Reincarnation Cases

It is always the same individual, same being, whether he is incarnate or discarnate. E.g. in this life I can decide, whether I'm going to visit my friends A and B in my hometown, or my friends C and D in another city. After my death I can decide whether I want to have couple AB or DC as my parents. It is always the same I that makes the decisions. There isn't any "true self" that decides something against my wishes. We are not some puppets whose strings are pulled by some mystical "true self" or "higher self".

I see it a little differently (perhaps). I think of each personality as a valid entity making its own decisions and path while being part of a gestalt soul which includes all of its incarnational personalities. So the experience of my personality as I live my life now is my own and it is also experienced by my "greater self", the soul gestalt that I am part of. This gestalt may be part of a larger gestalt and so on until we get the the ultimate gestalt which shares all of our experiences. 

In short, the separation, while valid in one sense is an illusion in another. As the personality I am right now, I don't experience what another in my group experiences because my consciousness is purposefully restricted. However, it may be possible, eventually, to shed those restrictions and view my individual life from a greater perspective.

As for reincarnation, I find it difficult to pin down what I think really happens. My favoured guess is that each incarnation is a newly formed member of the gestalt which grows with every life experience. I have to bear in mind that time is probably not as we understand it in this physical life so the linear progression model probably doesn't work in the way we imagine it to. So I think that each personality survives and continues while some fragment of that personality is the basis of another - like a twig from a branch or a fractal, perhaps.

It is difficult to visualise all of this because the concepts of time and linearity are so entrenched in this physical reality. I'm not sure that we are even capable of comprehending the process entirely though I am sure that I am certainly not capable of that here and now.

I see it a little differently (perhaps). I think of each personality as a valid entity making its own decisions and path while being part of a gestalt soul which includes all of its incarnational personalities. So the experience of my personality as I live my life now is my own and it is also experienced by my "greater self", the soul gestalt that I am part of. This gestalt may be part of a larger gestalt and so on until we get the the ultimate gestalt which shares all of our experiences. 

In short, the separation, while valid in one sense is an illusion in another. As the personality I am right now, I don't experience what another in my group experiences because my consciousness is purposefully restricted. However, it may be possible, eventually, to shed those restrictions and view my individual life from a greater perspective.

As for reincarnation, I find it difficult to pin down what I think really happens. My favoured guess is that each incarnation is a newly formed member of the gestalt which grows with every life experience. I have to bear in mind that time is probably not as we understand it in this physical life so the linear progression model probably doesn't work in the way we imagine it to. So I think that each personality survives and continues while some fragment of that personality is the basis of another - like a twig from a branch or a fractal, perhaps.

It is difficult to visualise all of this because the concepts of time and linearity are so entrenched in this physical reality. I'm not sure that we are even capable of comprehending the process entirely though I am sure that I am certainly not capable of that here and now.

This approach to understanding is similar to the teachings of Ron Scolastico's Guides and documented in a number of his books starting with The Earth Adventure. In this concept, it is the "gestalt soul" that plans and makes choices for the next life. This being is vastly greater than the individual human entity and subsumes all the previous personalities. It does not identify itself with the individual human entity and therefore can make dispassionate choices for the next life. This scheme is rather different from the prevalent New Age LBL belief system.

This approach to understanding is similar to the teachings of Ron Scolastico's Guides and documented in a number of his books starting with The Earth Adventure. In this concept, it is the "gestalt soul" that plans and makes choices for the next life. This being is vastly greater than the individual human entity and subsumes all the previous personalities. It does not identify itself with the individual human entity and therefore can make dispassionate choices for the next life. This scheme is rather different from the prevalent New Age LBL belief system.

I think "accumulated" version of ourselves is the prevailing view of the majority of spiritualist traditions and is not unique to the way you have described Mr Scolastico's view.

This approach to understanding is similar to the teachings of Ron Scolastico's Guides and documented in a number of his books starting with The Earth Adventure. In this concept, it is the "gestalt soul" that plans and makes choices for the next life. This being is vastly greater than the individual human entity and subsumes all the previous personalities. It does not identify itself with the individual human entity and therefore can make dispassionate choices for the next life. This scheme is rather different from the prevalent New Age LBL belief system.

I'm not sure I would go along with dispassionate as I believe that, although we can and do experience violent and painful experiences, we eventually grow spiritually to a point of understanding why those choices were necessary. Perhaps the collaboration between the individual personality, the gestalt soul and the other souls forming a group agree upon the roles in the coming drama. The importance of the experience radiates throughout the connected soul elements and the lessons learned benefit all.

What is really difficult to either comprehend or, worse, to explain is the need for suffering at all. My take is that it is part of our free-will driven narrative. I think that humanity, as a whole, could have chosen a different path but we allowed the ego to dominate our earthly choices and a downward spiral began, reaching its nadir in the 20th century with the horrors of two world wars and mass slaughter across the globe. We can mock the New Age movement which became popular in the sixties but it was a reaction to what had gone before. The anti-war protests and images of hippies poking daisies into gun barrels exemplified the zeitgeist. 

Anyhow, I'm straying way beyond the scope of this thread so, my apologies.

Do you think you go to an afterlife when you die?
Do you think you stay there forever or do you live again?
If you live again, what happened to the old version of you?
And finally what happens the second time you die? Who are you in the afterlife? The first you or the second you?

Perhaps this will answer to your questions and clarify this matter:

Buhlman and Tucker have both used the metaphor in which the soul is an actor. The roles may change, but it is always the same actor who plays those roles.

Jenny Cockell wrote in her book Journeys Through Time that she is aware of having been the same person throughout her many lives.

I am a tall, bald man with blue eyes. I am an electrical designer by profession and I play guitar in a band. I am an introvert etc. I know that none of those descriptions may be true in my next life, but I believe that I'll still be the same "I" or "self" that I am now.

Perhaps this will answer to your questions and clarify this matter:

Buhlman and Tucker have both used the metaphor in which the soul is an actor. The roles may change, but it is always the same actor who plays those roles.

Jenny Cockell wrote in her book Journeys Through Time that she is aware of having been the same person throughout her many lives.

I am a tall, bald man with blue eyes. I am an electrical designer by profession and I play guitar in a band. I am an introvert etc. I know that none of those descriptions may be true in my next life, but I believe that I'll still be the same "I" or "self" that I am now.

I don't think those quotes bring much clarity to the issue. 

The quote about the actor is spot on, but it doesn't answer the particular question on the table, of what happened to all those experience you had in a particular life. And whether you encompass only those in the afterlife...

The same with the second quote. What happens to the particular person from a particular life? 

If you don't mind sharing, I'm curious about answers to those questions I asked as that gets to the heart of it, and to the issues raised in your original post.

OTOH- if that's personal, we can just leave it alone then.

Perhaps this will answer to your questions and clarify this matter:

Buhlman and Tucker have both used the metaphor in which the soul is an actor. The roles may change, but it is always the same actor who plays those roles.

Jenny Cockell wrote in her book Journeys Through Time that she is aware of having been the same person throughout her many lives.

I am a tall, bald man with blue eyes. I am an electrical designer by profession and I play guitar in a band. I am an introvert etc. I know that none of those descriptions may be true in my next life, but I believe that I'll still be the same "I" or "self" that I am now.

Sorry to be so stubborn about this, but the human self or "I" that I am aware of through my life is composed of my personality, memories going back through childhood, and the body I identify with, not the "soul or spirit self" that could supposedly make decisions for a future life leading to great suffering. I most definitely am not aware of being an actor in an Earth role. I can definitively say that "I" my human self would absolutely not choose a life full of tragedy and pain and limitation. Therefore any being that could make such choices would not be my human self, it would be somebody/something else with no right to subject me to such horrors.

This of course leads to one of the central mysteries of reincarnation, the question of in what sense is the new unique human personality, memories and body the same as the previous unique human personality, memories and body? It would seem that whatever that explanation may be, it may not be meaningful to the human. If the actor metaphor is correct it still must have a lot of flaws - we should remember that an actor is always aware of his true identity and how he is putting on a show, and that he is not really suffering as his character is portrayed to be.

I can definitively say that "I" my human self would absolutely not choose a life full of tragedy and pain and limitation.

I agree. I don't believe that discarnate spirits decide to be born handicapped or get murdered etc. I think that it's possible to choose one's parents and perhaps some other things as well, but nobody chooses a miserable life deliberately. All that talk about choosing to be born blind or choosing a life in which one gets raped or disfigured in some horrible accident etc. is merely New Age belief or unreliable channeled information.

Do you think you go to an afterlife when you die?
Do you think you stay there forever or do you live again?
If you live again, what happened to the old version of you?
And finally what happens the second time you die? Who are you in the afterlife? The first you or the second you?

1. Yes.
2. I'll probably have to live again.
3. Incarnate spirit --> discarnate spirit --> incarnate spirit in a new body. Therefore I am that old version (same consciousness), but outer layers of me have changed (new body, and possibly different personality.)
4. The second I, but after a while I'll probably remember my previous lives and things in a larger perspective. In that situation I will probably think that I was both the first I and the second I, but ultimately I am neither of them. Both of those incarnations manifested some parts of my subliminal self/higher self etc. (When I said that I don't believe in "higher self" I meant that term in the same sense as the New Agers do. I do however believe in some kind of "higher self" in the same sense as William Buhlman uses that term.)

OTOH- if that's personal, we can just leave it alone then.

No. I have no problems in answering to your questions. If I wouldn't want to answer to questions, I wouldn't have written here in the first place.