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If you can answer the following question without a doubt, then you will have your topic answer as well.

Can you learn it all only by experiencing one character in one reality?

My answer is I don't think I can.
This however does not tell me if people reincarnate in the physical plane ; they could live other lives elsewhere:-)

Yes this is not a new topic, I know.
As part of my personal quest for spiritual evolution I have come back and forth many times on... what I believe we do as  spirits temporarily incarnated in the physical world and after half a century of reflexion I still don't know what to think. Note that I am not a religious person and I only  rely on  solitary meditation, dream interpretation and to a limited degree OBEs  to find "my" truths.
The idea of reincarnation (meaning as a human being on this physical plane) puzzles me. Does any one here has stronger views  (for or against)about this. What evidence would we have that spiritual evolution involves living several lives on this very plane and why should this be the case.
Thanks

Hi Patrik,

We  all tend to forget the fundamental differences between dreaming consciousness and waking consciousness. In dreams we can fall from a roof and never  land. If you were going to become lucid in the middle of your fall you would change the channel and in your regained waking awareness you would struggle to land safely. My point is that in the dream world the physical laws (time , space and related rationality) do not apply. To become lucid means IMO that one attempts to act physically on a non physical plane; in other words LD is a distorsion of a specific reality.

Kurt  Leland's writings have been a major step in my  personal growth.

My comment to this conversation is that in my experience when I become aware of being in the dream plane, I try not to bridge this experience with that of my waking life. My attitude is this: I am on the astral plane, I know that events and things  do not have to resemble the physical world. My feeling then is that if I think of my physical life this will alter my perceptions in the dream plane, and encourage me to manipulate it.  To me the dream world is its own dimension, with its own  rationality or lack of it. One aspect that is not often discussed in conversations such as this one is that in dreams we integrate (or remember) previous dreams, even very old ones, and act accordingly, at least I do

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As spirits we are not bound by material life rationality.
In other words,  earth population growth, global warming,  wars  represent a  physical life paradigm and as such  these are unlikely to enter into the process of incarnation. In formulating questions about non physical existence we should not make the mistake of projecting human thinking. To me,  the world of spirits is likely to be as incoherent as dreams when it comes to earthbound preoccupations.

I have on many occasions in a lowered conscious state in dreams successfully astral projected in the world of that dream. This happened again tonight.
It is literally exactly the same as in this world but just a more "flexible world" which is basically another reality but have some similarities. Anyone else astral project in their dreams too?

I find it strange it happens in my dream but sometimes in "the real world". Notice that im not talking about astral projecting from within a dream as many times mentioned on this forum.

To me the transition between dreams and waking or hypnopompic state is the main gate to the astral world. In the twilight zone I can do what I want: stay in the dream while lucid to know it, and  experiment (flying and visiting places). In this I believe that I am projecting in the dream world and I am aware that the rules are not the same as in the physical world. Astral being thought responsive , the sequences of events and the logical paths are not comparable

 but never as an adult have I had sleep paralysis.


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The hypnopompic state  for me is the only way I have ever experienced voluntary OOBE. You are not alone. I for one am satisfied with this achievement and do not pursue the vibration state. To me becoming aware and rational in the non physical dimension is a rewarding experience in itself. I find that in my opinion the main thing was to accept the validity of the non physical environment as a fact as opposed to discard it as just a dream world.

They say that our spirit separates from the body while sleeping and floats a few inches above it.  So when we start dreaming does our spirit and astral body leave the physical body completely and go off on the astral plane somewhere?  Is that where our dream takes place?  Or are we still near the physical body when dreaming and just imagining the dream in our mind?  Or is it a combination of the two?  And if it's a combination of the two, then how do you know whether a dream is taking place in your head (imagination), or whether it's taking place on one of the astral planes?

To me dreams as well as physical reality are the product  of  our mind activity. The mind to me is the individual centre of consciousness. Waking experience and dreaming experience occur at two separate levels of consciousness and this is why they appear to follow different rules  (time and space)and logic. You are referring to the spirit separating from the body. I am not sure that this is the case. The spirit (or mind) does not have to go anywhere to dream. However, I should add something here. In the waking state in bed at night I have seen once  the  double of my wife's entire body floating about 2 inches above her physical body. It was like a copy of her body made entirely of thousands of  minuscule lights. The body in question which I believe is called the etheric body (not the dreaming spirit) was hovering up and down following her breathing. This experience was a turning point in my quest for a higher reality.

Thanks for your thoughts. You articulated the issues around visualisation very well.
I for one try to stay away from visualisation altogether, which of course does not always work: like any one else I end up forming mental images as soon as I close my eyes. However  my own attitude is this: in the act of visualisation one creates a world with peoples and things. In other words what we see out there is only  what is already in our minds. I am curious about the non physical  plane and I attempt  not to fabricate it mentally . I follow this personal rule in daily waking level of consciousness (meditation) and in my approach to astral projection (in my case in the hypnopompic state). In essence I force myself to concentrate on what is out there. Sometimes I only see mud, sometime shapeless colours. In most cases when I maintain my focus , actual forms end up happening: rocks, forests, animals, humans, etc. I believe that it is essential to let NP things be with minimum interference .

"Watching" a scene would be more comparable to Remote Viewing.  That's all remote viewing really is.  I'd definitely include Hypnogogic imagery in that... it'd just be a really short remote view.

"Entering" and "Engaging" with the scene would then be Phasing.

Both being forms of "Projecting". 

It sounds like you're starting to think about and consider the "differences" of these experiences.  I applaud you. 

Keep questioning!

I missed your post in December. To me hypnopompia is the main gate to NP. And I believe that what I have done in the hypnopompic state is  OBEs. In the state of hypnopompia , I see landscapes and people who I know are not part of my waking reality. Then I jump-in become part of it out of free will. I have flown to places. Argued with strangers. As far as I can tell the main factor is will power and belief that this is all real. I understand from my readings that some people would not consider my experiences as true OBEs because I did not follow the established path (vibrations, etc). I don't now. I believe that we are all different. What works for someone will not work for someone else. Thanks for your post.

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quote:So this works because of the understanding that astral projection is a simple matter of a perspective switch (phasing), holding your focus on the nonphysical reality more than the physical reality; this fact is what determines whether you can project at will. unquote

Thank you for posting this. I am sure that what you are saying will be an eye opener to a lot of readers.
Your statement is at the core of my understanding of what NP is and if asked to formulate it I would use similar words. Consciousness in NP (or astral)  and therefore the existence of NP is a matter of perception (or I would say state of mind although someone here corrected me for using this phrase).

In my limited out of physical adventures the key factor has always been a strong belief that the NP dimension is as real as the physical one (albeit governed by different rules). In my case my rare successful attempts were achieved in the hypnopompic state and after several days of mental preparation (affirmations). I have not done much in a way of breathing and your post suggested to me that I should. Thanks again for this

This Friday (Black Friday) i'm going for a hypnotherapy to get regressed to a past life... see since birth I had this vivid memory of what I used to be and what amazed me is I had abilities in that life, and I been on the search for over 20 years (31yrs old now) trying to find out how to retrieve those abilities in this life, so fast forward to now, i'm finally getting ready to go get regressed, to see more of that life and see if everything adds up, and to possibly retrieve what was lost to me, the chase for this has left me depressed and stress for most of my life, cause everything I ever tried heeded no results, I had a little talk with the lady that's doing the regression and she said she can help me retrieve what was lost and also help me to adapt to this world...

and for good measure I will see if she can help me with Astral projecting at will, cause when you in a trance like that you can program your mind to do whatever you want, so I am very excited about Friday. I also had another life where I had abilities, may look into that at some point to but i'm focused on this one that I have vivid memories about.

The hypnotherapy is going to cost me $400, cause she said mine will take 4+ hours to do, so we broke it down, this Friday we doing 2 hours for 200, then next week same, hopefully we can finish up next week.

Thanks
Please tell us what you learned when this is done.

Well said Deric. Although we may be experiencing an alternate reality it is still our reality no matter how you look at it.

Thanks Deric for this. I can relate to what you are saying. For me too, once in the dream state I do not question reality. Everything is in order, even the most extravagant or absurd situations. The only shreds of lucid dreaming I ever get take place  in the twilight zone when I am falling asleep or waking up.

In my dreams I often wander in a town forever  unable to find my way home.
Recently this suggested to me  (as I woke up)that when I am in dreams I often bring with me waking life attitudes and expectations.  The main  waking   attitude here is that to go from A to B ...I have to drive or take a bus. I would like to train myself to think (as I should in the dream world): to go from A to B .......think of........ B.
Period.


Altogether, on the subject at hand:   to me the hypnagogic state is where I find  rare opportunities to experiment with NP reality (mostly flying) from my physical awareness perspective. This is not bad, IMO.  It provides me with enough evidence that there is indeed a fully  structured  alternate reality with its own rules and that it  does not conform to time , space, and  waking rationality.

My sense is that the said alternate reality features its own independent memory (in dreams I recall other dreams with details). I also bring over distorted fragments of physical life  memory(places, people, jobs, feelings)  which become integrated into the dream situation.

My own view is that in the dream state we experience a level of being which is just as real as the physical life and that this is where we go to stay when we transition.  

Hey!

So here is a french post about a guy who says that he projects only by relaxing his body and focus on breathing (and making it slower and slower), he even says that he focuses on the sound on the heart beat. At some point he just gets paralysed and he projects... http://www.ld4all.com/fr/forum/viewtopic.php?t=338

How is that possible because here we often read about the non physical focus to be able to project and about all the "visualisation" stuff... How is that just by focusing on breathing leads to projection? What is your theory on this? Why there is so much techniques when it is that "easy" lol ?

Thanks for this Superman. I have read the French post that you linked and this triggered in my mind a series of thoughts that I had forgotten.  At the time I experimented with breathing I did not know what OBEs were. I was younger and an avid swimmer. One of my favourite activity was  to hold my breath as long as I could. I did not follow any specific technique but I was doing well...2 3 minutes or more. Once or twice something extraordinary happened. My strategy under water was to forget as much as I could who I was, where I was and... after a short while I would enter a different environment. The vision that I recall was that of a beautiful landscape with trees, road and mountains. But the main thing (in hindsight) was that I felt that I was part of this environment and that nothing else existed.  Since that time (decades ago) I have discovered OBEs through other means (mostly through phasing in the hypnopompic state). None of my experiments ever involved voluntary visualisation. My attitude both under water and in the hypnopompic state has always been to let the non physical visit me. But of course I would not say that active visualisations are not a better method;just that I don't know.  

I just finished reading Frank Demarco's "Muddy Tracks", his first "nonfiction" book. I really enjoyed it. In this book I discovered several little things I experienced myself, which on one side validated once more some of my experiences, on the other side gave more credibility to the author's experiences.

Could you give us a flavour of the «little things» so that we could be tempted to read this book too. Thanks

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Hi serge,

First, there is no such thing as "death".  It is nothing more than a human concept, a perception of an event that all experience when the physical body is no longer viable due to age or some sort of physical trauma.  But we do not die.  There is no death.  We continue living as we always have, just from a different perspective of reality where we continue learning and developing as we continue our journey within and throughout Universe and continuously shifting from one body to another through higher and higher vibratory levels of the Universe.  The physical body is a vehicle very much like an automobile, except that our physical body has 5 commonly known physical senses that we use to experience this particular reality.  I'll say it another way.  The physical body is nothing more than a physical interface we use so that we can experience this reality.  When we turn off our car and exit the vehicle we do not say we just died.  The very same thing can be said about the physical body.  When we have left our physical body and moved on we are still very much alive.  Therefore there is no "afterlife".  There is only life.

Second, "time" does not exist except only as a concept as it relates to how we experience this physical reality.  Time is not a constant and has no basis in fact.  Time is literally an illusion.  We perceive time because it perceivably takes "time" for events to occur, objects to move from point a to b, the hands of a clock to move, it takes time to be born, grow old, and "die", etc.  But these are purely perceptions, and nothing more.  Universe is truly infinite with infinite potential realities all existing at this very moment.  The reason we experience time is because we continuously shift through these infinite realities in a linear fashion in the same way that a movie reel moves through a projector.  We just seamlessly move from one frame of reality to the next to the next to the next.  But they all exist right here, right Now.  I like to think of Universe with it's infinite realities as a huge library.  All the books in the library already exist, so I do not see them as existing in a past or a future.  I can pick any book off the shelf I wish to read/experience, but when I finish reading the book it still exists right here right Now with all the other books in the library.

Therefore, given that "time" does not exist, reincarnation can not exist as it is commonly understood with an individual being born then growing old and then "dies" to move on to the so-called "afterlife" where it reflects on the life it lived only to be reborn again into another physical life to hopefully learn from what the so-called "previous life" did not.  However, your Higher Self does have countless incarnations spread across the Universe throughout different timelines as it relates to the so-called "time" we experience within this perceivably linear existence within this physical plane of reality.  But all incarnations all exist at once, each independent from one another.  I believe these so-called "past life regressions" could be just the life of one incarnation of the Higher Self bleeding over to another incarnation, but only for very specific reasons and only as intended purposefully by the Higher Self.  There's a very good reason most cannot remember the life of one or all of our other personalities/incarnations.  That could very likely cause severe mental trauma to the incarnation you embody at your present awareness.  Also, becoming aware of our other incarnations could very likely hinder or alter the path we are meant to be on with this incarnation.  It is also possible you could have one or more incarnations of your Higher Self living right here somewhere on Earth at this very moment in "time" learning different life lessons.  So you could have several you's running around within the same instance of reality.  

Thanks Forrestdean for this remarkable exposé. I admire how you presented a considerably complex question in a way that laymen such as myself could relate to it. I understand indeed that death can be an illusion or just a change in our level of consciousness. The no-time framework is something I find more difficult to conceptualise. I don't reject it however. One single event in my long life offered me a hands on experience that would lend credibility to the notion of simultaneous lives. Years ago in broad day light, 10 am on a Saturday morning the figure of  a man appeared in the mirror of my bathroom. This man was a copy of myself, same height, same eyes, but with the body of a Neanderthal man. The event did not last more than 15 seconds but I never forgot it. Decades later, reading about the no- time concept and possible simultaneity of lives shed a new light to the event.  

On a second reading of your original post, I think that I understood better what you meant.

During my experiences with regression, past lives and life-between-lives, I felt that when I died it was like waking up from a dream. Each time I had the feeling of moving away, up, at relatively high velocity, and after a short while starting to mentally feel waking up to another me. I had exactly the same impression as when I wake up from an obe / lucid dream.

I believe that for our Higher Selves, our physical lives are as our dreams are for us as humans. So, I'd agree that our human individuality doesn't survive, but at the same time it isn't lost. Our perspective of our Earthly companions (relatives and friends) changes. We discover that we belong to other groups of souls we are close to in the Afterlife, and we don't miss our Earthly connections which appear to us as dream connections, where the "true" relationships were distorted by the dream scenarios.

The memories of past lives humans have are possible through our minds, because our minds aren't in our physical bodies. Our past lives influence who we are in the non-physical, and consequently who we are now in the physical, and what is happening to us here.

Regarding "time", from whatever past life you ascend after death, during regressions, you always ascend to the same Afterlife now. It isn't like you ascended from a past life to a past moment of your Afterlife, you ascend into the same Afterlife now.

These were my direct experiences and perceptions.

Thanks again for sharing your experience. I can relate to the way you are looking at reincarnation. It is great for me to be able to read from people like you who seem to have a deeper experience and wisdom on  these fundamental questions

I browsed on youtube a few of DeMarco's interviews. I didn't get the same impression as you about his view of reincarnation. This one is one of the more thought provoking. (Frank DeMarco on the Role of Suffering as Seen from the Other Side)

Thanks Baro-san for your thoughts. My comment was referring to DeMarko's Cosmic Internet which is the only sample I know of his thinking. In this book DeMarko channels NP entities who are clear and adamant: we  as individuals are born  and die only once. This is a step that we take as individual spirits.

This is a follow up thread to my previous one regarding the survival of individual personality after death. My thoughts had been triggered by Donald Tyson's  (Soul Flight) statement that he did not believe that individual personality survived death. This of course clashed with what I had believed all my life. My understanding was that the evidence of survival after death was the process of reincarnation which suggests that if we are to have many lives on the physical plane we do indeed survive transition. Reincarnation , one believed,  could be demonstrated thanks to testimonies of subjects under regressive hypnosis among others things. All this went by the window when I read Frank Demarko's book called the Cosmic Internet. Demarko's book is written in the tradition of Jane Roberts' Seth Speaks (minus the cumbersome theater). That is the author channels entities in the NP which he calls the Guys upstairs (and stays away from naming them). For Demarko (if I understood well), we only live one single physical life. In other words we do not reincarnate. We are born to the physical plane through a convergence of physical heredity  (genes)and  non physical heredity (character, memories). The latter includes memories and more generally learnings from  the past lives....of someone you may think is YOU but it is not. To the "Guys upstairs" your passage in the physical is one shot only, a sort of a boot camp. And then at transition you go back home which I take is where our higher self (the spirit) resides. I found Demarko's statement extraordinary and interesting. I wonder if  more experienced members on this forum could shed some light on Demarko's tack?

Interesting ...

What if we turn it around? What if you were the leading character in "a dream" of your "higher self"? Your past lives would be other "dreams". You wouldn't remember them, and you wouldn't remember about your "higher self", as you don't remember about your waking human you, in your human dreams.

Your human waking life might be an "incubated dream" of your "higher self", who wanted to use it as a tool to learn / experience a lesson, and grow. That is your life lesson as human, but you forgot about it because you're in a "dream".

Ideally, you realize that you're in a "dream", you become lucid, you recover your "higher self's memory", and you start doing what you remembered you planned to do when you "went to sleep". I believe this is called enlightenment.

If you don't figure out what's your life lesson, and you miss it, then you wasted this opportunity, and will have to try it again. Fortunately, you don't really need to be enlightened to have a good guess what is your current life lesson, as you don't need that to get glimpses of your past lives, your "higher self's past dreams".  

A "false awakening" would be when you believe you know, when you believe you're enlightened, but you're actually still "dreaming".

:-)I have picked up a conference on the internet that may be germane to the idea of consciousness being  independent from the brain (generally speaking) and yet heavily dependent on the brain in waking physical life. The main speaker is Dr Bruce Greyson, a neuroscientist who has a vast knowledge and  clinical experience in near death experiences. He reflects on various models, one of them being that the brain acts as a reducer (or transformer) to enable physical life. In his experience, consciousness (thinking, observation, memory) does not stop at clinical death. Thousands of medical reports demonstrate that humans in clinical death situation (no heart beats and no brain waves) continue to be conscious (observe the physical world as well as the next) and are capable of reporting about their experience. Research on NDE of course  is not new, I am aware of this, however I find that Dr Greyson is offering   to the layman a perspective on the survival of individual consciousness  that deserves the attention of people who are interested in Astral life.

Enjoy:

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2017/01/29/neuroscientists-believe-theyve-found-proof-for-life-after-death-present-it-to-the-united-nations/

Interesting ...

What if we turn it around? What if you were the leading character in "a dream" of your "higher self"? Your past lives would be other "dreams". You wouldn't remember them, and you wouldn't remember about your "higher self", as you don't remember about your waking human you, in your human dreams.

Your human waking life might be an "incubated dream" of your "higher self", who wanted to use it as a tool to learn / experience a lesson, and grow. That is your life lesson as human, but you forgot about it because you're in a "dream".

Ideally, you realize that you're in a "dream", you become lucid, you recover your "higher self's memory", and you start doing what you remembered you planned to do when you "went to sleep". I believe this is called enlightenment.

If you don't figure out what's your life lesson, and you miss it, then you wasted this opportunity, and will have to try it again. Fortunately, you don't really need to be enlightened to have a good guess what is your current life lesson, as you don't need that to get glimpses of your past lives, your "higher self's past dreams".  


A "false awakening" would be when you believe you know, when you believe you're enlightened, but you're actually still "dreaming".

Thanks,

I am not aware of this dream (for that matter all of my dreams) to be the stage of a self higher than my current humble waking Me. To the contrary, in my dreams my life is quite pedestrian and certainly no different from my daily life. I am always a 20-21 st century male of European descent. The places I end up in are all in the Western World. A lot of my life there weaves distorted memories of my past waking life. I also meet a lot of new people; some I like, some I don't...etc

The dream I was refering to could be called a semi-lucid dream. I  noted that the situation I was involved in was featuring very clear and articulated memories of people and places that I had met in another dream (that is nothing to do with my waking life. The difference between  these memories (from dreams vs waking life was 100% clear) and ....I said to myself: how interesting, I should make note of this  and try to remember it when I will wake up. I did.

Stillwater your answers to my questions seem to reflect a strong set of personal  opinions , and there is of course  nothing wrong with that, except....

.. that posters like me expect to find here on this forum  a range of subjects and ideas discussed in a way which reflect the extraordinary complexity of what some call the  non physical. I am honestly puzzled by some of your answers and I would be curious to read how other members (who stay away from this spiritual  evolution sub-forum) feel about what you said.

To my question: How can (you) extrapolate observable entropy in the physical plane  ( what you were doing) and what happens in the non physical where natural laws do not apply?

You replied: "when I say nature here. I am using it to describe the nature we know in this existence (and thus natural law would apply to that system only). Technically all of existence would constitute nature, but lets call that stuff beyond this reality frame something like "supernature" , or "metanature" for clarity" end of quote.

Comment:
I do not see much clarity in your reply. By renaming the non physical "supernature" you are not answering my question, you are avoiding it . The question again was, how can you describe as entropic the "supernature" (your word) plane since you and we don't know much about this order of things, and in your own admission you  quote:"try not to believe in things (you) can in no way test or prove".

There are many things that I myself cannot "test" nor "prove". My modest incursions in the non physical (astral vision, obe, lucid dreams ,distant vision) suggest to me that as a waking human entity there is not much that I can test or prove in a plane where human rationality, the three dimensional space and the notion of time do not apply...Yet it is All there (and abundantly discussed as real by most posters on this forum). I understand that some participants on this forum do not like the notion of "belief or faith". I am not fond of these words either. They refer to traditional blind adherence to cults, dogma and superstitions. I value straight rational thinking as much as you do, except that where rationality, human science and history cannot explain something, my attitude is: there may be something there. I cannot make sense of it because I am a human in
the waking state. But I won't reject it.  When I dream for instance, some of this unexplained stuff makes sense and I don't question it. When I dream I am in a separate paradigm, when I dream I remember previous dreams in a sort of life-like continuity. I can't explain any of that ,yet I know it is there.

But natural laws are based on observing nature. Nothing in nature follows that pattern... the stars are slowly decaying away to iron, less useful over time as they go; animals are getting more complex, but no better at surviving- they go extinct at the same rate, and some of the most primitive ones are the best off; evolution doesn't appear to be intrinsically improving creatures, only changing them; the universe tends toward high entropy and low-development as a system. If there was a natural law about improvement, it seems to be its negation: things fall apart to greater and greater degrees the longer you run the system... nothing seems to keep.

Thanks Stillwater.

What is your own sense of humans individual destiny?
If we were not born (or reborn) to the physical plane for the sake of learning, or for lack of a better word, for bettering ourselves, what is the purpose of incarnation? How can we extrapolate  observable entropy in the physical plane and what happens in the non physical where natural laws do not seem to apply?

Do you believe in Karma? Now if Karma is a dimension in the non physical, how  would one position individual destiny outside a learning curve.

Here I am however  indeed beginning to argue against my own point: In the non physical we are not necessarily on a path of improvement (neg-entropy) but also potentially on a negative path (following observable physical entropy)...the right course being a matter left to the individual. 

My own view is that I should be flexible about the non physical, since anthropocentric rationality draws me ( us) not to see the forest for the tree

I'd say in a sense yes, and also no.

A huge part of what we consider our waking identity is connected to our physical bodies and its needs and drives. We might retain the same perspective as a being we had, but be totally changed in terms of sense of identity, because all of that is tied up in our life here.

Consider when you play a computer game... you go out and race cars, or fight orcs, or w/e the thing you do in the game involves. When you step away from the game, do you still race cars in your normal life, or fight orcs? Do you think about how great it would be to win the grand prix, or about your character's family members? Do you still have the same goals and desires your game character had? You don't identify with that character at all. You remember being them, but their identity was only a small part of you. I think this is probably similar to that. You retain memories of it all, but you don't identify with this life at all, because you are bigger than that. You don't have the same drives and needs and desires anymore.

This is all speculation on my part, and that goes for what anyone else would tell you, whether they admit it or not, but that is what base reasoning tells me.

Thanks,

Yes it is all speculation on my part too. I like your game  analogy.
One should indeed remain flexible in speculating on the subject of post mortem identity. What drove me to broach the subject was Donald Tyson's statement that individual consciousness does not survive death. One may debate the nature of  "individual consciousness" , but IMO not the survival of  the soul or individuality (under one form or another). Rejecting the notion of individual perennity would amount to rejecting as well  the notion of one individual's path towards enlightenment or higher self.

I do not believe it is an 'accident'. Regression hypnosis tells us that it is planned in advance. I also do not think that we are forced to incarnate again. There might be some 'force' that is felt (like 'karma' or what Robert Monroe called 'work load') but free will is still there. As a "Higher Self" we have a 'different overview' (again quote Monroe) so we might 'think' and feel different about physical lives as we do now due to all the hardships we have to endure.

This being said I agree to all other things that is said above.

Thanks Volgerle for your points. About incarnation I sometimes feel that way too.
What maybe an accident or a lottery  perhaps is not that we incarnate (or reincarnate) but where we do it. But there again I may be wrong. My general impression is that we are on a learning path and that terrestrial life is primary school.