fandomhigh | Magical Theory 101 (Monday, 03/20/2006, 5th Period)

"Lots of people believe in reincarnation--the idea that the soul moves on after death, and is eventually reborn into a new body, with a clean slate on life. The concept started out with the thought of the soul being reincarnated as the infant of one of its relatives from its past life. This? Kinda was how family resemblances were explained, since no one had a clue about DNA or heredity. Pythagoras was the first one to really define it, as he taught that the soul was immortal, even though the body wasn't. He believed that the soul rested in the Underworld between lives, and drank from the waters of the Lethe so as to forget the previous life before embarking on the next one. Plato took that one step further, and said that the soul was impure when embodied.

Plato? Kinda iffy on that one in my book, but then again, that view that the material world is corrupt is kind of an old one.

The concept of reincarnation is pretty old hat in Eastern society too, and it's similar. The soul goes through a series of incarnations. Eventually? You were removed from the cycle of reincarnation. Once you'd earned it, anyway, by transcending materialism. I'm simplifying.

Here's a nice, long, interesting ~~wiki entry~~ handout for you on the subject.

A lot of people, however, don't believe in reincarnation. Here's a handout for you on the skeptics and how they feel about reincarnation.

What I'm mostly interested in, though? Is how you feel about it."

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This is kind of a tough subject for Paige, she doesn't know all that much about whitelighters, but has the feeling that when she dies she'll just become one of those. But then she also has a wierd feeling that maybe she has been here before ~~as the evil enchantress~~

"I guess reincarnation could happen, I mean a lot of people have the feeling they're been here before, and like have memories of stuff that never happened to them right?" she suggests

"I wouldn't say a lot of people do," said Jenny. "But some people do feel like that, yes. Have you ever heard of False Memory Syndrome, though?"

"You mean where someone suggests a memory to you and you believe it?" she asks

"That's a somewhat simplified version of events, but, yes," said Jenny. "Some people believe that's what occurs when an individual states that they have memories of a past life."

She thought for a moment, "you'd be able to check if that was the deal though wouldn't you? I mean I've heard of cases where people remember things they couldn't possibly have known about."

She thinks for a moment, "or is this a sort of suggestion under hypnosis kinda thing? Where the person doing the regression suggests something to the person being regressed when they're in like a trance?"

"And some of those cases have actually been disproven," said Jenny. "Sometimes people construct past lives out of half-remembered historical facts learned during childhood, for example. Mind you, I'm not saying reincarnation doesn't exist. But I am saying that when attempting to prove or disprove reincarnation, you've got to be extremely careful."

Jenny nodded. "That's a very good example. Someone in a trance is extremely suggestible, and, in fact, much past-life regression is done with people in trances."

Paige smiled, she sometimes felt a little out of her depth in this class.

She nodded thoughtfully, "yeah I guess that makes sense, I know I don't remember everything I was taugh when I was younger, so something could trigger that and make me thing I lived it."

Magical Theory 101 (Monday, 03/20/2006, 5th Period)

Re: Discussion - Reincarnation

Re: Discussion - Reincarnation

Re: Discussion - Reincarnation

Re: Discussion - Reincarnation

Re: Discussion - Reincarnation

Re: Discussion - Reincarnation

Re: Discussion - Reincarnation