redwood trees outlive most trees by millenniums, or as some yogis live several hundred years though most men die before the age of sixty, so some astral beings live much longer than the usual span of astral existence. Visitors to the astral world dwell there for a longer or shorter period in accordance with the weight of their physical karma, which draws them back to earth within a specified time. “The astral being does not have to contend painfully with death at the time of shedding his luminous body. Many of these beings nevertheless feel slightly nervous at the thought of dropping their astral form for the subtler causal one. The astral world is free from unwilling death, disease, and old age. These three dreads are the curse of earth, where man has allowed his consciousness to identify itself almost wholly with a frail physical body requiring constant aid from air, food, and sleep in order to exist at all. “Physical death is attended by the disappearance of breath and the disintegration of fleshly cells. Astral death consists of the dispersement of lifetrons, those manifest units of energy which constitute the life of astral beings. At physical death a being loses his consciousness of flesh and becomes aware of his subtle body in the astral world. Experiencing astral death in due time, a being thus passes from the consciousness of astral birth and death to that of physical birth and death. These recurrent cycles of astral and physical encasement are the ineluctable destiny of all unenlightened beings. Scriptural definitions of heaven and hell sometimes stir man’s deeper-than-subconscious memories of his long series of experiences in the blithesome astral and disappointing terrestrial worlds.” “Beloved Master,” I asked, “will you please describe more in detail the difference between rebirth on the earth and in the astral and causal spheres?” “Man as an individualized soul is essentially causal-bodied,” my guru explained. “That body is a matrix of the thirty-five ideas required by God as the basic or causal thought forces from which He later formed the subtle astral body of nineteen elements and the gross physical body of sixteen elements. “The nineteen elements of the astral body are mental, emotional, and lifetronic. The nineteen components are intelligence; ego; feeling; mind (sense-consciousness); five instruments of knowledge, the subtle counterparts of the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch; five instruments of action, the mental correspondence for the executive abilities to procreate, excrete, talk, walk, and exercise manual skill; and five instruments of life force, those empowered to perform the crystallizing, assimilating, eliminating, metabolizing, and circulating functions of the body. This subtle astral encasement of nineteen elements survives the death of the physical body, which is made of sixteen gross metallic and nonmetallic elements. Paramahansa Yogananda, standing, speaks to a full house at the downtown Minneapolis Radisson Hotel in the fall of 1927 “God thought out different ideas within Himself and projected them into dreams. Lady Cosmic Dream thus sprang out decorated in all her colossal endless ornaments of relativity. “In thirty-five thought categories of the causal body, God elaborated all the complexities of man’s nineteen astral and sixteen physical counterparts. By condensation of vibratory forces, first subtle, then gross, He produced man’s astral body and finally his physical form. According to the law of relativity, by which the Prime Simplicity has become the bewildering manifold, the causal cosmos and causal body are different from the astral cosmos and astral body; the physical cosmos and physical body are likewise characteristically at variance with the other forms of creation. “The fleshly body is made of the fixed, objectified dreams of the Creator. The dualities are ever-present on earth: disease and health, pain and pleasure, loss and gain. Human beings find limitation and resistance in three-dimensional matter. When man’s desire to live is severely shaken by disease or other causes, death arrives; the heavy overcoat of the flesh is temporarily shed. The soul, however, remains encased in the astral and causal bodies. The adhesive force by which all three bodies are held together is desire. The power of unfulfilled desires is the root of all man’s slavery. “Physical desires are rooted in egotism and sense pleasures. The compulsion or temptation of sensory experience is more powerful than the desire-force connected with astral attachments or causal perceptions. “Astral desires center around enjoyment in terms of vibration. Astral beings enjoy the ethereal music of the spheres and are entranced by the sight of all creation as exhaustless expressions of changing light. The astral beings also smell, taste, and touch light. Astral desires are thus connected with an astral being’s power to precipitate all objects and experiences as forms of light or as condensed thoughts or dreams. “Causal desires are fulfilled by perception only. The nearly-free beings who are encased only in the causal body see the whole universe as realizations of the dream-ideas of God; they can materialize anything and everything in sheer thought. Causal beings therefore consider the enjoyment of physical sensations or astral delights as gross and suffocating to the soul’s fine sensibilities. Causal beings work out their desires by materializing them instantly. Those who find themselves covered only by the delicate veil of the causal body can bring universes into manifestation even as the Creator. Because all creation is made of the cosmic dream-texture, the soul thinly clothed in the causal has vast realizations of power. “A soul, being invisible by nature, can be distinguished only by the presence of its body or bodies. The mere presence of a body signifies that its existence is made possible by unfulfilled desires. “So long as the soul of man is encased in one, two, or three body-containers, sealed tightly with the corks of ignorance and desires, he cannot merge with the sea of Spirit. When the gross physical receptacle is destroyed by the hammer of death, the other two coverings—astral and causal—still remain to prevent the soul from consciously joining the Omnipresent Life. When desirelessness is attained through wisdom, its power disintegrates the two remaining vessels. The tiny human soul emerges, free at last; it is one with the Measureless Amplitude.” I asked my divine guru to shed further light on the high and mysterious causal world. “The causal world is indescribably subtle,” he replied. “In order to understand it, one would have to possess such tremendous powers of concentration that he could close his eyes and visualize the astral cosmos and the physical cosmos in all their vastness—the luminous balloon with the solid basket—as existing in ideas only. If by this superhuman concentration one succeeded in converting or resolving the two cosmoses with all their complexities into sheer ideas, he would then reach the causal world and stand on the borderline of fusion between mind and matter. There one perceives all created things—solids, liquids, gases, electricity, energy, all beings, gods, men, animals, plants, bacteria—as forms of consciousness, just as a man can close his eyes and realize that he exists, even though his body is invisible to his physical eyes and is present only as an idea. “Whatever a human being can do in fancy, a causal being can do in reality. The most colossal imaginative human intelligence is able, in mind only, to range from one extreme of thought to another, to skip mentally from planet to planet, or tumble endlessly down a pit of eternity, or soar rocketlike into the galaxied canopy, or scintillate like a searchlight over milky ways and the starry spaces. But beings in the causal world have a much greater freedom, and can effortlessly manifest their thoughts into instant objectivity, without any material or astral obstruction or karmic limitation. “Causal beings realize that the physical cosmos is not primarily constructed of electrons, nor is the astral cosmos basically composed of lifetrons—both in reality are created from the minutest particles of God-thought, chopped and divided by maya, the law of relativity which intervenes to apparently separate the Noumenon from His phenomena. “Souls in the causal world recognize one another as individualized points of joyous Spirit; their thought-things are the only objects which surround them. Causal beings see the difference between their bodies and thoughts to be merely ideas. As a man, closing his eyes, can visualize a dazzling white light or a faint blue haze, so causal beings by thought alone are able to see, hear, feel, taste, and touch; they create anything, or dissolve it, by the power of cosmic mind. “Both death and rebirth in the causal world are in thought. Causal-bodied beings feast only on the ambrosia of eternally new knowledge. They drink from the springs of peace, roam on the trackless soil of perceptions, swim in the ocean-endlessness of bliss. Lo! see their bright thought-bodies zoom past trillions of Spirit-created planets, fresh bubbles of universes, wisdom-stars, spectral dreams of golden nebulae, all over the skiey blue bosom of Infinity! “Many beings remain for thousands of years in the causal cosmos. By deeper ecstasies the freed soul then withdraws itself from the little causal body and puts on the vastness of the causal cosmos. All the separate eddies of ideas, particularized waves of power, love, will, joy, peace, intuition, calmness, self-control, and concentration melt into the ever-joyous Sea of Bliss. No longer does the soul have to experience its joy as an individualized wave of consciousness, but is merged in the One Cosmic Ocean, with all its waves—eternal laughter, thrills, throbs. “When a soul is out of the cocoon of the three bodies it escapes forever from the law of relativity and becomes the ineffable Ever-Existent. Behold the butterfly of Omnipresence, its wings etched with stars and moons and suns! The soul expanded into Spirit remains alone in the region of lightless light, darkless dark, thoughtless thought, intoxicated with its ecstasy of joy in God’s dream of cosmic creation.” This well-known photo, called "The Last Smile," was taken hours before Yogananda's passing on March 7, 1952 “A free soul!” I ejaculated in awe. “When a soul finally gets out of the three jars of bodily delusions,” Master continued, “it becomes one with the Infinite without any loss of individuality. Christ had won this final freedom even before he was born as Jesus. In three stages of his past, symbolized in his earth-life as the three days of his experience of death and resurrection, he had attained the power to fully arise in Spirit. “The undeveloped man must undergo countless earthly and astral and causal incarnations in order to emerge from his three bodies. A master who achieves this final freedom may elect to return to earth as a prophet to bring other human beings back to God, or like myself he may choose to reside in the astral cosmos. There a savior assumes some of the burden of the inhabitants’ karma and thus helps them to terminate their cycle of reincarnation in the astral cosmos and go on permanently to the causal spheres. Or a freed soul may enter the causal world to aid its beings to shorten their span in the causal body and thus attain the Absolute Freedom.” “Resurrected One, I want to know more about the karma which forces souls to return to the three worlds.” I could listen forever, I thought, to my omniscient Master. Never in his earth-life had I been able at one time to assimilate so much of his wisdom. Now for the first time I was receiving a clear, definite insight into the enigmatic interspaces on the checkerboard of life and death. “The physical karma or desires of man must be completely worked out before his permanent stay in astral worlds becomes possible,” my guru elucidated in his thrilling voice. “Two kinds of beings live in the astral spheres. Those who still have earthly karma to dispose of and who must therefore reinhabit a gross physical body in order to pay their karmic debts could be classified, after physical death, as temporary visitors to the astral world rather than as permanent residents. “Beings with unredeemed earthly karma are not permitted after astral death to go to the high causal sphere of cosmic ideas, but must shuttle to and fro from the physical and astral worlds only, conscious successively of their physical body of sixteen gross elements, and of their astral body of nineteen subtle elements. After each loss of his physical body, however, an undeveloped being from the earth remains for the most part in the deep stupor of the death-sleep and is hardly conscious of the beautiful astral sphere. After the astral rest, such a man returns to the material plane for further lessons, gradually accustoming himself, through repeated journeys, to the worlds of subtle astral texture. “Normal or long-established residents of the astral universe, on the other hand, are those who, freed forever from all material longings, need return no more to the gross vibrations of earth. Such beings have only astral and causal karma to work out. At astral death these beings pass to the infinitely finer and more delicate causal world. Shedding the thought-form of the causal body at the end of a certain span, determined by cosmic law, these advanced beings then return to Hiranyaloka or a similar high astral planet, reborn in a new astral body to work out their unredeemed astral karma. “My son, you may now comprehend more fully that I am resurrected by divine decree,” Sri Yukteswar continued, “as a savior of astrally reincarnating souls coming back from the causal sphere, in particular, rather than of those astral beings who are coming up from the earth. Those from the earth, if they still retain vestiges of material karma, do not rise to the very high astral planets like Hiranyaloka. “Just as most people on earth have not learned through meditation-acquired vision to appreciate the superior joys and advantages of astral life and thus, after death, desire to return to the limited, imperfect pleasures of earth, so many astral beings, during the normal disintegration of their astral bodies, fail to picture the advanced state of spiritual joy in the causal world and, dwelling on thoughts of the more gross and gaudy astral happiness, yearn to revisit the astral paradise. Heavy astral karma must be redeemed by such beings before they can achieve after astral death a permanent stay in the causal thought-world, so thinly partitioned from the Creator. “Only when a being has no further desires for experiences in the pleasing-to-the-eye astral cosmos, and cannot be tempted to go back there, does he remain in the causal world. Completing there the work of redeeming all causal karma or seeds of past desires, the confined soul thrusts out the last of the three corks of ignorance and, emerging from the final jar of the causal body, commingles with the Eternal. “Now do you understand?” Master smiled so enchantingly! “Yes, through your grace. I am speechless with joy and gratitude.” Never from song or story had I ever received such inspiring knowledge. Though the Hindu scriptures refer to the causal and astral worlds and to man’s three bodies, how remote and meaningless those pages compared with the warm authenticity of my resurrected Master! For him indeed existed not a single “undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveller returns”!

You are different all the time. What will live on? I swear to God this is the case, you cannot convince me otherwise with all the false evidence about past lives. It's just not the case. You have to accept reality. I used to believe in the possibility of reincarnation being real, but it ain't. You are an Avatar. The Being is different from that and at the same time, it is everything, including your Avatar and every other. There is just one Being, One. So your Avatar won't reincarnate, but there will be many new ones that are similar to yours. Do you really think that Vishnu, Shiva and Jesus are real and somewhere out there awaiting you on the judgement day? There are no deities and there certainly is no reincarnation. God does not punish himself by sending himself to hell or reincarnating itself in a terrible life. He knows exactly why you did what you did in life, He made the butterfly effect and made you do it. He did it, not you, so there is no Karmic debt to be paid or sins weighed for you to go to hell or heaven. And God does not care about being worshiped or you fearing Him because of eternal hellfire or bad Karma for sins. I don't know, but you could actually point your finger at God for everything you do or anyone else does, cause he made you do it. He moves the mountains, the seas, and all of our asses.

@Godishere The fastest way to wake up is to simply stop seeking. Unfortunately for the "you" that thinks it can get there, there is actually no you to do it... so it cannot actually be done. It can only seem to happen on its own - and without any input from "you" whatsoever. Here's the thing. You don't have any free will - not one iota - to make any decision about it, to get any closer to it, or to strive for it in any way at all. Try to predict your next thought. Impossible. Thoughts simply arise. All of the apparent actions you've ever taken in your entire apparent life... these also simply appeared. There was never a you behind them. All is not lost though. The seeking energy - the energy that stakes claim to the appearance as its own, as somehow belonging to it... this energy eventually seems to wear itself out, over what seems to be a lifetime or even lifetimes. This ongoing seeking, attachment and reattachment to forms, to thoughts, to new apparent bodies has been called "reincarnation". So. All of "your" thoughts are simply appearances arising, being claimed by the self as its own. You do not exist. These words - "you do not exist" - are used so often by Neo-Advaita speakers and writers so as to feel like platitudes. But as Leonard Cohen might have said, these words are the crack where the light gets in. When looked upon afresh, without bias, sometimes - albeit rarely - what they are pointing to can be clearly and suddenly seen. Everything you think you are - all of it - was always just thoughts. And these appeared without any input from you whatsoever, and they were moulded into some storyline of a self over the course of your apparent life. It's all a misapprehension. None of it actually happened. There never was a you. You were never there. Awakening thus cannot be recommended by anyone or even wanted by anyone. There's just noone there to recommend it or want it. Life seems to change insofar as there is obviously noone left to stake a claim to the appearance anymore. The appearance is thus completely free and unfiltered - more magical, more alive, more mysterious. Like an impossible miracle. There is no rhyme or reason to awakening. When the seeking stops, it stops. And then it can be seen that nothing at all actually caused it. It happened whenever it happened, on its own terms. Without a person being there - ever - to be involved in it.

I'm not doubting for the sake of doubting. Although nothing is stopping me from doing that . Im a truth seeker .one of the hardest issues I'm facing in my journey is the question of death. And what comes after death . So I listen to anyone saying they know . You claimed to know. But was unable to provide evidence for your claim . Which actually supports my point. Reincarnation is a BELIEF. Like it or not . There is no reason to believe in it other than hopes and wishes. They make for very poor belief structures. It makes no sense to waste thought on things that are nothing more than imaginations for which there is no evidence or way to test. Maybe there is invisible undetectable magic man in the sky ruling the universe through physics we don’t know or understand, or maybe its a giant inflatable purple cow, or may its a trillion dust mites with collective brain on an undiscovered chocolate planet or maybe its a hazelnut planet with…..get the point? I don't want speculation. I want fucking facts . Because I'm fucking serious about this work .

@Razard86 you just changed the subject I'm not talking to a "myself " because I'm not schizophrenic. There isn't a me and a a myself to talk to . I'm talking to YOU. All I did was innocently asking for evidence of reincarnation. And you didn't provide one . You just came up with his idea that you gonna live the same situation from reversed positions .but I ask you HOW do you know that for certain? Because I don't have the same degree of certainty.

@Razard86 Many people, including notable philosophers, stridently believe that we can never know anything for certain. That sets a very high bar for certainty, which we operate every day of our lives. Are you certain the floor will support your weight? Not 100% certain, but close enough that you are willing to step forward before testing the floor first. Imagine having to test everything before proceeding with the desired action. So, perhaps we can lower the bar on certainty to match what works for us on an everyday basis, rather than adhering to an impractical, even impossible, degree of certainty that some insist on before declaring certainty. Regarding the rebirth fantasy..every version of an afterlife is a story of wishful thinking unsupported by hard evidence. Our certainty about any kind of afterlife including rebirth, or reincarnation, is nil, yet the story seems to provide a measure of comfort for those who are unsettled, unnerved by the prospect of the death of the body meaning lights out for consciousness, totally and forever. I get it; death is ugly, death is nasty; it looks really bad and smells even worse. Death means deep sadness, unbearable grief, inconsolable misery for those emotionally attached to the newly deceased. What harm can there be in the invention of stories of an afterlife? That is for you to decide.

What's your proof for reincarnation?

I want to create a world where after I either die of autoimmune/heart related problems early, or in 15 years when my family/pets have passed - I will from an overdose - I want something that I've made for myself to magically be a part of reality. I want, when I'm choking in pain, fearful and alone on the floor, wishing that I had not done what I did, that the mother goddess will come to collect me in her proverbial arms, to take me away to an ideal world that she has made that is more dense than something where you're just an orb of light, like I can enjoy aspects of what made physical reality so appealing. But it's eternal and actually developed through hive minded, free willed unified imagination. Demons. The world is orderly, safe, kind, loving, and you get to have a special connection with someone. And my partner is a total baller. He's one of the top hunters on the planet and the absolute literal best chef in the entire world. And I'm young and hot again. And he digs me, like for real, on a deep soul level and knows everything about me and cares for me. And we have fun, we do all kinds of weird kinky stuff, and he cooks for me really amazing unique dishes, and the culture is interesting and has developed over a long period of time. I get to work as an artist with a female demon friend that I make. He's also very smart, and despite having some flaws like depression, a bit neurotic/awkward, he's pretty emotionally aware and in tune with himself and the people around him. Not full of himself or insecure in the wrong ways. He's a hard worker, a good friend and takes care of the innocent human souls that end up getting stuck on his planet during their reincarnation cycles, as this happens by accident sometimes. He finds the way human souls are structured to be precious and unique and he loves their vulnerability. There's a size difference, too, like demons are usually 6.5 - 8 feet tall, he is 7.5 and his partner - me - is 5.2 in this world. Our relationship ends up being an experiment done by the demon mother and the creator to make a well functioning mixture of light and dark, yin and yang. Demons pair-bond, they develop a lock and key system, where the female's soul moves into and circulates into the chest of the male, it rotates, and this creates a cord, a soul connection that is almost impossible to break. Their planet is located near a "yang" light source of energy where animals that are light oriented that migrate through the miasma come to feed, and they have developed their world around hunting, food and love - for their partners and for their demon mother who created them. They have their own styles of art, language, writing system, no politics or leaders as they are too unified for hierarchy. They turn into wolves to run into the city and to hunt, but in the cities they have a well developed train system that goes across the city, and also up the winding skyscrapers that are about two times the size of the largest one on earth. Their cities are well- lit, as their light only provides enough visibility as you would get from the moon, and it is similar to how downtown tokyo looks. They have three cities, a population of only 5 million, and small farms right outside the city - the rest of the planet is left to develop on it's own in peace. Demon children are created from the mother starting as a ball of intelligent miasma, they create consensus reality through structured imagination/manifestation and live forever. They never die, as this is the density right after physical death. Due to being dark (but not evil) oriented, they have a heavier density than most light beings, aside from the animals that they hunt which are on the same level. I could go on and on about this little world I am building but I will leave it here. I kind of feel like, as a creator, that I could end up developing what comes next, but who knows? My heaven is basically something that I get to create, that has meaning to me, that I put the work in to build as well as I can - something that can reflect a new start somewhere that is utopian and pretty chill. That's my "heaven". I feel like, if I could communicate with a deity, maybe one like Kali who is pretty all encompassing in energy, that she would be the one who could create a world like this. It's kind of helping me to develop my knowledge of how worlds work as I am kind of a shut in without a lot of worldly experience - just a lot of metaphysical experience so it's like I got that down but then structuring the city, and all of that jazz, even plot holes or things I wouldn't think of that would go into this - I'm not there yet. I hope to, as the years go by, develop it into something very detailed and cohesive, but we'll see. When I grow up I want to be a forester Run through the moss on high heels That's what I'll do Throwing out a boomerang Waiting for it to come back to me When I grow up I want to live near the sea Crab claws and bottles of rum That's what I'll have Staring at a seashell Waiting for it to embrace me I put my soul into what I do Last night I drew a funny man With dog eyes and a hanging tongue It goes way back I never like that sad look From someone who wants to be loved by you I'm very good with plants When my friends are away They let me keep the soil moist On the seventh day I rest For a minute or two Then back on my feet and call for you You've got cucumbers on your eyes Too much time spent on nothing Waiting for a moment to arise The face in the ceiling And arms too long I'm waiting for him to catch me Waiting for you to embrace me, oh-oh

@billiesimon Whatever you think you are right now is illusory. The idea of a “you” is a misapprehension caused by a strong egoic identification with thoughts, sensations and physical objects, all of which are merely appearances arising. They have nothing to do with “you”. There is no you. There is *only* this / God / infinity. The appearance. All that appears to be. If the body you think you are occupying dies, and the seeking energy that is the illusory “you” hasn’t been exhausted, then there will be further illusions. The self is very, very sticky. For example, “you” may get stuck to your wife, your best friend, or your pet dog. It’s not that “you” kick them out of “their” body - a la Quantum Leap - so that you can occupy it. It’s that the seeking energy will latch on to a form that already isn’t actually occupied by anyone. This is “reincarnation”. Enlightenment is the end of the seeking energy, and thus leads to the end of the apparent reincarnation cycle. “Once in every thousand thousand years does a soul wake up”…

past lives and reincarnation are not real. They are just fiction. There is zero independently verifiable evidence that is beyond reasonable doubt that reincarnation exists. Out of the countless billions of people that have died in human history, there is no such evidence that anyone has come back from the dead. Not one scrap of verifiable evidence. What does that tell you? Reincarnation is just so much half-baked, wishy-washy mysticism that gives a warm and fuzzy, touchy-feely emotional comfort to those who are afraid of death. Anyways ..let's get back to the main topic now reincarnation is not the topic ..even antinatalism is not the main topic .the main topic was marriage and having children.