Arty Farty Friday ~ REINCARNATION

After yesterday's post considering a possible reincarnation, and Wednesday's about Manly P. Hall and his beliefs, thoughts about reincarnation still hover.

An Arty Farty reincarnation medley for today then: illustrations, a poem, a story, quotes......but first some words on astrology and reincarnation.

I'm on the fence. I don't know. Nor, actually, does anyone else. But many have written trillions of words on the subject. The best few words on the topic I've found, from an astrologer, are at The Real Astrology website. Astrologer Kevin Burk has a section there devoted to answering readers' questions. In response to a question about finding evidence of reincarnation in a natal chart he wrote this:

Peg,
I don’t think that any single element in the chart can identify what our Sun Sign was in a past incarnation. As you’ve no doubt noticed, the books that present these various theories also tend to be the books that greatly over-emphasize the importance of the Sun Sign in the first place.

Astrology can most certainly provide information about past lives, and one of the key sources for this information is the South Node. But before we go any further, it’s important to remember that time, and particularly our three-dimensional linear perception of time, is an illusion. Personally, I believe that it is impossible to tell if something is from a ‘past life’ or from a ‘future life’ because ultimately there is no difference...and therefore, trying to find out who you were the last time you were here is rather futile.

The South Node describes experiences that we have had in a past life, or in past lives. We are meant to take these experiences and bring them to the next level by working with the North Node. However, the South Node may represent a collection of past lives, or a single, specific past life, but not the most recent life. My personal philosophy is that whatever I did and whoever I was, I’m here now and that’s all that matters. I’m always open to insight from my past experiences, particularly when it applies to patterns and issues that I’m working on in this current lifetime, but my interest in my past lives doesn’t go much deeper than that.

With strong reservations, I mention Martin Schulman’s Book, Karmic Astrology: The Moon’s Nodes and Reincarnation. Schulman does explore the various past life lessons presented by the South Node; however he does so in (what I feel) is a very fatalistic and almost accusatory manner. It is, however, the only book on the Nodes that I have seen that specifically addresses the question of past lives.
http://www.therealastrology.com/

PAST LIVES by Maxine Olson




QUOTES:

"Doctrine of reincarnation is neither absurd nor useless. It is not more surprising to be born twice than once."
- Voltaire

"We all have some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time - of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances."
- Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)

"It is conceivable that I might well be reborn as a Chinese coolie. In such case I should lodge a protest."
- Winston Churchill

"The most promising evidence bearing on reincarnation seems to come from the spontaneous cases, especially among children."
- Ian Stevenson

"Have you never observed that children will sometimes, of a sudden, give utterance to ideas which makes us wonder how they got possession of them? Which presuppose a long series of other ideas and secret self-communings? Which break forth like a full stream out of the earth, an infallible sign that the stream was not produced in a moment from a few raindrops, but had long been flowing concealed beneath the ground?"
- J. G. Herder

STORY:

The King Milinda once asked the Buddhist sage Nagasena: "When someone is reborn, is he the same as the one who just died, or is he different?"

Nagasena replied: "He is neither the same nor different....Tell me, if a man were to light a lamp, could it provide light the whole night long?"
"Yes."
"Is the flame then which burns in the first watch of the night the same as the one that burns in the second...or the last?"
"No."
"Does that mean there is one lamp in the first watch of the night, another in the second, and another in the third?"
"No, it's because of that one lamp that the light shines all night."
"Rebirth is much the same. One phenomenon arises and another stops, simultaneously. So the first act of consciousness in the new existence is neither the same as the last act of consciousness in the previous existence, nor is it different."

(http://www.amazon.com/Questions-King-Milinda-N-K-G-Mendis/dp/9552400678)

POEM: by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

Sudden Light

I HAVE been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?

AND can't forget this song... words by Lorenz Hart music by Richard Rodgers - Peggy Lee & Benny Goodman Trio perform "Where or When"

VERSE


Sometimes you think you've lived before
All that you live today
Things you do come back to you
As though they knew the way
Oh, the tricks your mind can play!



REFRAIN


It seem we stood and talked like this before
we looked at each other in the same way then,
But I can't remember where or when.
The clothes you're wearing are the clothes you wore.
The smile you are smiling you were smilimg then,
But I can't remember where or when.

Some things that happend for the first time,
Seem to be happening again.
Amd so it seems that we have met before
and laughed before
and loved before,
But who knows where or when.

NOTE: Eagle-eyed passing readers might notice that I am not providing many direct hyper-links these days. Reason: Blogger techies have provided an updated editing facility, which I don't care for, and which has caused a "bug" in the old editing program. The "bug" collapses paragraphs when trying to use the hyperlink facility - other stuff too. Blogger is working to sort the problem out - it is said. So - apologies for lack of hyperlinks and other niceties.