Eckhart Tolle suggests that you can observe reincarnation in yourself many times during the day when you identify with a thought.
The moment you associate your identity with the thought, you have forgotten your essential nature as consciousness and have incarnated into a thought form.
Eckhart writes: "The way of the cross is the old way to enlightenment.... Enlightenment consciously chosen means to relinquish your attachment to past and future... How much more time do you think you will need before you are able to say, 'I will create no more pain, no more suffering?"'
"For many Africans," says Carol Beckwith, "the spiritual world is still very much alive.
"For the Betsileo people of Madagascar, for instance, there seems to be no boundary between the living and the dead and, when we were talking to them, we could never be sure if they were talking about people who were dead or alive.
"While we in the west seem to have lost that immediate sense of the spirit world, for many African societies it is still a vivid part of their daily lives." A haunting photographic record of African rituals .
"Hinduism does not teach that all worldly pleasures are sinful, but it teaches that they can never bring deep, lasting happiness or peace (ananda).
"According to the Hindu sage Adi Shankaracharya - the world as we ordinarily understand it - is like a dream: fleeting and illusory.
"To be trapped in Samsara is a result of ignorance of the true nature of being.
"After many births, every person eventually becomes dissatisfied with the limited happiness that worldly pleasures can bring.
"At this point, a person begins to seek higher forms of happiness, which can be attained only through spiritual experience.
"When, after much spiritual practice (sadhana), a person finally realizes his or her own divine nature - i.e., realizes that the true "self" is the immortal soul rather than the body or the ego - all desires for the pleasures of the world will vanish, since they will seem insipid compared to spiritual ananda.
"When all desire has vanished, the person will not be reborn anymore."
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A HuffPost/YouGov poll shows that 45% of Americans believe in ghosts, or that the spirits of dead people can come back in certain places and situations.
Alfred Russel Wallace
"Alfred Russel Wallace announced that natural selection alone was not sufficient to account for human evolution.
"As a spiritualist, he believed that humans have non-material spirits - implying supernatural involvement - but he had scientific reasons as well.
"Our brains, he claimed, are over-engineered: through the people he met on his travels, he recognized that even the ‘savage’ in his mud hut has the potential to play Chopin études on the piano, despite the fact that he will never even see a piano.
"How could natural selection, which Wallace appreciated only responds to immediate needs, produce apparently useless traits like these?
"The solution to this question was, for Wallace, some kind of ... non-material guiding force."
1. How old is your child?Three 2. How often does your child see ghosts/entities?Pretty much all day 3. What type of "being" does your child see?My grandfather who died 13 years ago
4. Where around town will your child most often see these beings?Anywhere
5. Do these beings ever approach your child around town?I believe he is always there 6. At what age did your child being seeing ghosts? We noticed it around 9 months Anything else you would like to add?She tells us he keeps her safe
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Spiritualism is a belief that spirits of the dead have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living.
He believed that that certain aspects of living organisms, such as intelligence and morality, cannot be explained in terms of purely materialistic processes.
5.We should practise non-attachment to lots of things. "All the delightful things of the world - sweet sounds, lovely forms, all the pleasant tastes and touches and thoughts - these are all agreed to bring happiness if they are not grasped and possessed.
"But if you regard them merely as pleasures for your own use and satisfaction and do not see them as passing wonders, they will bring suffering."
6. It is not a good idea to 'suppress' our feelings.
Research shows that people who are able to talk about their grief, anger or fear get rid of these negative feelings more quickly.
People who are not able to talk about these feelings are more likely to suffer ill health, mental or physical.
Some people get angry when there is a long queue at the airport.
Some people learn not to get angry.
They are not supressing their anger; they just don't feel anger.
We see ourselves as separate selves.
Our body feels the pleasures and pains of life.
Imagine switching out of the SELF mode into the NON-SELF mode.
In the NON-SELF mode there is no grasping of pain or pleasure.
But this is difficult for our minds to imagine, just as 'infinity' is difficult to imagine.
Some people write about the dangers of talking about the Oneness of everything.
"Holding to both the oneness and multiplicity of existence takes greater spiritual maturity...
"It requires being present with the moment with all it's paradox and radicalness.
"Experiencing both the bliss and sorrow of existence takes greater spiritual maturity...
"It requires us to be present to the entire situation of existence, our own and all others.
"In terms of our tradition, we describe this as the dance between emptiness and form and our path as the willingness to experience both and their mutuality.
"The main emphasis of our path is to show up wakefully to the play of emptiness and form..."
Some people have suggested that only one 'entity' has real free will.
And only that one 'entity' is good.
That one person is 'God'.
Or the Tao, or the Force, or the Holy Spirit, or the divine...
Paradoxically, it may be that if we give up our supposed 'free will', we can then follow the will of 'God' (or go with the flow, tune into the Tao, realise that we are part of 'God') and live happily ever after.
Some Taoists would argue that every 'thing' and every 'action' is a mixture of 'good' and 'evil'.
"Taoists believe that nature is a continual balance between yin and yang, and that any attempt to go toward one extreme or the other will be ineffective, self-defeating, and short-lived."
The Mohist philosophers in China believed that the purpose of life was universal, impartial love.
Mohism promoted a philosophy of impartial caring - a person should care equally for all other individuals, regardless of their actual relationship to him or her.[48]
"We can test the problem with my most perfect identical twin: myself!
"Trying to remember the most important decisions I took in my life, I ask myself what I would have done if I had had the possibility to relive again any of the decisive moments of my life - with the same imperfect knowledge and with the same external constraints I had.
"The results of analyzing my perfect twin’s behaviour are, in my opinion, absolutely clarifying: reliving my life would have rendered a life identical to the one I actually lived.
"I can distinguish between two types of events as determinants of every minute fact that occurred in my life.
"Some were the result of conscious decisions, in many cases taken as the result of an evaluation of pros and cons (always with incomplete knowledge of the real situation).
"As it is impossible for me to take stupid decisions (the stupidity defined by myself), I was forced to decide in a determined way, searching the best results.
"In other cases my behaviour was the result of random and/or uncontrolled external factors. In the first case I would repeat my action; in the second, my response would be forced.
"However, if the external random factors would be the same, I also would repeat my action
"Ruben Rial Planas shows in his 'twin analysis' that he has made two types of decisions in his life:
"Those which were conscious, determined decisions.
"And the others 'the result of random and/or uncontrolled external factors'.
"To my astonishment he concludes: 'In either case I am not free', although he just made a brilliant analysis of the really free decisions: the conscious determined ones."
We choose; we have free will.
"Ultimate reality is consciousness."
According to Amit Goswami, a theoretical nuclear physicist:
"Consciousness is the ground of all being... Our free will is real...
"Reality is not two things - God and the world - but one thing, consciousness."
The problem of evil can perhaps be explained by looking at the equation 0 = +X -X.
When there are created 'things', we get dualism.
In other words, when we have 'hot' we also have 'cold'.
When we have 'good' we also have 'bad'.
We could perhaps see 'God' or the 'Ulimate Reality' as being '0', and the world as being +X -X.
Or we can see 'Reality' as being '0' which can be +X -X.
"The mystics of all the great traditions agree that all distinctions are imaginary and that the Ultimate Nature of Reality is non-dual."
The Taoists would argue that there is always Yin and Yang.
There is only a problem if there is a lack of balance.
Of course the mystics would also say that Ultimate Reality is much more complicated than we normally imagine, and that Ultimate Reality cannot be described in words.
Dr. Ian Stevenson:
"Twins in Sri Lanka.
"We did testing that showed they were identical, yet they were markedly different in their behaviors and physical appearance.
"One twin began to talk about a previous life as a Sinhalese insurgent, said he was shot by police in April 1971. Anyway, his family laughed at him, so he shut up and nothing could be verified about what he said.
"The older twin talked copiously about the previous life of a young schoolboy. He made several specific statements that ultimately checked out. He said he lived in a place called Balapitiya and traveled by train to a school in another town called Ambalangoda. He made comparisons between the families' property.
"He referred to an aunt, by name, who had cooked chilies for him.
"Perhaps the most astonishing thing was that when the two families met, the boy pointed to some [writing] in a wall that turned out to be the name of the deceased boy he was remembering. The subject said he had made that when the cement was wet. No one in the deceased boy's family had noticed it before."
Ros Barber's new novel Devotion is about God and parallel universes.
Finlay Logan's daughter has died, in a parachute accident.
And Finlay Logan, who is a psychologist, is assessing the sanity of April Smith, a Christian fundamentalist who has blown up a bus.
Finlay says: "There is no fucking God. Because it simply wasn't possible that God the Father would smear your twenty-one-year-old daughter across a field in the Surrey Hills."
Finlay meets Gabrielle Salmon.
Gabrielle Salmon is a scientist who studies consciousness.
She claims that she can help people to connect to God, and thus find peace.
She has managed to reproduce Religious, Spiritual and Mystical Experiences (RSMEs).
Author Ros Barber now presents two parallel universes for Finlay.
Finlay can choose.
We should note that the scientists now tell us that this is possible.
According to the scientists, when you come a cross a 'particle' it does not have a 'fixed state' - until your mind decides what its 'fixed state' will be.
In other words, if you come across Mr Schrödinger's cat lying very still on the grass, the cat is neither dead nor alive - until your mind decides what its 'fixed state' will be.
Let us imagine that you have a very strong feeling that the cat will be alive and well next year.
Christians believe that things go better when you tune into the Holy Spirit.
The Taoists would call the Holy Spirit the Tao.
When you are tuned in, the cat is not dead.
Some Taoists and Christians and others believe that bliss can be achieved when:
1. You believe that, when tuned in, life works out for the best.
2. You are compassionate
3. You are moderate (Avoid extremes)
4. You are humble (The selfish ego is switched off)
5. Everything is in balance
6. Being tuned into the Holy Spirit or the Tao or whatever you want to call it, you go with the flow.
(You are not battling against the Holy Spirit or Tau)
7. You avoid the use of force; you avoid pitting your will against the universe.
Eventually the cat will die, but it will continue in the Spirit.
Spirit and body?
"It stretches our own humanity to love a child who is less than perfect... And that is an important lesson for us.'" (Dr. Frank Oski) Christians refer to both 'spirit' and 'body'.[4]
There is a belief that spirits inhabit and animate beings.
The body is like a computer.
The spirit is like the person who operates the computer.
The New testament refers to evil spirits. Luke 11:2 "When the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and not finding any, it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.'"
Mark 16:9 "He first appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom He had cast out seven demons."
How might a spirit achieve bliss?
Lao Tzu taught that we should eliminate all that is dark and negative in ourselves.
