Before you were born....

[crazy a]

...where were you? Not physically, but your soul/spirit/essence/"YOU".

You hear how people have near-death experiences where they move to a light and can see their family and friends that have gone before. Now reverse it.

Why were you the product of your parents and not the couple next door? Or the couple in the next state? The other side of the world? If you weren't born "you", would you have been born someone somewhere else? What if a couple didn't join to make the physical "you"? Would the spirit/essence just never come to be or would it float around or what?

Deep thinking, I know, but something I've wondered about on and off.

[Exotic Ginger]

Its funny you asked this because I was just recently remembering a conversation I had with a friend about this years ago.

Many people who believe in reincarnation think that they have a really old soul that has been passed down for ages. I thought about that, and I decided that I don't know enough about the world in general and don't feel like I have enough wisdom to be an old sould, so therefore I must be a really young soul/personality.

However, just the act of deciding this, made me disbelieve in the theory. I mean, I can understand (maybe) how a soul could be passed from one person to another, but if that's so, then where do the new souls come from? Are they created randomly? And if so, what creates them? And if they are created, why aren't all souls (or personalities) created fresh?

I think we are all just a product of chemicals, genes, and our own parents and upbringing.

I'm not religious in any way so I just have to work these things out myself.

[tyledras]

*Really long and potentially irritating rant ahead.*

I use to think about that a lot previously. Cosnidering how I might be different if I was born to someone else, had a different name, lived a different life. How that end of things worked out. I think it was a weightier question to me previously when I was vaguely poking around at what I believed and thought. Since then I forgot about the question for a while, and coming back to it, I decided it goes under the category of nonsense questions. Really cool question, but nonsense question none the less. Sort of like, what would have happened if I hadn't gotten out of the way of a specific car in time, or hadn't met so and so. It is interesting to think about, but I've decided after a while of it bouncing around in the back of my head, that it isn't relevant and doesn't matter.
And this is why. Sort of.

I am who I am. As a Christian, and a Catholic, I believe that God made each of us unique, and who we are is no accident, and therefore neither is our life, who we are born and the circumstances in which we are raised. We have our choices along the way with that of course. But ultimately, who I am is who I am. It was decided that I would come to be, and here I am, with my life here, behind me, and ahead of me, and with all the choices it entails. And the joys and the sorrows.

Could I have been born somewhere else, to someone else, would my spirit inhabit a different body? I think the first two are vaguely remotely possible, but still a nonsense question as it didn't happen and the difference to me between reality and possibility seems to me to have in some degree to do with choice. And I don't really see that there is too much of that in this. Place possibly, but not too much more than that for most of us. And to the last question, No, I don't really think so. I don't particularly think I would be someone much other than me, not because I find it difficult to imagine myself in another situation, but because knowing myself, having watched myself grow from the inside so to speak, I see what I have taken from the world around me, and I can not imagine a more positive sitation for me to grow up in. I've been through a lot. I am quite aware that many others have been through a hell of a lot more than I have. I am also quite aware that much of that I would have been incapable of dealing with, and what I have been through already I have dealt with and been able to grow from it instead of being killed by it, literally as well as figuratively, because of the people I was raised by and around. I do not think that accident. Nor do I think who I am in my present circumstance to be an accident either.
There is a central idea behind my thinking that I am trying to get at and failing utterly. I hate these meds. Not that I think it is completely the fault of the medication I am taking, but they don't help me to keep my thoughts straight. There is a lot more thought that has gone into this than the gobledeegook I've put up here, but nonetheless that is the conclusion that I have reached. I believe in a loving God who created us with a will (doubly: he created us willfully and made us willfull) and I think he made us who we are and no accident of it.

Ok, let the criticism flow, or not. whatever. I do wanna hear what other people have to answer on this. Should be interesting

[crazy a]

Tyle---I think it sounds like you're saying that God created us on purpose, so even if our circumstances were somewhat different, we would still be "we". Our souls wouldn't be interchangable, neither would they be floating around in space.

Would this be a correct interpretation of your post?

[tyledras]

yeah. basically. it is slightly more complicated than that, but not much, that's about it. thanks.

*looks abashed at the ease of summing up*

[JaceSan]

I used to ask my brother about this sort of stuff because he's read a lot about reincarnation and past-life regression. I don't know if I believe any of it, but it makes for interesting conversation, no?

From what I can remember, YOU chose to be born to your current parents. Our familial karmic bonds are the strongest and most influential in our current lives. Supposedly there are unresolved issues that need to be worked out between you and the people you've chosen to be your parents. I think the question is why did you choose these particular parents to be born to? What is it that needs to be resolved and how do you go about doing so?

This applies to other people in your life as well. There's a reason you've chosen to have these people in your life. If you have the feeling that you've met someone before, but actually haven't then you may have met in a previous life. This is also why we experience feelings of deja vu. A place or even a certain circumstance may have left an impression on our essence. Something triggers that impression and we get the sense of having "been there before".

Apparently once you've resolved all your issues and your karmic debt has been paid you're free to move on to a different state of being. Some souls have a acheived this but return to help guide others. (i.e. the Dalai Llama and others)

I honestly haven't studied enough philosophy or Buddhism to explain it very well. In fact I used to piss my brother off by asking him about these things. He'd just tell me to read about it if I really want to understand more. I bet Dano could explain this a lot better.

I agree with Gem that these are things we need to work out ourselves, but it's great to get other peoples input.

To try and answer crazys question, I think that if we weren't born to our current parents we would have "found" another pair to be born to. The point of being born is to come into the world and serve some sort of purpose or resolve some issues. Maybe this is an egotistical way of looking at life. Perhaps we don't have a purpose or anything to figure out. We're simply "here".
It's nice to believe we serve a greater purpose though.

What about cloning? Will a human clone have a different spirit/soul/essence than the person they were cloned from? Or will that essence be cloned as well?

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ June 28, 2003 08:47 AM: Message edited by: JaceSan ]</font>

[Lulu]

now this may sound kinda wierd, but as a teenager, I came up with my own theory about life/death and the hereafter.

I decided there was probably this big cloud of energy around us- like the atmosphere. And that it was always moving and changing. Sometimes, I figured it took the form of motion, heat, fire, and sometimes life and personalities.

I figured that we were probably portions of that energy contained in matter. That we were pullled down from the cloud and consolidated in our current form or persona. That when we die, in the same way that our bodies dissolved back into the matter that makes up the planet, our 'spirits' evaporate (sorta) back into the big swirling mass from which they came.

I liked this theory because it explained everything- even the notion of past life memories. See, you could have been a part of someone else, and someone else could oneday be a part of you! But ultimately (in keeping with the teachings of most religions) we're all part of the same, greater (albeit nonconscious) thing.

(Maybe I should start a cult or write a book. What do you think?)

[Exotic Ginger]

Sounds good to me. Make sure you make some money at it. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[erisesoteric]

Personally, I'm just too damn pragmatic to worry about souls.

I'm the product of my parent's genetic material. In appearence, tendencies, and personality, I take after both of them. I respond to certain things in certain ways because of a combination of my base genetic material, and the environment I was exposed to in my formative years.

What is my soul? Haven't a clue. I would hope it exists, that part of me gets carried on. I hope that it is something that can learn, like the mind, and love, like the heart, and that eventually, it will come to understand the world, and it's place in it.

I don't so much see our souls as being created by god and being sent forth into the world, so much as being an essential part of god, god's hands, maybe, or his eyes, and that eventually, we return to god, and become god, and god learns from us as we do from god.

[usmu]

Well my parents decided to have some fun and exercise one evening and eventually that resulted in me. And that's all there's to it.I don't think mankind has a soul, at least not in the (religious) context as it's usually defined. Nor do I think there's that's greater then the combined parts (organs, chemical reactions, etc.) of us.

And I have to agree with Tyle on "what if I was born as someone else" being a "non sense" question. There's no what if, at least from a historical point of view. That what was was and can not be changed. As such questioning doesn't to find alternatives for the present is a nice exercise, but does not carry any weight.