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The beliefs around rebirth and Samsara are where Eastern philosophy becomes more egoic and dogmatic. It loses its purity. For example, in having reincarnation, we are taking for granted a simplistic human perspective of time and sequential events. The physical universe as described by Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, and the afterlife as described by Near-Death Experience reports, both agree that time is far stranger than that. It can be said that everything is happening 'now'. Your past self of 10 years ago and your future lifetime are happening now, just at different points in a multi-dimensional space-time continuum. In a more practical sense, my understanding is that people have a choice in terms of whether they are reborn here or not. There is a lot more in existence than this world, or even this universe. The goal in the bigger picture seems to be reaching a state of mastery (expression of oneness and selfless love within the physical world, like Jesus), and then the whole process repeats. But as profound as all of this is, it all falls under the banner of beliefs from our perspective, so is not worth focusing on too much. Just rest assured that God knows what He's doing.

If we are just supposed to worship death, then why did God even create life in the first place? If it's better to be dead and never come back, why did God even create the cycle of reincarnation in the first place? It makes no sense. If life just causes suffering, it would have been pointless for God to even create life to begin with. By the way, I don't believe that the cycle of reincarnation exists, but I'm using that as an illustration of my point. I wouldn't mind to be reincarnated. That would be awesome. I would love to be reincarnated a million times. That's because I like life more than death. The teaching that "all life is suffering" is complete nonsense because many people are living their lives with very minimal suffering. Theoretically, if you lived a perfect life with perfect Christian values, you would not suffer at all. Not even the tiniest bit. The only reason why we suffer is because we are sinners. Sin causes suffering. The ironic thing is that the people who are trying to escape suffering are actually the ones who suffer the most. Some spiritual guru who is sitting in a dark cave torturing himself probably suffers more than any normal person.

(An excerpt from Zhuan Falun which talks about transcending this dimension, full book is linked at the end of the post): "It’s somewhat delicate to discuss spiritual concepts such as surpassing this material and mortal realm, or [as Chinese thought calls it,] “surpassing the five elements” and “three realms.” Many teachers of energy practices who have broached these topics have had a hard time responding to skeptics. They often get hit with tricky questions like, “Who can you name that’s achieved these things?” Some of these teachers have not been masters, however, even if they fancy themselves so. But they would try to respond to the questions when they should have just kept quiet; they were in no position to answer them. And so they would get tongue-tied. This has hurt the credibility of spiritual practices in general and muddied the waters. And people have used episodes like these as a pretext for discrediting these practices. Terms related to surpassing the five elements and three realms are spiritual in nature and have religious origins; they came out of a religious context. So it’s important for people to be aware of the historical background of the terms. So what does it mean to surpass the five elements of this material world? The physics of ancient China, much as with physics today, believed that the theory of five elements was valid. And it is indeed the case that the five elements of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth give rise to all of creation, so we subscribe to the theory. For someone to surpass the five elements means, in contemporary terms, to transcend the physical world that we know. I realize it might sound a bit hard to believe. But bear in mind that true spiritual teachers carry a higher energy, known as gong. I have undergone testing to assess my energy, as have many teachers of chi-gong. There are many instruments now that can detect the material elements of higher energy, which these teachers emit; all it takes is the right instruments. Instruments can now detect radiation including infrared, ultraviolet, ultrasound, infrasound, electricity, magnetism, and gamma rays, as well as atoms and neutrons. True chi-gong teachers emit all of these, and more—only they are things that instruments can’t yet detect. So all it takes is the right instruments, and it’s now established that these teachers emit many types of matter. True spiritual teachers exude a powerful and beautiful aura, which can be seen with the right kind of electromagnetic field. The stronger someone’s energy is, the larger the aura that he emanates. Ordinary people have auras as well, only they’re really quite small. From research in high-energy physics we know that energy is in fact things like neutrons or atoms. Many chi-gong teachers have had their energy assessed, and that’s the case for most of those who are renowned. I too have been assessed, and it was found that the amount of gamma rays and thermal neutrons I released was eighty to one hundred and seventy times greater than what matter normally emits. And that was only what the equipment could measure, as the indicator had reached its limit. The researchers found it hard to believe—neutrons that powerful. It shouldn’t be humanly possible. So we can say that it has been scientifically affirmed that masters of energy practices do have higher energy. It takes a practice of both mind and body to transcend the five elements. Practices that don’t involve the body will develop the kind of energy that facilitates spiritual attainment only, and aren’t concerned with surpassing the five elements. Practices of mind and body, by contrast, store up energy in every cell of your body. When most adherents first develop higher energy, the particles of energy that they give off are coarse and low in density, with gaps between them. That makes it not very powerful. At a more advanced stage of practice, the density of energy might be greater than even that of water at the molecular level, by a factor of a hundred, a thousand, or even 100 million. It’s all possible, because your energy becomes more dense, more fine and smooth, and more powerful as you progress. The energy is stored in every cell of your body. And not just your body in this dimension, but your bodies in other dimensions, too. The energy will fill your cells, from the plane of molecules to atoms, to neutrons, to electrons, all the way to the cells at an extremely subatomic level, and over time your body will come to be brimming with higher energy. This higher energy has intelligence and is quite capable. As you gain more of it and it grows denser, it will fill all of your body’s cells and easily inhibit them, since they are weak in comparison. And as this happens, the process whereby old cells are shed and replaced by new ones will cease, since high-energy matter will replace the matter originally making up your cells. While it’s easy to describe, reaching that point of spiritual refinement is a long process. But when it does happen, your entire body will have been remade at the cellular level with high-energy matter. Then it would no longer be the five elements that make up your body. It would instead be material from beyond this world that forms you—you would have a body of high-energy matter harvested from other dimensions. On another note, virtue, similarly, is made up of matter from other dimensions and not subject to the time of this dimension. The sciences now hold that time has a field, and that time’s influence cannot extend beyond it. It’s not possible for time, in one dimension, to have influence over things in other dimensions which are ruled by altogether different laws of time and space. So time, here, would have simply no impact on matter of other dimensions. And the same would be true for your body, which would no longer be mortal in any sense. It would have, as the ancients put it, “surpassed the five elements.” But your body would look no different to people than before. That’s because, despite the dramatic changes in you, your practice wouldn’t be done. You would still have breakthroughs to higher realms to make. And to do that you would need to keep practicing in this world. Being invisible to people wouldn’t do you much good. So what comes next, then? By this point in your practice your cells at the molecular level will have all been reconstituted with high-energy matter. But the atoms one level down have a specific configuration, just as do molecules and atomic nuclei; the configuration doesn’t change for any of them. The molecular configuration of cells makes one’s flesh soft to the touch; the molecules of bone are configured with a greater density, and so they are hard to the touch; while the density of the molecules of blood is very low, so it’s liquid. Others won’t be able to tell from your appearance what a change you’ve undergone, however, since at the molecular level your cells will retain their original structure and configuration. So the energy inside of you will have changed, even if your cellular structure hasn’t. This means that you will no longer be subject to aging. Your cells will no longer decay and die, and you will forever stay young. So spiritual practice can bring you a youthful look that never fades. It’s only natural that a body like this might still suffer a fracture if hit by a car or bleed if cut by a knife. That’s because its molecular configuration hasn’t changed, even if it is free of aging or metabolic processes. So this is our take on surpassing the five elements. It’s well-founded and can be explained scientifically. It’s unfortunate that terms like this get a bad rap as being religious imaginings when they are carelessly used by people who don’t know what they are talking about. People aren’t familiar with the terms since these have an older, religious background, and aren’t necessarily in the idiom of our day. Next let’s look at what it means to “surpass this mortal realm”—or the “three realms,” as it’s also known. As I explained the other day, perfecting your character is the key to developing higher energy. The qualities of the universe will no longer limit you as they come to define your character. And as your mind elevates, your material virtue will be transformed into higher energy. Eventually this energy will form into a column as it grows and climbs higher. The higher that the column is, the greater your energy. We like to say that “anything is possible through Dafa.” It all comes down to how sincere and committed you are. Any height is possible if you have the grit and tenacity that it takes. And even if you one day have converted all of your white matter, more can still be had by reworking your black matter through suffering. And if that’s still not enough, you can take on the sins of your close friends or family who don’t practice, and increase your energy that way. But, this only applies to you if you have progressed to an extremely advanced stage. You shouldn’t even think of assuming others’ sins when you only recently came into the practice as an ordinary person. That much karma would doom most people’s practice. The guidance I am giving here applies to different stages of practice. “Three realms” is a religious term that describes three hierarchical realms of existence—namely, the “realms” of minor deities, this world, and the underworld. Within these three there are nine major planes of existence, and a total of thirty-three planes in all. An accompanying belief is that all things within the three realms, no matter the plane, reincarnate cyclically and may be reborn on any of several possible tracks. So someone who is a human in this life might become something else, such as an animal, in the next. And so Buddhism has taught that you should really make the most of your life as a human being, for the chance to do spiritual practice might not come again. They say this because animals are forbidden from practicing or hearing the Way. Or if an animal did learn to practice, it would never reap the divine rewards of spiritual effort; higher beings would slay it once it built up much energy. You may have waited hundreds of years, or more, for a human body, only to not cherish it now, when you finally have one. If you reincarnate as a rock, it might be eons before you are freed—if ever. You would never be freed if it didn’t break, crumble, or erode away. Human bodies are not easily come by! A person who truly learns Dafa, the “Great Way,” is incomparably fortunate. This should give you a sense for how hard it is to get a human body. There is such a thing as “levels” of attainment in spiritual practice, and they are simply the outcome of how well you do. If you want to enjoy eternal life, keep on practicing, and when your column of energy reaches to a great height, you will be outside of [the cycle of reincarnation]—or the “three realms.” There are people whose souls leave their bodies when they meditate, and rise to a higher point. One of my students did a write-up about his progress in the practice and described visiting heavenly realms and what he saw there. I told him to try going higher. But he said that he couldn’t go further, and indeed, he wasn’t able to at that point. Why would that be the case, though? It was because he had visited those realms by riding atop his column of energy; it was as high as he could go at the time. Ascending to greater heights, as I had suggested, would mean that he had achieved, to use a religious term for it, “divine standing.” But greater things are still possible for a practitioner. Whatever height you have reached, you can still continue to perfect yourself and advance in your practice. And if, in the process, your energy column breaks through the outer limits of the three realms, then you will have indeed “surpassed” them. We measured it once and determined that the three realms described in some religions lie within the scope of the nine planets; and I should add here that there is no basis for the claim that there are ten planets. I have seen that the energy columns of some past masters had reached great heights and broken through the boundary of the Milky Way, which means that they very much had surpassed the three realms. So it should be clear now that doing so is a matter of spiritual attainment." - From Zhuan Falun, the core book of Falun Dafa. It talks about spiritual things from a scientific perspective. It talks about other dimensions, the soul, the cosmos in the microcosm and the macrocosm, supernatural abilities, karma, healing, the true history of mankind and many other fascinating things: https://www.falundafa.org/eng/eng/pdf/Zhuan-Falun-2018.pdf

Just felt like sharing this for fun. Just verified that the present moment is a belief. The present moment isn't real. Contrary to popular opinion, there is actually stuff outside of the present moment, and that's best described IMO as infinite formlessness. Which may seem obvious to some, but its not, because it also partially explains how reincarnation works. The present moment is just a perspective of many. Which means the stuff outside of the present moment (formlessness) stays constant/eternal, but the present moment can die and morph into something else, something other than a present moment. Which is hard to understand for us because we only know the present moment, but it definitely can die and morph into something else. In other words, experiencing things from the 1st person isn't an absolute, its relative. Its possible to experience things from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person and beyond that to things that a human mind is incapable of imagining. This also explains how sleep works. Sleep is a morphing of the present moment to something else, or to a present moment of a different entity. What stays constant through out wake and sleep is that formlessness outside of the present moment, and the present moment itself morphs.

Can anyone explain, how in their perception this whole thing might work? When you die, you look for another life to be conscious of? How the transition might work? According to the reincarnation theory you get to another "level", higher soul, but how would that look in practice?

You guys asked @Leo Gura some really good questions in this thread. Well done! I have complied all the amazing nuggets of wisdom here. I wish we could get more information on the nature of the metaphysical part of reality, and less about the end goal (Godhead) itself. How is the Illusion structured? How does the architecture of the Dream look like? Where does Karma/reincarnation fit it? How to become better at manifesting material success by manipulating meta-aspects of reality? I'm sure psychedelics would allow access to these bits of information, that model helped him before, I don't see any reason it wouldn't now. Compilation 1:

If you realize your permanent self while you are here, nothing will change when you die... If you don't, you will still be bound to the wheel of time and reincarnation.

actually, looking at it more closely, I don't think people are scared that they will die when the movie dies. I think they are scared about what the movie will play after this movie stops. If you go ask atheists what happens after death, they say just a black rectangle will occur (which is a little bit true). Go ask Christians and they say heaven and hell. Go ask Asian people and they say reincarnation. No one actually thinks they will stop after the movie stops. Or that they will cease to exist (except for a few esoteric western philosophers). Everyone knows the movie keeps playing after this movie stops. The question that everyone is worried about is, what will that next movie be, and whether they will like it.

It’s not wether you believe in it or not it’s just true? Are new forms not made each day? Are there not thousands of babies born a day? Tbh infinite amounts of living beings in the universe are created and day. All of those are you. That’s what reincarnation is.

I want to get that book but can't find it here in the west, what dose he say about reincarnation?

The problem with reincarnation is the term incarnation, which falls under the materialist mindset that consciousness resides in the body. (Incarnation literally means "embodied in flesh.") The truth of course is that the body resides in consciousness - not consciousness residing in the body. So if incarnation is not accurate, then re-incarnation is also not accurate. On the other hand, first-person consciousness has no opposite, so death (as state) is perfectly impossible. Therefore there has to be some sort of eternal continuation of consciousness, which is likely to involve fluctuations of state.

Yes but spiritual masters of no duality like ramana maharshi or shadguru talk about reincarnation. I'd like to know what is the theory because non duality and reincarnation seems no compatible

As per my understanding and being around a lot of Hindus, I can tell that the only purpose why reincarnation in the literal sense was propagated was to make people believe that they will pay for their crimes in their next life so that people have some kind of fear and hence order prevails in the society. The true meaning of reincarnation is simply that what we collectively do today affects the world tomorrow.

Reincarnation, or resurrection? As an aside, though related to flesh.. CORONAVIRUS CARNIVOROUS An interesting coincidence!

It's weird to hear people talk about Leo as a new age teacher. Most of his latest stuff is yellow, turqouise, some green. But he has none of those new age vibes like talking about reincarnation, chakras, reiki, crystals.

I have a memory of Christopher Titmuss saying (on the subject of life after death) "who lives, who dies?" meaning that the best way to find out what's going to happen to us in the future, is to find out who we are now. Until I fully bottom that out, I'm just speculating and theorising. Maybe we only find out the truth about reincarnation when we're fully enlightened and (if you believe the Eastern religions) don't need to do it any more, ha ha!

But who reincarnate? There is an infinite being, itsnt it? Well, who knows but in an awakening experience looks quite sure. And we are shapes limiting that infinite and no more, we are like concepts, filters, points of wievs. So when that "I" get finished, it's done, no reincarnation, it was only a shape, an illusion that it's going to be dissolved in the infinity. But why shadguru and mostly of spiritual masters talk about reincarnation?

There is belief in reincarnation in eastern religious philosophies of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism and Taoism. This is also an esoteric belief in some streams of Judaism, in Druid religion of the Gauls, in ancient greek philosophy as well, and some sects of sufism. Reincarnation is also an intrinsic part of some northern Native American and Inuit traditions. The research and books of well-established psychiatrists Dr.Brian Weiss, Dr. Michael Newton, Dr.Ian Stevenson citing case studies of reincarnation have given enough evidence that reincarnation is not a mere Oriental theory but may have its foundations in fact. Here are two articles dealing with past life remembrance... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1209795/Reincarnated-Our-son-World-War-II-pilot-come-life.html https://www.reincarnationresearch.com/japanese-soldier-reincarnates-as-a-woman-lesbian/

If there is no reincarnation why Buddhist spend their whole life mediating? Why not enjoy human ego?

Its an interesting topic. I have people close to me who are more 'spiritually tuned' than I am who have had visions of 'past lives' that more highlighted lessons they've needed to learn in more than one lifetime. I would say there is something to the idea of reincarnation for growth and raising consciousness.

I need your opinion on this..

Yes, from my pov there is the illusion of having free will and actually have free will. I think that reincarnation happens when there's the illusion of something separate controlling you/your dream. But once you break the code, you should have infinite free will instead of identifying with the finite lifeform or dream character. Every moment is infinity anyway so evolution doesn't actually need shape-shifting to infinity. Only form identifying with form goes through each number which is nothing but a misinterpretation of the reflection of the true Self... like in the story of Narcissus.

The human ego is also a belief. I was talking about the eternal Self. The ego' story is that death is final and this is just a ride into nothingness. Have you ever experienced death to know that you won't come back to life in another form? We forget many things in this life, so the reincarnation theory seems plausible to me. Yes, it is one of the explanations and you can call it a belief but it is better than "death is the end".

You're assuming I was referring to you. I wasn't. On what you actually did say, I was referring to this: Reincarnation is a belief.

Its mind bugging to think about it lol If reality is infinite, doesn't that mean that literally anything is possible? And if so, wouldn't there be a universe (with lower case U) where for example a tyrannical mythological god truly exists and he is eternal and all powerful and maybe he has a version of hell that exist physically, and if people don't follow his commands he will make them suffer for eternity after they die or whatever... That sounds crazy and scary tbh , also is reincarnation something possible? And if we will keep reincarnating forever, mustn't that include a possibility where we will inevitably reincarnate in such a universe where we would experience eternal suffering that never ends? Is that even possible, to reincarnate in a form that is eternal? I can't find an answer to this anywhere I hope Leo can answer this mind bugging question.