Well stated, nothing there to argue about but I have one further question. Do you think someone can know for sure if they study hard enough or find the correct source to read?
No. The product of the intellect will only result in "thinkingness". Always, forever. Reading, at best, can encourage you to LOOK in some direction or area. Once you then take the time to observe and experience, then THAT has some value. Of course, that gets tricky with subjects like past lives, telepathy, ESP, etc. The only "knowing for sure" is at the tippy top of the "Know to Mystery Scale". That is WAY FAR above "thinkingness". "Study" and "reading the right source" remain as an exercise of the intellect. In Buddhism and Taosim, the intellect gets analyzed and discarded. It has very limited use in the BIG scheme of things. Of course, people living at this time, in societies obsessed with "science" and "overintellectualizing", have placed an unusual excess of value in this area of "thinkingness".
For example, one can "read" all about "compassion". Read stories about Mother Theresa, read stories about Jesus, read stories about Buddha, and so forth. But, until one actually FEELS the beingness of a truly compassionate person, or allows that feeling to erupt in and through oneself, all of that "reading" remains devoid of any value.
But also, the path is long, winding and often beset with many detours. Periods of reading and thinking often occur. Also, "contemplation" is different than simple reading. One can "imagine" various scenarios as one reads, and add to it immensely. If one asks, "how can it be that way", and "how is it not that way", as one reads, it also expands the experience aspect, rendering the reading "more valuable".
People tend to read what they are "attracted to". People resonate with external data that aligns well with ones current state of consciousness. Whatever it is that you find yourself most attracted to, as an interest, is the BEST guage of who and what you currently are (understanding that THAT is always changing).
Very well stated, there is nothing that you say which can be disputed. However, I have a further question. Do you think that any means exists where people can find out with 100% certainty whether they lived before or not. I always thought that if someone remembered his name and the dates of a particular life, and knew where he was buried that if he took a trip there and found the headstone with the correct name and dates on it, that would constitute sufficient proof for me that I would have certainty of having lived that life. Some other things would give me certainty as well, for instance if I recovered an ability to speak Japanese or the ability to play the violin at a high level without studying, that would do it for me.
Never 100% certainty. I think it is like physics, and there can be ways to ascertain "higher probabilities". But, also as with quantum physics, if one "knows" WHERE the event occurs, one cannot also "know" the velocity or momentum of the event. Knowing in detail about one thing, prevents knowing in detail about other things. Proof will always involve some aspect of the ever-changing temporal reality. Added to that is the severely limited nature of human perception and memory. So, even basing "proof" on "documented studies" or "direct personal experience" has its flaws and pitfalls. I am sure enough "proof" can exist for many people, in either direction. In the end, as I see it, most of the tme people accept the proof that aligns with what they already believe anyways. Proof? To me most "proof" is self-trickery.
But, really, the only need one has to know or learn about past lives, is to deal with it/them all so that they no longer have any influence in anything. If there are "traumatic" aspects of past lives that need to be addressed, of course, the best place to be is "having them all addressed, with no attention any longer in the area". Otherwise, who cares? They are like anything else that any person can have attention fixated on. Of course, people who think they are meat bodies, who identify ones awareness with MEST, living and dying one life, probably need to get smacked in the face with a past life or two.
When my Son was around one year old and was learning to talk, he used the word "Giya" for 'Yes" but just No for "No". He kept using giya for about 4 months and then finally switched over to yes. I didn't think much about it but perhaps 15 years later, I was watching one of those Chinese Kung Fo type movies with English subtitles and about 4 times I heard the word giya in the movie and the subtile said the word "yes". That certainly is not proof but it made me wonder.
Lakey
Here's an interesting twist on it. According to eastern theories, yes, a person continues to reincarnate. But, once a person attains to a certain level of understanding, and especially to a certain state of consciousness, the desire and "need" to reincarnate vanishes. So, at THAT POINT, does reincarnation matter? I suspect that for THAT PERSON it no longer has any significance or meaning. Interestingly, whereas modern New Age therapies often deal with and address "past life" experiences as some way to "open up" awareness and deal with "Karmic tendencies" that need to be sorted out, I don't think there is any such slant in Buddhism or Hinduism. Their approach is simply to work to control ones mind, so as to be in full awareness at all times. The whole situation with "past lives" resolves itself as one breaks down the various factors of mis-identification.
Now, I will be honest. I have zero attention or concern for my own past lives. But, also, I ran over 600 hours of Dianetics, mostly whole track, and I may have lost interest due to having done so much of it. The nature of consciousness is "attention", and where one places attention on a routine and chronic manner determines "what" any person is "conscious of". Concern for anything, in a way that is anything more than mild curiosity, can often manifest as "stuck attention".
Some channeled information takes the view that all "lives" are occurring simultaneously, and that the notion of "past" in "past lives" is entirely erroneous. That may be how you experience it, but that isn't necessarily the way it is. That any conscious entity seems to have "layers" of experience and reality seems obvious, to me.
Something IS going on. There is no doubt about that, to me. The ONLY value ANY book will have is if the "thinkingness" involved in reading it acts as a nudging to get you to DO SOMETHING about changing your state of consciousness. Reading and thinking can't do it. Mental ruminations will forever remain mental ruminations.
Thinkingness that leads to some
practice is the only value of reading about any of this sort of stuff. For example, reading about meditation is useless and does nothing. DOING meditation does something. You can read about, think about, argue about, discuss and ponder "meditation" until hell freezes over, but until you actually DO IT, you will NOT "understand it". You may know "all about it", from some cold analytical view, but you will never "know it". Hubbard understood the importance of "practical" versus "theory". If study doesn't get somebody to do something or look, then it has no value. The entire range of spiritual practices on Earth, that have any real lasting value, simply encourage a person to move up from thinkingness to lookingness. One will NEVER "know" by thinking (reading, studying), though one MIGHT be able to know by careful undifferentiated looking (as directed by reading and studying).
If anyone is curious about past lives, reading accounts can be "fun", and it may "resonate" as true for you, but the best solution is to get auditing, or some past life regression therapy, etc. In other words, DO SOMETHING that has a potential to allow you to contact whatever appears for you as "past lives". Then, get over it!
That I am an
eternal spiritual being is my current operating hypothesis. As a creative entity, with the ability to imagine just about anything as "real" and have it "affect me", from THAT perspective, yes "past lives" probably do exist in some manner. But, people create their own "past lives" and "charge about them". That is the bottom line. In the end everything that you thought was "other than you" and "out there" was "in you" the entire time. Your universe is YOUR universe. You made it. Including every notion of any past life you may have.
Choosing to envision oneself as an eternal spirtual being is the
logical choice. How? Well, if I AM an eternal spiritual being, on some long evolutionary path towards enlightenment, then I have increased my odds of coming out ahead. I have hedged my bets! And, if not, and it matters not at all what any person thinks or believes because you are DEAD in a few years anyway, forever dead, well then it DOESN'T MATTER. My choice of ideas and suppositions were as "valid" as anybody else's within THAT framework. And, if their is any value in originality, at least I steered off a bit from the mindset of the common earthly MEST-hypnotized drone.
Silly humans. They mock up these various past lives, then forget them (intentionally), and then spend all of this time working to "discover", "recall", and "remember" these past lives. Seems a bit pointless to me. :confused2: It wouldn't be unlike a young child who hides his favorite toy in a hole in his back yard, and then spends the next 5 years trying to find it again. Why?
Hubbard may have been right when he said that the last goal or desire of any being is to have a game. Any game is better than no game - apparently. Including the one mentioned in the previous paragraph.