Should You Plan for Your Next Incarnation?

I'm not even planning for retirement yet... Guess I'll probably get stuck here for another go'round.

There is evidence that some or most souls choose the next life. The Stevenson et. al. evidence does just show that, not necessarily that they chose a miserable life. The rest is a logical, rational chain of inferences.

We know that many though not most human lives have a lot of suffering, and that some are predominately egregious suffering. We reasonably believe that souls have great knowledge of the material world including the likelihood of hereditary genetic disease or of likely misery caused by other particular choices of place, time, parents, etc. Souls therefore almost certainly know, before their next life decision, if the upcoming human life will be burdened by (for instance) severe hereditary genetically-cause disease. 

Many human lives are afflicted by genetically-caused hereditary disease and/or other conditions that could be predicted by the soul for those particular choices of time, place, parents, etc.

Therefore it is a reasonable inference that some souls some time deliberately choose miserable lives for their human incarnations.

That is merely guesswork. Moreover, the quotes by Matlock in my earlier message clearly refute your theory.

That is merely guesswork. Moreover, the quotes by Matlock in my earlier message clearly refute your theory.

I disagree that it is "just guesswork". Please indicate what step or steps in the reasoning are invalid and why.

If you reject my logical reasoning on this, you still have not explained many of the millions of cases of miserable pain-filled lives that actually exist in the world.

And your quote from Matlock does nothing for that gap. Your quote is, "In I Saw A Light And Came Here James G. Matlock writes that "we often return to our families, friends or compatriots" and "the subjects almost always reside in the same country as the previous persons". [page 268]."

(1) Return to the same family or friends, in the same country does nothing to prevent birth into horrendous conditions of life.
Cases of severe hereditary genetic disease can occur in all families including those in developed countries. Cases of birth into dysfunctional families subjecting the child to psychological and physical abuse (distorting the child's personality into adulthood) can occur in all countries including developed ones. Birth into poverty and neglect and crime can occur in all countries including developed ones.
(2 In any case we don't know if this is the general rule for all reincarnations, or just a subset of cases going this way due to the investigator's selection process.

The stark fact is the actual existence of millions of suffering human beings, in situations where their suffering could have been predicted as highly probable given their chosen time, place and parents, and could have been prevented by the soul (by simply not incarnating with those particular parents). Instead, the soul apparently deliberately selects them for its own purposes (presumably soul learning).
This of course is assuming the soul has the necessary knowledge and power and is the being making the choices for the upcoming incarnation.

If the being making these choices is the previous human personality (in the between lives state), then it must be severely dazed and confused, or distorted, in order to make some of the choices that are so numerously observed in the population. Of course, the previous human personality has no knowledge of things like hidden genetic defects in a fetus, so those sorts of cases might be ascribed to ignorance.

So how do you explain this common pervasive fact of the human condition?

If the being making these choices is the previous human personality (in the between lives state), then it must be severely dazed and confused, or distorted, in order to make some of the choices that are so numerously observed in the population. Of course, the previous human personality has no knowledge of things like hidden genetic defects in a fetus, so those sorts of cases might be ascribed to ignorance.

If we accept that reincarnation occurs, repeatedly (rather than just first life followed by second life), then the being in the between-life stage would presumably consist of ALL of the previous personalities - perhaps dozens or thousands of them. Or equally, of none of them.

However, data from NDE accounts often shows that the person during the experience rapidly loses any interest in the body or worldly attachments of the body they just left. This is something which is hard to grasp, but I think it is an important key to making sense of these ideas.

For example during an NDE a person describes their thinking as clearer and faster than usual, the experience itself as 'realer than real' - as though they just woke from a dream. The idea that the person is "severely dazed and confused, or distorted" is in direct contradiction with the evidence, which shows them thinking clearly, and having access to knowledge so things are understood.

If anyone is "severely dazed and confused, or distorted", I'd suggest it is us, all of us (with perhaps a few exceptions). It is humanity itself which seems dazed and confused.

I tend to consider this world as like a theatre, where we all play a role. But we are not the role, any more than an actor becomes any of the parts he/she plays on stage. When the play is over, the actor has an independent existence, not taking their stage persona home with them.

I tend to consider this world as like a theatre, where we all play a role. But we are not the role, any more than an actor becomes any of the parts he/she plays on stage. When the play is over, the actor has an independent existence, not taking their stage persona home with them.

Your last line really resonated with me! Have you heard of Richard Martini by chance? He is a film director who became interested in the afterlife/consciousness after filming past-life regression sessions and discovering the similarities between them and other events. He too tends to relate this life to a theater, where we play our roles until the show is over, then we go "home".

Your last line really resonated with me! Have you heard of Richard Martini by chance? He is a film director who became interested in the afterlife/consciousness after filming past-life regression sessions and discovering the similarities between them and other events. He too tends to relate this life to a theater, where we play our roles until the show is over, then we go "home".

I've heard the name Martini, but am not familiar with his work. (It's possible there may even be discussion of his ideas on this forum, I haven't checked).

I don't claim to have invented this idea independently by myself. Shakespeare for one did it previously, and in popular culture, a certain Elvis spoke Shakespeare's words as an idea in a song.  I remember a fellow student when I was at college used to often go round saying "All the world's a stage" too.

One part which was an original thought (if there are indeed any) was when, as a dazed and confused young adult, I would describe myself in some journal-type notes, as being thrust onto the centre of the stage. Everyone else around me seemed to know their lines, and played their respective parts. But I had no idea what I should do, I had to improvise. (This was desribing my actual daily life).

If we accept that reincarnation occurs, repeatedly (rather than just first life followed by second life), then the being in the between-life stage would presumably consist of ALL of the previous personalities - perhaps dozens or thousands of them. Or equally, of none of them.

However, data from NDE accounts often shows that the person during the experience rapidly loses any interest in the body or worldly attachments of the body they just left. This is something which is hard to grasp, but I think it is an important key to making sense of these ideas.

For example during an NDE a person describes their thinking as clearer and faster than usual, the experience itself as 'realer than real' - as though they just woke from a dream. The idea that the person is "severely dazed and confused, or distorted" is in direct contradiction with the evidence, which shows them thinking clearly, and having access to knowledge so things are understood.

If anyone is "severely dazed and confused, or distorted", I'd suggest it is us, all of us (with perhaps a few exceptions). It is humanity itself which seems dazed and confused.

I tend to consider this world as like a theatre, where we all play a role. But we are not the role, any more than an actor becomes any of the parts he/she plays on stage. When the play is over, the actor has an independent existence, not taking their stage persona home with them.

This is assuming that the "superclear" state of consciousness described by deep NDEers is the same state that the human is in between lives when choosing a next incarnation. I suppose this is a reasonable assumption, but this implies that this "clarified consciousness" human could deliberately choose, to use the extreme example, a next life of extreme misery due to hereditary genetic diseases. This would have to be the case to explain the many actual human lives of this and other terrible sorts.

Then this requires us to believe that with just some added clarity of thought and perception "we" ourselves also could make such a choice. This is hard to believe, and requires a careful redefinition of what is really meant by "we" or "ourselves". 

These words are meant to refer to the human personal self including the ego and memories, not some unimaginably expanded being with memories of hundreds or more previous lives and personalities, and perception of and understanding of vastly more than perceivable by the human. That is, the sort of being that could make such humanly unacceptable choices.

I simply don't believe that I myself the human personality and ego and memories would ever choose such a fate, not even if this "I" just had a close relationship to my human self. It seems to me that whatever this expanded "I" is that can make such a decision, it is very very different from my human self, to the point that it is questionable how it relates at all to me the human person.

[Laird]

The stark fact is the actual existence of millions of suffering human beings, in situations where their suffering could have been predicted as highly probable given their chosen time, place and parents, and could have been prevented by the soul (by simply not incarnating with those particular parents).

I wonder about the bit in your quote which I've bolded. It seems at least potentially fallacious to me, because if those lives were destined to occur anyway, then even if one soul was free to reject it, some soul was required to accept it for it to occur at all.

It seems potentially similar to arguments I've heard about poverty: that people in low-paying jobs should just work harder to become qualified for higher-paying jobs. Similarly, the problem here is that those low-paying jobs are a necessary part of society, so even if a given worker can rise out of one of those jobs, it must necessarily be filled by some other unfortunate soul.

I wonder about the bit in your quote which I've bolded. It seems at least potentially fallacious to me, because if those lives were destined to occur anyway, then even if one soul was free to reject it, some soul was required to accept it for it to occur at all.

It seems potentially similar to arguments I've heard about poverty: that people in low-paying jobs should just work harder to become qualified for higher-paying jobs. Similarly, the problem here is that those low-paying jobs are a necessary part of society, so even if a given worker can rise out of one of those jobs, it must necessarily be filled by some other unfortunate soul.

This is good "out of the box" speculative thinking. This upends the usual New Age teaching that lives of much human suffering are generally always planned by the soul (through soul choice of the next incarnation) to achieve soul growth in dealing or trying to deal with the "challenges".

A few thoughts on the possible implications, probably unacceptable to the major traditions of spiritual philosophy and teachings.

The problems I have pointed out are seen in a different light: maybe the predictably really messed up human lives are part of the cost of maintaining the system of Earth experience or the so-called "Earth Adventure". This would seem to be the case; that the diseases and other challenges of these terrible lives are simply part of the natural order. Presumably no complex system, however ingeniously designed, will be totally free of errors and problems - they come about due to the complex series of engineering tradeoffs necessary to design an objective physical reality that primarily fosters human creativity and joyful living. For instance, diseases like cancer are certainly part of the inevitable cost of designing incredibly complex animal bodies, and naturally afflict non-human animals as well as humans.

One possible implication would be that perhaps there is a system that chooses which souls are forced to inhabit grievously defective bodies, or bodies born into very bad circumstances. These souls would presumably be expected to make the best of it, to "turn lemons into lemonade" so to speak, as much as they can. Is the selection scheme the "short straw" method, or some complicated Karmic calculation?  

Somebody has to do the dirty jobs whether they like it or not, in order that the system allow the great majority to experience the joys of Earth life. Unfortunately then, the system has to involuntarily compel some souls to live the extremely challenging lives that are the inevitable downside of the overall system. 

Of course, some suffering humans can still legitimately complain that they didn't come up with this scheme, and wouldn't conceivably ever choose it. That the cost is simply too great to the individuals that have to do the "dirty jobs".

Another musing: maybe some humans actually never receive souls: absolutely everybody balked at inhabiting these particular bodies, and maybe subverted the system. These cases are the sociopaths with no conscience or empathy. They are manipulative, lie frequently, are callous and lack empathy, and have a weak or no conscience that allows them to act recklessly or aggressively, even when they know their behavior is wrong. The serial killers, for instance.

If you reject my logical reasoning on this, you still have not explained many of the millions of cases of miserable pain-filled lives that actually exist in the world.

There is zero evidence that they deliberately chose miserable pain-filled lives.

(1) Return to the same family or friends, in the same country does nothing to prevent birth into horrendous conditions of life.

I never claimed that it does. But it explains why, for example, an African does not born in Europe or South America in his next life.

(2 In any case we don't know if this is the general rule for all reincarnations, or just a subset of cases going this way due to the investigator's selection process.

That's right, but spontaneous cases are more credible than regression cases or new age teachings.