As below so above

I think what we call reincarnation is just like little glitches in the Matrix, little electricity brownouts... happens all of the time. There need not be a reason for it. It's a very complex system and glitches must happen constantly. Some we notice, and some we don't...

You know how extreme violence (and amazing love!) stays with us... it scars us, makes a deep impression... we may replay the images in our head... we may be compelled to re-live the images from time to time...

Why should it be any different on the large universal scale! Extreme hate or love overloads the system, distorts the output, derails the train, creates a hole, short-circuits the matrix... creates an apparent reincarnation, a re-living, a re-experience...

As above so below...

In Big Mind we fracture our self into many, many voices... the more time we spend doing the process the more we voices we may find... personal voices, transcending voices etc... in the end we put it back together as the free-functioning human being...

We all, that is all living things, this entire complex system... or what the chinese call the 10,000 things... it's just like all the voices we access during the Big Mind process... in other words the voices relate to the free-functioning human being exactly the way the 10,000 things relate to Big Mind... the 10,000 things are no more and no less real than the voices are... Just as we can get stuck in the voice of anger or the voice of the vulnerable child, we get stuck in the voice of EGO, of ME, of SOUL...

As below so above.

Evidence

Victor says:

Well, I can imagine Dr. Tucker has some compelling evidence... Take a young child that should not have any way to know about some events and yet they do. Perhaps they can even link what is reported by the child to an actual place and person. So, maybe reincarnation, maybe collective consciousness, maybe alien mind probes...

Indeed. I don't see that evidence as proof that some souls reincarnate and others don't.

Not one, not two.
Not one will never change, not two will always evolve. If duality or relative is the energy of not-one-not-two, and unity or absolute is the never changing... the Dharma is constantly evolving while the Buddha remains the same.

If existing as separate souls is an illusion of the ego, reincarnation must be an illusion also.

Incarnate this...

Stuart to me:

Have you heard what's going on at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, North Carolina? Dr. Jim Tucker (child psychiatrist and researcher for the University in the Division of Personality Studies) is, in all likelihood, the foremost scientific authority on reincarnation in the United States. His job -his very unique job- is scientifically document young children who spontaneously recall previous lives. His research has produced staggering, inexplicable evidence for reincarnation. You should look it up. Also, have you seen the issue of What Is Enlightenment on Death and Rebirth? interesting stuff.

I mean, I think your take is plausible, but some of the data from U of Virginia is MINDBLOWING. There are scores of instances and accounts that simply defy any reasonable explanation (besides reincarnation, and not of the variety you described).

Personally, my take is that not everyone reincarnates, and it is a developmental issue. When some souls (essential voyagers) develop to a certain depth and fortitude, they acquire something akin to an "escape" velocity. Most souls just dissolve and are re-absorbed into the big subtle / causal atmosphere when they hit the furnace of excarnation. They black out, and dissolve. But, some do not. Bodhisattvas punch through that initial, disorienting membrane of experience minus the filters of corporeal layers, and they may be reborn consciouslly. Additionally, what the research shows is that traumatic deaths (murder, suicide, bizarre sudden accidents) seem to play a huge role in these reincarnation. 70% of the strongest cases are of children who were murdered, met an untimely death of a usually gruesome nature. That seems to short-circuit or disrupt the normal process, and somehow results in a much higher rate of reincarnation, which is where the most inexplicable evidence comes from, correlated in multiple criteria. Check it out. It's pretty weird.

My reply:

I will check out Jim Tucker - sounds interesting.

I think the problem that any belief in reincarnation represents to me is that it takes us out of the here and now. Give a human ego the tiniest hope of coming back - or going someplace like heaven... - and that's what we'll think about instead of cleaning up this planet...

In other words I could be completely wrong about all of this, and believe me I am not at all attached to my theory, but I think it is more useful than to talk about bodhisattvas and rebirth... we'll all find out at some point...

Stuart answers:

i totally agree on the temptation to leave this moment, this life, these conditions, and caste our lot somewhere else. "oh, it's my last lifetime, that's when all this wounding happened..." or "in my next life, i'm gonna blah blah blah". i like the way Alan Watts put it, "all past lives are this life. all future lives are this life."

Memory Leaks

Consciousness leaks. It is the reason people think there is reincarnation. It may also be the reason multiple people come up with the same idea. Take the Lightbulb, for example. There is a saying I heard attributed to William Burroughss: Ideas belong to a time, not a person.

It's just leaky memory because we all have a certain amount of access to the big impersonal conciousness, sometimes called Big Mind.

I know that many people like the rebirth idea, but I can only surmise that is because they are attached to the idea that a little bit of themselves survives and transfers. Ah, if not the ego, please let some kind of soul transfer... alas there is only witnessing, but no witness, because that which is witnessing is impersonal.

How come there is a 14th Dalai Lama? The boys selected to be potential Dalai Lamas receive a lot of great training. One or the other might develop an "antenna" and receive leaky consciousness/memory. I believe the trick lies not in re-incarnating, but in accessing that consciousness.

And how do you access that consciousness? You access it because you understand that there is no self and you prepare yourself to tap into what Carl Jung called the Collective Unconscious - or maybe we should call this the Collective Consciousness. We can develop an antenna or radar through training and some have it because of a natural genetic ability...

A friend wrote:

Essentially, rebirth makes life more like one big University where you get to keep taking "classes" until you "graduate"... presumably either to heaven or another plane of existence. And that's all good until you ask, "What goes on in that next plane of existence?!" And, "Why is that existence superior to here and now??" Well, of course it's superior because all is love, there's no suffering, AND you get to have super-powers! Sounds great... or really really boring.

I think any of the training people do or talk about that is supposed to prepare them for their death is just illusion and attachment. Don't waste your time. Instead I suggest helping that old lady across the street, or registering people to vote, or working in a soup kitchen, or in some other form reaching out. And yes, I think the idea of the Bodhisattva, who promises to help liberate human beings in every rebirth - that's just one of many remnants of Hinduism that can be found throughout Buddhism. After all Hinduism was the prevalent religion in the time of Buddha.

Actions speak louder than words. By acting we put things in motion and when we approach the "optimum mode of being", which is what Batchelor calls Buddha-hood, we live it out.

PS: At Upaya a few weeks ago Stephen Batchelor mentioned that in Sanskrit and Pali the term is not Buddha-nature, but Buddha-womb. That has quite a different flavor. It suggests a place where a Buddha may grow. It speaks of potential rather than actualization. The term Buddha-nature was the Chinese translation of the Sanskrit/Pali.

PPS: When I told Stuart that I think believing in reincarnation is just attachment he shot back "you say that every time", which cracked me up!

Rubber-band

The Buddha began by looking for an end to suffering - in the end he found that Suffering was the end to suffering. Another Koan - How do I go to the place where there is neither hot nor cold. (That is where there is no suffering) The teacher answers "When its hot the heat kills you. When it cold the cold kills you."

He found that Suffering is the end of suffering. Yes, and that reminds me of a rubber band... a well-kept rubber-band is elastic and bounces back, while a brittle and dry rubber-band breaks... that's really the only thing we are studying and practicing: How to keep the rubber-band elastic. Everything else follows from there. The definition of a healthy complex organism is "robustness", meaning that it has the ability to bounce back from a catastrophic failure. A well kept and exercised rubber-band...

Stephen Batchelor @ Upaya

Slideshow of Stephen Batchelor teaching at Upaya in Santa Fe this past weekend. He is brilliant and all of his talks will become available over time at Upaya's dharmapodcast.org. The first talk is available now.