From: suzych@swcp.com
In article ,
Alistair@nothere.com wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Sep 2005 01:31:05 -0600, Suzy Charnas
> wrote:
>
> >Because when where you want to go is on a very long, convoluted journey,
> >you can't always just walk over there this week. Sometimes it takes a
> >number of lifetimes just to get to the next change of horses, as it
> >were. And tomorrow may not be promised to *me*, but it always comes to
> >the next version of "me" to pop into the world, and the one after that.
>
> OK, I guess what I'm trying to find out is WHY you (or anyone) believe
> in reincarnation. What has convinced you that this is the correct
> paradigm for life in the universe?
>
> Alistair
Fair question, and since the NG is fairly quiet right now, I think it's
okay for me to take up the space I need to explain it here, which I
ordinarily wouldn't do.
Here's the historical answer (there's a theoretical answer that goes
along with it, but that came much later): as a kid, a little kid I mean,
I can recall being told a story by my then-best friend, a Christian of
some denomination or other (I didn't know from denominations, I was
maybe nine or ten, maybe less) about how you die, you get judged, you go
up or down and that's it forever (and babies who die get to hang out in
limbo -- so maybe she was Catholic?). I can remember that moment
exactly: I said, "What? You mean it's like a person is just a tissue,
God blows his nose in you once and then throws you away, even little
babies? That can't be true; it doesn't make any sense." Then I forgot
about it; in my teens, I zipped through an interest in the major
religions, reading prodigiously and trying on attitudes, including lofty
philosophical ones via people like Jean Paul Sartre et al. And forgot
about it again.
Then I wrote a book inspired by the works of Loren Eiseley, a
naturalist, essayist, and paleontologist teaching at U.Penn. I was
planning to dedicate the book to him, but I discovered (in a magazine in
a dentist's waiting room) that Eiseley had just died of a massive heart
attack. Whereupon I suddenly found myself, as a happily married woman
of about 40, experiencing deep mourning for somebody I'd never met. I
mean that can't-move lethargy, and crying jags, and maddening memories
of distressing dreams, and inability to concentrate.
So, out of desperation (and embarrassment -- I mean, how the hell do you
explain this behavior to family and friends?), I turned to a colleague
out in California who had some years before approached me at a business
convention and told me some impenetrable stuff about my soul this and my
soul that. She'd said that she and I were old comrades, and any time I
had questions about such things I could ask her and she would ask her
"source", which was (*cringe*) responses channeled from some kind of
non-physical bunch of souls that had finished up their incarnations;
which sounded loopy to me, but hey, she was Californian, right? Anyway,
now it was her or a shrink. I asked her.
The response was that Eiseley and I were old pals, having shared many
previous lifetimes as parents/child, siblings, master/apprentice,
religious wearing out their knees in stone-cold monasteries, etc., and
that furthermore we had had an agreement (that is, we'd decided between
our last lives and this one) that he was going to provide some raw
material for my current work. His unplanned-for death had intervened
before we could do that, which was why I was so upset; though Eiseley,
"this comfy old soul", wasn't troubled by it since we could always renew
our plans for another time.
I said, "Oh. Um. Well, thanks very much."
I stopped crying. I wrote to Eiseley's widow, asking whether I could go
ahead and dedicate my book to him anyway, and she said yes; she also
said that if not for his untimely death, he and I would surely have met
before long in person, as he was working on an SF novel of his own and
was friends with some SF writers I know (we all get together frequently
at conventions); and he was a very convivial man. Not long afterward
came a dream in which Eiseley (whose picture I'd seen on his book
jackets so I knew what he looked like) told me g'bye, he was moving on;
we had a friendly hug and he walked away, and that was that (whew! How
weird!).
Except that I started thinking more about it, asking more questions and
getting more answers which most of the time made pretty good sense and
were helpful in dealing with the world; and I've had other incidents of
actual meetings with such "old friends" since, where there's been some
mutual recognition, articulated from both sides. That first incident
also let loose a flood of dreams providing glimpses of pasts in which
I'd been, oh, a navigator on a Viking boat or just some poor drowning
sailor on a sinking ship, a haulier on the Russian-Polish border feeding
my horses grain laced with brandy (turns out they really did that,
against the cold), some aristocrat's tutor for his bratty kids, a
miller's wife, that kind of thing. I've been exploring.
So -- proof? Of course not. Convincing? Not to you, maybe, and why
should it be? But pretty damned convincing to me -- it's one of those
"you had to be there" things -- so that's why I think this stuff is
real. Why others believe -- results of NDE's, religious teaching,
personal visions, OBE's, or whatever -- they would have to tell you
themselves, if they cared to. I trust it most in others when it's
personal, because I think religion (as in organized, institutionalized
spiritual belief and practice) distorts pretty much everything it
touches even worse than personal ego interests do.
SMC
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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