What Are Your Thoughts On Suicide And Reincarnation?

[100rockets]

From my understanding (according to Buddhism or some other spiritual sources) sleep is related to death in that the last thought we have prior to falling asleep is the first we will have when we wake up and so in a similar way the state of mind in which you are in when you die will determine your next life (that is if reincarnation exists). However thought is just a form in the mind. Does the mind go on after death then? It seems quite contradicting and also a form of scare tactic.

What are your thoughts on this and reincarnation in general? better than that what kind of direct experiences have you had meditating that lead you to believe what you do about reincarnation?

 

Edited November 5, 2016 by 100rockets

[Emptystickfigure]

Personally, I don't know. I used to think I knew enough, but then life likes to throw unpredictability at you.

I believe in reincarnation, but I think that we do it just for the fun of it. There's no meaning to it other than experience. I guess we choose to be an aborted baby in one lifetime, just for the heck of it. We choose to be beaten up and scarred in some lifetimes. And in some lifetimes we might choose to be rich, or famous, or both. This is just my idea. There is no inherent purpose to reincarnation other than experience, in my opinion.

What happens if a person commits suicide? Some believe there's a karmic backlash against it, and some think there is no reincarnation. And some believe that suicide will have no karmic backlash. And some people don't believe in karma, period.

 

[Alphard]

ON REINCARNATION

I have no idea and never will.  Some people claim to know but there is never any definitive proof so I personally dont believe them.  I consider the entire subject a waste of time even thinking about.  I believe its more likely to be an archaic way for religions to control and manipulate people.
 

ON SUICIDE 

The statement "suicide is a selfish act" is WRONG.

Suicide is a desperate act by someone who is in intense pain and wants their pain to stop. That is a HUMAN response to extreme pain, not a selfish one. Over 90 percent of the people who die by suicide have a mental illness at the time of their death, so they are not thinking clearly. 

Saying that a person who had severe clinical depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, PTSD, or a similar illness was engaging in an act of selfishness when they died by suicide – even though their thought process, mood, and judgment were greatly affected by their mental illness – is not only inaccurate, but downright cruel, to both the person who suicides and the suicide survivors.

Those who use the word “selfish” are merely helping perpetuate the STIGMA associated with suicide.

A suicidal action that manifests from intense, excruciating, unbearable pain associated with a serious mental illness has nothing to do with selfishness.

[Telepresent]

15 hours ago, 100rockets said:

the last thought we have prior to falling asleep is the first we will have when we wake up

Is  this true?  Do you know this for sure?  How has this been proven/recorded?

I ask because I don't know either way, but something about it rings false to me.  It's a bit like the idea that if you die in a dream, then you die in real life: how the hell would we possibly know that, as nobody would wake up to record that they died in their dream?

I have a similar issue with this statement: I don't have a clue what my last thought before going to sleep is, and I can't report it because... well, then I'm asleep!  Also I don't know what my first thought when I wake up is, because normally I wake up to an alarm clock and a confused jumble of thoughts which take a good 30-60 seconds to settle down into consciously recognised thinking.  So how is this assertion recorded/proven?  Even if it's based on what people report as their first/last thoughts of the day, I'd be very skeptical.

[Telepresent]

5 hours ago, Emptystickfigure said:

I believe in reincarnation

What leads to this belief?  Not being aggressive, just curious

[Markus]

I don't believe in reincarnation. With beliefs about science and evolution in my web of beliefs, it just doesn't make any sense. Do I know it doesn't exist? Nope. I can't think of a conceivable way it could be proven one way or the other.

You didn't ask any specific question about suicide, so I'll go on the things others have commented. Is it selfish? Sure. So is moralizing about suicidal people being selfish. I use selfish as in "stemming from the ego" rather than society's seeming definition of "this person did something I don't like, thus they're selfish for not having considered how I'm affected by it".

[Prabhaker]

@100rockets

Dr. Brian Weiss who had experimented with hypnosis to heal patients. To his utter surprise his patients began to speak about past live experiences under hypnosis; after recognizing that residues of psychological traumas from a past life could be the cause of a prevailing sickness in this life, he was able to help his patients understand the connection and thus heal their bodies.

This was a cutting edge approach for the medical profession and Dr. Weiss was understandably hesitant to disclose his findings at first. Not only was he taking on the entire medical profession but also all psychoanalysts and psychologists. However, as the evidence was so overwhelming he gathered courage and published his first book, ‘Many Lives, Many Masters’.

Past Life Regression, Your Most Recent Past Life Hypnosis

Hypnosis for Past Life Regression

 

 

[Alex4]

I know that I dont know anything about it and I think focus on that is a waste of time. i may be  wrong on the last one

[pluto]

Suicide will only make you have to do it all over again with a new body and a wiped memory.

You cant complete your mission thus must restart the game.

[Frogfucius]

I've thought about this, and I don't think suicide or how we live our lives up until the final moment has anything to do with how we reincarnate. We are all playing a role, one in which we have no control over. Our thoughts, feelings, and actions  are not independent of the universe.

One thing I wonder about reincarnation, is if we reincarnate into a different form of consciousness for eternity, each time with a clean slate. I wonder if people I see on the street are me, but in a different form of consciousness that I experience from the one I'm having now, but not independent of my consciousness. I wonder the same about other animals. Crazy shit.

[Extreme Z7]

Reincarnation seems more plausible to me a part reality than infinite oblivion after death.

[cetus]

@pluto

2 hours ago, pluto said:

Suicide will only make you have to do it all over again with a new body and a wiped memory.

You cant complete your mission thus must restart the game.

Good to know. A couple of quick questions b-c I really don't know much about the subject.  Since all memory is wiped away you come back as a happy person next time living life to it's fullest? And what happens when you die a natural death at a ripe old age? Something different apparently. What would that be? Also I'm not sure what my mission is. How can I find out before it's too late? Is there an age cut point like 70 or 80? How would I know if this life is a "restart" now ? Any way to know? But what is there to know if all memory was wiped? I'm confused now.  What happens to snakes that commit suicide ?

 

[Joel3102]

9 minutes ago, Frogfucius said:

I wonder if people I see on the street are me, but in a different form of consciousness that I experience from the one I'm having now, but not independent of my consciousness. I wonder the same about other animals. Crazy shit.

I had a similar epiphany the other day. From this non-dual perspective, I am essentially everybody else. My consiousness is ultimatlty not independent of the life of Jesus, Hitler, you or the Dinasours. Everything is intamately connected and I felt this, not just intellectually grasped it.

[ajasatya]

nothing reincarnates. the i that reincarnates does not exist.

there's simply continuity of reality being conscious of itself. desiring and fulfilling itself. this is the fuel for experiences, such as the one "you"'re having right now.

[cetus]

7 minutes ago, John Flores said:

Your consciousness either simply goes into the collective or it gets recycled

Consciousness is collective. A unified field that exists everywhere. Within space time and outside of space time.

[Emptystickfigure]

7 hours ago, pluto said:

Suicide will only make you have to do it all over again with a new body and a wiped memory.

You cant complete your mission thus must restart the game.

That might be true, but I also believe that we ( our form) might hold subconscious imprints from our thousands, millions?? of other lives.

Like if we drowned in two of our past lives, we might have a fear of water. In our present life, it might not make sense, but our subconscious self might still harbor that fear from 20 lives ago.

[Emptystickfigure]

On 11/6/2016 at 1:35 AM, Telepresent said:

What leads to this belief?  Not being aggressive, just curious

If everything is consciousness, and the certain consciousness form still sees itself as separate and as a form, it's possible mind creates reality, and the self form goes into another body, or attracts another body, and the process begins again. Until it achieves enlightenment, that is.    

[Bob84]

On 11/5/2016 at 4:29 PM, 100rockets said:

Does the mind go on after death then? It seems quite contradicting and also a form of scare tactic.

Maybe if they dont cremate you.

[Bizarre]

My thoughts are, that if youre going to entertain and seriously investigate the notion of enlightenment then you need to keep an open mind with regards to reincarnation too.  

It also depends a lot on the mind / minds interpreting the original source texts for you.  You cant just say "Buddhism says" because there are different schools of Buddhism and also crazy and not so crazy interpretations of it.  

These two things are worth taking into account when discussing anything in this field.  But the main thing is once you understand reincarnation according to how your chosen school sees it, then you make it no self and essentially transcend it.

Karma and reincarnation are closely linked, and if you can source a decent interpretation on the teaching of karma you can see how it is played out in real life.  It becomes obvious.  The same is with reincarnation.

[ajasatya]

death = recycle of illusions. ego dies. body-mind experience dies. memories die.

only truth remains.