Reincarnation: Frank Kepple vs Bruce Moen

[Broken Yogi]

Think of time as a place.  A big empty nothing that only contains one thing, you.  In this big place you are copied over infinitely and each copy contains every possibility of your entirety, which is naturally infinite.  Here's the kicker, that big place is contained in a spaceless space.  There is not direction, no time, no change.  Just you. 

Trust me, I know it is hard to grasp, but that's my point.  It is impossible to see the scope of your existence from our perspective.

Time is a construction of our subjective mind to account for something we don't understand.  Because the astral is a subjective place, (so is everything else but that's another discussion) time still seems to happen sometimes.

How can absolute reality be timeless yet our experience is temporal?  I mean isn't our experience a part of absolute reality?  You can't remove one part and apply different rules to it.  Since our experience is a part of absolute reality (all of it in my opinion) then it too is bound by whatever the properties of absolute reality are.  If we experience something that seems uncharacteristic of the absolute then logically it must be some distortion in the way we perceive absolute reality.

Yes, yes, you're speaking to the converted here relative to the absoluteness of reality, that time and space are ultimately illusions, etc. But that's not the subject under discussion here. We are talking about the relative truth of reincarnation, past lives, etc., and the existence of time within the astral worlds. Frank makes a category error by saying that time doesn't exist in the astral planes. That's just plain not true. It does exist there, in the relative sense, just as it exists here in the relative sense. Just because it's ultimately an illusion doesn't mean that the practical knowledge of past lives and their relationship in time to us doesn't exist in the relative world of physical and astral life.

The relationship of astral worlds to physical worlds is a relative matter within the illusion of time and space. If you go beyond that illusion, you also go beyond both physical and astral worlds. I have no doubt of this, because I've seen it myself. But I've also seen that when you remain within the physical and astral worlds, which means all of us, including Frank, time and space remain our apparent boundaries. It's good to have glimpses of the absolute to give us humor about the ultimate non-seriousness of everything arising in consciousness, but we shouldn't make the category error of thereby declaring that time doesn't exist in the astral, when every being who actually lives in the astral experiences time (and space) in one form or another.

That is precisely why it is often warned that the illusions of the astral world are even greater than the physical world, because time can stretch on seemingly forever there, and one can get lost in all the varieties of experience it offers. The genuine experience of the absolute transcends even the astral worlds and their amazing possibilities. In fact, the physical worlds can be a much better spiritual ground for transcendence than the astral worlds, for that very reason. The limitations of egoity are more obvious and clearly defined here. In fact, in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions it is often said that genuine enlightenment requires a human birth, that even the highest Gods and Goddesses of the astral planes must relinquish their experience and submit to human birth in order to achieve full enlightenment.

[personalreality]

The experience of time (relatively) doesn't equal time.  And my original statement was in regards to reincarnation and I said that my view of reincarnation makes time irrelevant and unnecessary. 

Nevertheless, we're to the point where we're just trying to repeat our selves in different ways.  Either we don't understand each other or we really disagree with each other.

truce.

[Xanth]

The experience of time (relatively) doesn't equal time.  And my original statement was in regards to reincarnation and I said that my view of reincarnation makes time irrelevant and unnecessary. 

Nevertheless, we're to the point where we're just trying to repeat our selves in different ways.  Either we don't understand each other or we really disagree with each other.

truce.

Especially when you realize that you can reincarnate yourself into any "time frame" of human evolution you wish.
That's when it really starts boggling the mind, because it opens up a slew of new ideas and questions! 

[Broken Yogi]

Good posts Broken Yogi !

I'll return to the topic for a moment.

The word "focus" is being used here in three different senses (F27, F3/4 or "focus of the self") to describe things that may or may not be identical or even related. This is unfortunate, as I feel English has not run out of new words and government has not banned coining of new words (yet).

The truth is, that no one knows what truth is... Its all theories, so don't take them very seriously. Its fun guessing whats all this about though. Some things are becoming evident as we (mankind) evolve. It has been established both by material sciences and spiritual ones, that the physical world is an illusion, a virtual reality created by our minds, a product of our perceptions. Time and space are merely illusions, no doubts about it. Experienced ones will tell you that even Astral and higher worlds are illusions, although not as solid and persistent as this one. Probably due to the fact that they are closer to "that which is". This "that which is", some sort of ultimate stuff, which simply is, is what this universe is, and of course is us also.

So this universe, we and our all incarnations are illusions created by that which is, which appear to be "placed at" various spaces and times. This is called Lila. (Hindus always use new words to describe new stuff). As you move away from illusions, the virtual reality starts breaking and identity, ego, space, time etc start making little sense. Finally, you are left with nothing or emptiness, which is that which is, and this is called Nirvana.

By this time you must have felt that the question - whether incarnations are in one time or different times, one identity or different one,..... is meaningless. Yes, its not very important, once you are awake (Chetan in Sanskrit is the exact word). What is important is to understand the Lila, see it and know it. It lasts for a split second, all that which is quickly throws you back into the virtual reality.

I don't know why this is so. It is amusing that there is something.

Part of our disconnect does have to do with the focus on theory over experience. More so, it has to do with a category error in the theory which confuses absolute and relative experience.

Even though time is ultimately an illusion, we experience it here in the physical world, without a doubt. And the same is true in the astral world. Everyone in the astral world experiences time (and space) in one form or another. We can talk until we are blue in the face about the absolute, and how time and space are illusions, but our experience is that of time. Even if we go to some astral realm, we will experience time there. We will die and go to the afterlife lower astral realms, maybe visit some higher ones if our karmas so incline us, and then we will take another rebirth in the physical worlds. From the absolute point of view, all that is an illusion, but in our experience it will seem all too real.

So it makes no sense to argue that in the astral realm there is no time, and thus no reincarnation, when our actual experience will tell us otherwise. There is a clear distinction between the time and space of the astral and the physical realms, and again it would be a category error to mix the two together. It's certainly true that in the astral realms, depending on how high one's perspective is, one's past and future lives can be seen as one "person" along a dimensional axis of time, but even then time still exists, it is merely understood and experienced in a higher dimensional way. As long as there is any perception at all, there is time and space.

Of course, if one transcends perception entirely, and enters into the source from which all time and space proceeds, that is a different story. That is called "liberation from the cycle of birth and death", and I highly recommend it. There is no person who can do that, however, because the very thing that must be transcended is the illusion of the "I", the ego, the separate person who seems to be born and die and reincarnate. As long as there is the illusion of "I", there is necessarily going to be the illusion of time and space.

And it's not as if time has to be viewed as a "glitch" in the machine. It's a feature, not a bug. As someone once said, "time is God's way of keeping everything from happening at once". Time lets us actually see the illusions we have created, and work through them. Without time, we would actually be rather lost and incapable of changing. It's not time that we have to transcend, it's the ego, the "I", which is the source of time. We can't transcend time merely by moving to some high astral realm. We have to look at this ego-construct and go beyond it. That's why love is so central to the process, because love is a way of going beyond the ego illusion. If we bring the ego into the astral realm, we also bring along time and all other illusions. And, of course, wherever we go, there we are. In many respects, we never go anywhere, we just spin more hallucinations from our ego. Time is among the first illusions we create, because it is so easy to lose ourselves in time.

[Broken Yogi]

Could you point out where I can find this definition of "Change"?
All I can seem to find (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/change) has absolutely no mention of a concept of "time" associated with it.

Every single one of those definitions involves time, either explicitly or implicitly. Read them more carefully, and you will see them referring to past, future, and a change between the two. For example, take the first definition:

1. to make the form, nature, content, future course, etc., of (something) different from what it is or from what it would be if left alone: to change one's name; to change one's opinion; to change the course of history.

This makes reference to time in the form of past, present, and future. Without referencing time, there can be no definition of change. Try it. Give me a definition of change which does not reference time in some way.

[Broken Yogi]

The experience of time (relatively) doesn't equal time.  And my original statement was in regards to reincarnation and I said that my view of reincarnation makes time irrelevant and unnecessary. 

Nevertheless, we're to the point where we're just trying to repeat our selves in different ways.  Either we don't understand each other or we really disagree with each other.

truce.

Perhaps so. It doesn't make any sense to me to speak of time as something apart from our experience of it. That's pointless theorizing that never intersects with our own conscious awareness. There is no such thing as "time" in the abstract, which is perhaps what you mean, but so what? Nothing actually exists in the abstract. Concepts are just tools for dealing with our experience, but if they have no relevance to our experience, they have no meaning at all. The concept of time only has meaning in relation to our actual experience of time. When we become so abstracted from experience that our concepts no longer have any relation to experience, they all collapse into "illusion". But even then, experience remains, and time along with it. Experience always trumps theory.

[Broken Yogi]

Especially when you realize that you can reincarnate yourself into any "time frame" of human evolution you wish.
That's when it really starts boggling the mind, because it opens up a slew of new ideas and questions! 

I have serious doubts about whether this is possible. In a disembodied state it is certainly possible to explore various past lives, but we don't jump from one lifetime to another time frame at random or by desire. The process and progress of the soul still occurs within time. You will find this out when you die. Your "next" lifetime won't be out of synch with the timeline of your past and future lives. Not unless you have achieve a remarkable freedom from identification with all lives, and at that point, why would you desire to incarnate at all?

The cycle of birth and death is hard to escape. Not as easy as it might seem.