Reincarnation. Who or what would reincarnate? (explained)

[Walker]

From the same dialogue as the OP:

Q: Does not death dissolve the individuality of a person, so that there can be no rebirth, just as the rivers discharged into the ocean lose their individualities?

A: But when the waters evaporate and return as rain on the hills, they once more flow in the form of rivers and fall into the ocean. So also the individualities during sleep lose their separateness and yet return as individuals according to their samskaras or past tendencies. It is the same after death – the individuality of the person with samskaras is not lost.

[henry quirk]

I like my current incarnation just fine, so: I won't.

[Walker]

I like my current incarnation just fine, so: I won't.

Did you also choose to be born?

[henry quirk]

I like my current incarnation just fine, so: I won't.

Did you also choose to be born?

No. And I probably won't have any say over when I kick, but I can damn well try to stall the reaper.

As for reincarnatin': I may have no say, but if I do, I'll tell whoever is in charge, 'nope, put me back'.

[Age]

I like my current incarnation just fine, so: I won't.

Did you also choose to be born?

No. And I probably won't have any say over when I kick, but I can damn well try to stall the reaper.

As for reincarnatin': I may have no say, but if I do, I'll tell whoever is in charge, 'nope, put me back'.

Put you back where?

Back to the dead or back to the living?

[henry quirk]

Did you also choose to be born?

No. And I probably won't have any say over when I kick, but I can damn well try to stall the reaper.

As for reincarnatin': I may have no say, but if I do, I'll tell whoever is in charge, 'nope, put me back'.

Put you back where?

Back to the dead or back to the living?

back in the body I currently inhabit, of course, which is here and now, in the land of the living

[Walker]

From the same source as the OP:

Q: If what is destined to happen will happen, is there any use in prayer or effort or should we just remain idle?

A: There are only two ways to conquer destiny or be independent of it. One is to enquire for whom is this destiny and discover that only the ego is bound by destiny and not the Self, and that the ego is non-existent. The other way is to kill the ego by completely surrendering to the Lord, by realizing one’s helplessness and saying all the time, ‘Not I but thou, O Lord’, giving up all sense of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ and leaving it to the Lord to do what he likes with you. Surrender can never be regarded as complete so long as the devotee wants this or that from the Lord. True surrender is love of God for the sake of love and nothing else, not even for the sake of liberation. In other words, complete effacement of the ego is necessary to conquer destiny, whether you achieve this effacement through self-enquiry or through bhakti marga.

*

Q: The present is said to be due to past karma. Can we transcend the past karma by our free will now?

A: See what the present is. If you do this you will understand what is affected by or has a past or a future, what is ever-present and always free and what remains unaffected by the past or future or by any past karma.

[commonsense]

If there were such a thing as reincarnation, selective reincarnation would not exist. If there were such a thing as reincarnation, whatever mechanism that allowed one living thing to return to life after being dead would be available to all living things. If there were such a thing as reincarnation, there would be reincarnation for all. That means Jesus and everyone, including plants and animals, would return to live again.

[henry quirk]

If there were such a thing as reincarnation, selective reincarnation would not exist. If there were such a thing as reincarnation, whatever mechanism that allowed one living thing to return to life after being dead would be available to all living things. If there were such a thing as reincarnation, there would be reincarnation for all. That means Jesus and everyone, including plants and animals, would return to live again.

As reincarnation is a fiction, it seems to me anyone can make up any old rules they want for it.

For example...

Only humans reincarnate.

Only libertarians can reincarnate.

Libertarians, as the chosen, decide when they reincarnate, where they reincarnate, and what they reincarnate to.

All other life (including non-libertarian humans) go to oblivion.

Prove me wrong.

[Dontaskme]

As reincarnation is a fiction, it seems to me anyone can make up any old rules they want for it.

For example...

Only humans reincarnate.

Only libertarians can reincarnate.

Libertarians, as the chosen, decide when they reincarnate, where they reincarnate, and what they reincarnate to.

All other life (including non-libertarian humans) go to oblivion.

Prove me wrong.

To have Knowledge of any ''thing'' is to be identified with a fiction.

No ''thing'' ever reincarnates, because ''things'' have no knowledge of their existence. ''Things'' are KNOWN by no thing.

''known things'' are aka fictions.

.

[commonsense]

As reincarnation is a fiction, it seems to me anyone can make up any old rules they want for it.

For example...

Only humans reincarnate.

Only libertarians can reincarnate.

Libertarians, as the chosen, decide when they reincarnate, where they reincarnate, and what they reincarnate to.

All other life (including non-libertarian humans) go to oblivion.

Prove me wrong.

To have Knowledge of any ''thing'' is to be identified with a fiction.

No ''thing'' ever reincarnates, because ''things'' have no knowledge of their existence. ''Things'' are KNOWN by no thing.

''known things'' are aka fictions.

Fascinating. Please say more about known things being fictional rather than being facts. I am fascinated by this but I don’t see how you came to that.

[Dontaskme]

As reincarnation is a fiction, it seems to me anyone can make up any old rules they want for it.

For example...

Only humans reincarnate.

Only libertarians can reincarnate.

Libertarians, as the chosen, decide when they reincarnate, where they reincarnate, and what they reincarnate to.

All other life (including non-libertarian humans) go to oblivion.

Prove me wrong.

To have Knowledge of any ''thing'' is to be identified with a fiction.

No ''thing'' ever reincarnates, because ''things'' have no knowledge of their existence. ''Things'' are KNOWN by no thing.

''known things'' are aka fictions.

Fascinating. Please say more about known things being fictional rather than being facts. I am fascinated by this but I don’t see how you came to that.

The claim ''I know'' requires a knower. Therefore the claim ''I know'' is a fictional idea within what already exists. In other words I have to be already present to make the claim ''I KNOW''. So then any apparent ''knowledge'' is always a story arising and falling in what is always and ever NEVER NOT HERE.

It's not the 'I' that knows...the 'I' is KNOWN...as a fictional character in the I that already IS prior to becoming aware of itself, because to become aware of yourself you first have to exist without knowing so, and so only upon that aware knowing does an identification become apparent. But this born identification is a fictional character, it's an artificial conceptual overlay upon what you already are. In other words you first have to exist to know you exist.

IN FACT ''Existence'' makes no claim to exist, existence just IS, so even the idea of non-existence is still existence.

So the true fact of reality does not claim the fact of reality, the fact of REALITY is obviously self-evident. So any claim of the fact must be a fictional conceptual overlay upon what already IS the actual fact, reducing all claimed facts as fiction.
Knowledge pertains only to conceptual language which is an artificial overlay upon itself so it's all just a belief that arises out of pure not-knowing silence. And that is all that is happening here.

.

[Walker]

From the same source as the OP:

“But it must be distinctly understood that it is no soul which comes and goes, but only the thinking mind of the individual, which makes it appear to do so. On whatever plane the mind happens to act, it creates a body for itself; in the physical world a physical body and in the dream world a dream body which becomes wet with dream rain and sick with dream disease. After the death of the physical body, the mind remains inactive for some time, as in dreamless sleep when it remains worldless and therefore bodiless. But soon it becomes active again in a new world and a new body – the astral – till it assumes another body in what is called a ‘rebirth’. But the jnani, the Self-realized man, whose mind has already ceased to act, remains unaffected by death. The mind of the jnani has ceased to exist; it has dropped never to rise again to cause births and deaths. The chain of illusions has snapped for ever for him.”
- Sri Ramana Maharshi

[Dontaskme]

From the same source as the OP:

“But it must be distinctly understood that it is no soul which comes and goes, but only the thinking mind of the individual, which makes it appear to do so. On whatever plane the mind happens to act, it creates a body for itself; in the physical world a physical body and in the dream world a dream body which becomes wet with dream rain and sick with dream disease. After the death of the physical body, the mind remains inactive for some time, as in dreamless sleep when it remains worldless and therefore bodiless. But soon it becomes active again in a new world and a new body – the astral – till it assumes another body in what is called a ‘rebirth’. But the jnani, the Self-realized man, whose mind has already ceased to act, remains unaffected by death. The mind of the jnani has ceased to exist; it has dropped never to rise again to cause births and deaths. The chain of illusions has snapped for ever for him.”
- Sri Ramana Maharshi

Thank you Walker.

"If you die with concepts these concepts take another form; but they will not be you; you don't know what that form will be. Concepts will come again and again until they are exhausted."

In other words, over the natural process of the manifestation of phenomena gets superimposed a phantom-self with a supposed autonomous, independent existence, and on this/phantom-self is loaded the concept of the resultant effects of the imagined volitional actions i.e. Karma, bondage and re-birth.

Only the mind is born, not YOU.




"The Question of Re-birth by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Maharaj rejects the idea of re-birth or re-incarnation out of hand, and the basis for such
rejection is so simple that it humbles us: the entity which is supposed to be re-born does not exist,
except as a mere concept! How can a concept be re-born?

Maharaj in all innocence asks the protagonist of re-birth: "Please, I want to know, who is it that
would be re-born?" The body 'dies' and, after death, is demolished buried or cremated as
quickly as possible. The body, in other words, has been irreparably, irretrievably, irrevocably
destroyed. That body, therefore, which was an objective thing cannot be re-born. How then can
anything non-objective like the life-force (the breath), which, on the death of the body, merged with
the air outside, or the consciousness which merged with the Impersonal Consciousness, be re-born
either?

Perhaps, says Maharaj, you will say that the entity concerned will be re-born. But that would
be utterly ridiculous. You do know that the 'entity' is nothing but a concept, a hallucination which
arises when consciousness mistakenly identifies itself with the particular form.

How did the idea of re-birth arise at all? It was perhaps conceived as some sort of an acceptable
working theory to satisfy the simpler people who were not intelligent enough to think beyond the
parameters of the manifested world."


.

[Walker]

Sri Ramana Maharshi, who was identified as a sage by Sri Nisargadatta, answers these questions but in so doing presents paradoxes, dichotomies, flat-out contradictions to common sense. Essentially, he explains reincarnation and why it exists, and he also explains why it does not exist. Both sages stress the importance of the proper message for a correlating capacity of comprehension. For one capacity, reincarnation exists. For another capacity, it does not exist. The message is the same, but comprehension of the message varies enough to create a logical contradiction. This is the paradox that Sri Ramana reaches furthest to explain when he says reincarnation is, and is not.

From the same source as the OP:

Q: So you do not uphold the theory of rebirth?

A: No. On the other hand I want to remove your confusion that you will be reborn. It is you who think that you will be reborn.
See for whom the question arises. Unless the questioner is found, such questions can never finally be answered.