15 December 2018
Bedtime. Carol picked up and is reading Live and Learn and Pass It On, a small book given to her as a Xmas present in 1992. Jadah is sitting on her lap while she is in bed while Spooky is asleep in the tub chair in the front bedroom.
2239 hours. As a teacher I have attempted to learn and pass it on, just like the title of Carol's book. Living comes with the territory. The soul exists. Living is biochemical human consciousness. In stories the soul argues with the heart's and the mind's side of human consciousness while the human tends to argue or debate internally with the heart and soul and mind. The human is living in the physical world. Living is paramount, a necessary struggle for survival. The spiritual aspects appear secondary while growing in consciousness, but once more mature in consciousness the spiritual aspects become more important. (2302)
16 December 2018
Sunday afternoon. You took Carol's sister, Gayle, out for a pre-Christmas lunch and had a good chat in the process. She had just worked on an Elk Lodge Christmas project for local veterans and their children and it was quite successful. She and her friend in charge were quite pleased and look forward to the project again next year. Last night you looked up 'afterlife' on Wikipedia and wondered if that's the direction to follow rather than saying Heaven in terms of transmigration of souls. - Amorella
1551 hours. I am confused here, Amorella. Do you mean the transmigration of souls to the Afterlife?
Look up 'afterlife' first then 'transmigration'.
1554 hours. I thought transmigration of souls meant the soul moving into another physical body not into an afterlife.
I will show you my intent after you look them up and re-read them. - Amorella
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From Wikipedia
Afterlife (also referred to as life after death) is the concept that an essential partof an individual's identity or the stream of consciousness continues to manifest after the death of the physical body. According to various ideas about the afterlife, the essential aspect of the individual that lives on after death may be some partial element, or the entire soul or spirit, of an individual, which carries with it and may confer personal identity or, on the contrary, may not, as in Indian nirvana. Belief in an afterlife, which may be naturalistic or supernatural, is in contrast to the belief in oblivion after death.
In some views, this continued existence often takes place in a spiritual realm, and in other popular views, the individual may be reborn into this world and begin the life cycle over again, likely with no memory of what they have done in the past. In this latter view, such rebirths and deaths may take place over and over again continuously until the individual gains entry to a spiritual realm or Otherworld. Major views on the afterlife derive from religion, esotericism and metaphysics.
Some belief systems, such as those in the Abrahamic tradition, hold that the dead go to a specific plane of existence after death, as determined by God, or other divine judgment, based on their actions or beliefs during life.
In contrast, in systems of reincarnation, such as those in the Indian religions, the nature of the continued existence is determined directly by the actions of the individual in the ended life, rather than through the decision of a different being.
Different metaphysical models
Theists generally believe some type of afterlife awaits people when they die. Members of some generally non-theistic religions tend to believe in an afterlife, but without reference to a deity. The Sadducees were an ancient Jewish sect that generally believed that there was a God but no afterlife.
Many religions, whether they believe in the soul's existence in another world like Christianity, Islam and many pagan belief systems, or in reincarnation like many forms of Hinduism and Buddhism, believe that one's status in the afterlife is a reward or punishment for their conduct during life.
Reincarnation
Reincarnation is the philosophical or religious concept that an aspect of a living being starts a new life in a different physical bodyor form after each biological death. It is also called rebirth or transmigration, and is a part of the Saṃsāra doctrine of cyclic existence.[1][2] I
t is a central tenet of all major Indian religions, namely Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism.[2][3][4] The idea of reincarnation is found in many ancient cultures,[5] and a belief in rebirth/metempsychosis was held by Greek historic figures, such as Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato.[6]
It is also a common belief of various ancient and modern religions such as Spiritism, Theosophy, and Eckankar and is found as well in many tribal societies around the world, in places such as Australia, East Asia, Siberia, and South America.[7]
Although the majority of denominations within the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam do not believe that individuals reincarnate, particular groups within these religions do refer to reincarnation; these groups include the mainstream historical and contemporary followers of Kabbalah, the Cathars, Alawites, the Druze,[8] and the Rosicrucians.[9]
The historical relations between these sects and the beliefs about reincarnation that were characteristic of Neoplatonism, Orphism, Hermeticism, Manicheanism, and Gnosticism of the Roman era as well as the Indian religions have been the subject of recent scholarly research.[10] Unity Church and its founder Charles Fillmore teach reincarnation.
Rosicrucians[11] speak of a life review period occurring immediately after death and before entering the afterlife's planes of existence (before the silver cord is broken), followed by a judgment, more akin to a final review or end report over one's life.[12]
Heaven and hell
Heaven, the heavens, seven heavens, pure lands, Tian, Jannah, Valhalla, or the Summerland, is a common religious, cosmological, or transcendent place where beings such as gods, angels, jinn, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or live.
According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to earth or incarnate, and earthly beings can ascend to heaven in the afterlife, or in exceptional cases enter heaven alive.
Heaven is often described as a "higher place", the holiest place, a paradise, in contrast to hell or the underworld or the "low places", and universally or conditionally accessible by earthly beings according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith or other virtues or right beliefs or simply the will of God. Some believe in the possibility of a heaven on Earth in a world to come.
In Indian religions, heaven is considered as Svarga loka. There are seven positive regions the soul can go to after death and seven negative regions.[13] After completing its stay in the respective region, the soul is subjected to rebirth in different living forms according to its karma. This cycle can be broken after a soul achieves Moksha or Nirvana. Any place of existence, either of humans, souls or deities, outside the tangible world (heaven, hell, or other) is referred to as otherworld.
Hell, in many religious and folkloric traditions, is a place of torment and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divinehistory often depict hell as an eternal destination, while religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations. Typically, these traditions locate hell in another dimension or under the earth's surface and often include entrances to hell from the land of the living. Other afterlife destinations include purgatory and limbo.
Traditions that do not conceive of the afterlife as a place of punishment or reward merely describe hell as an abode of the dead, the grave, a neutral place (for example, sheol or Hades) located under the surface of earth.
Ancient religions
Ancient Egyptian religion
The afterlife played an important role in Ancient Egyptian religion, and its belief system is one of the earliest known in recorded history. When the body died, parts of its soul known as ka (body double) and the ba (personality) would go to the Kingdom of the Dead.While the soul dwelt in the Fields of Aaru, Osiris demanded work as restitution for the protection he provided. Statues were placed in the tombs to serve as substitutes for the deceased.[14]
Arriving at one's reward in afterlife was a demanding ordeal, requiring a sin-free heart and the ability to recite the spells, passwords and formulae of the Book of the Dead. In the Hall of Two Truths, the deceased's heart was weighed against the Shufeather of truth and justice taken from the headdress of the goddess Ma'at.[15]
If the heart was lighter than the feather, they could pass on, but if it were heavier they would be devoured by the demon Ammit.[16]
Egyptians also believed that being mummified and put in a sarcophagus (an ancient Egyptian "coffin" carved with complex symbols and designs, as well as pictures and hieroglyphs) was the only way to have an afterlife. Only if the corpse had been properly embalmed and entombed in a mastaba, could the dead live again in the Fields of Yalu and accompany the Sun on its daily ride.
Due to the dangers the afterlife posed, the Book of the Dead was placed in the tomb with the bodyas well as food, jewellery, and 'curses'. They also used the "opening of the mouth".[17][18]
Ancient Egyptian civilization was based on religion; their belief in the rebirth after death became the driving force behind their funeral practices. Death was simply a temporary interruption, rather than complete cessation, of life, and that eternal life could be ensured by means like piety to the gods, preservation of the physical form through mummification, and the provision of statuary and other funerary equipment.
Each human consisted of the physical body, the ka, the ba, and the akh. The Name and Shadow were also living entities. To enjoy the afterlife, all these elements had to be sustained and protected from harm.[19]
On March 30, 2010, a spokesman for the Egyptian Culture Ministry claimed it had unearthed a large red granite door in Luxor with inscriptions by User,[20] a powerful adviser to the 18th dynasty Queen Hatshepsut who ruled between 1479 BC and 1458 BC, the longest of any woman. It believes the false door is a 'door to the Afterlife'. According to the archaeologists, the door was reused in a structure in Roman Egypt.
Ancient Greek and Roman religions
The Greek god Hades is known in Greek mythology as the king of the underworld, a place where souls live after death.[21] The Greek god Hermes, the messenger of the gods, would take the dead soul of a person to the underworld (sometimes called Hades or the House of Hades). Hermes would leave the soul on the banks of the River Styx, the river between life and death.[22]
Charon, also known as the ferry-man, would take the soul across the river to Hades, if the soul had gold: Upon burial, the family of the dead soul would put coins under the deceased's tongue. Once crossed, the soul would be judged by Aeacus, Rhadamanthus and King Minos. The soul would be sent to Elysium, Tartarus, Asphodel Fields, or the Fields of Punishment.
The Elysian Fields were for the ones that lived pure lives. It consisted of green fields, valleys and mountains, everyone there was peaceful and contented, and the Sun always shone there.
Tartarus was for the people that blasphemed against the gods, or were simply rebellious and consciously evil.[23]
The Asphodel Fields were for a varied selection of human souls: Those whose sins equalled their goodness, were indecisive in their lives, or were not judged. The Fields of Punishment were for people that had sinned often, but not so much as to be deserving of Tartarus. In Tartarus, the soul would be punished by being burned in lava, or stretched on racks. Some heroes of Greek legend are allowed to visit the underworld.
The Romans had a similar belief system about the afterlife, with Hades becoming known as Pluto. In the ancient Greek myth about the Labours of Heracles, the hero Heracles had to travel to the underworld to capture Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog, as one of his tasks.
In Dream of Scipio, Cicero describes what seems to be an out of body experience, of the soul traveling high above the Earth, looking down at the small planet, from far away.[24]
In Book VI of Virgil's Aeneid, the hero, Aeneas, travels to the underworld to see his father. By the River Styx, he sees the souls of those not given a proper burial, forced to wait by the river until someone buries them. While down there, along with the dead, he is shown the place where the wrongly convicted reside, the fields of sorrow where those who committed suicide and now regret it reside, including Aeneas' former lover, the warriors and shades,
Tartarus (where the titans and powerful non-mortal enemies of the Olympians reside) where he can hear the groans of the imprisoned, the palace of Pluto, and -
the fields of Elysium where the descendants of the divine and bravest heroes reside. He sees the river of forgetfulness, Lethe, which the dead must drink to forget their life and begin anew.Lastly, his father shows him all of the future heroes of Rome who will live if Aeneas fulfills his destiny in founding the city.
Philosophy
Modern philosophy
There is still the position, based on the philosophical question of personal identity, termed open individualism, and in some ways similar to the old belief of monopsychism, that concludes that individual existence is illusory, and our consciousness continues existing after death in other conscious beings. Positions regarding existence after death were supported by some notable physicists such as Erwin Schrödinger and Freeman Dyson.[96]
Certain problems arise with the idea of a particular person continuing after death. Peter van Inwagen, in his argument regarding resurrection, notes that the materialist must have some sort of physical continuity.[97]
John Hick also raises some questions regarding personal identity in his book, Death and Eternal Life using an example of a person ceasing to exist in one place while an exact replica appears in another.
If the replica had all the same experiences, traits, and physical appearances of the first person, we would all attribute the same identity to the second, according to Hick.
Process philosophy
In the panentheistic model of process philosophy and theology the writers Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshornerejected that the universe was made of substance, instead reality is composed of living experiences (occasions of experience).
According to Hartshorne people do not experience subjective (or personal) immortality in the afterlife, but they do have objective immortality because their experiences live on forever in God, who contains all that was. However other process philosophers such as David Ray Griffin have written that people may have subjective experience after death.
Science
Regarding the mind–body problem, most neuroscientists take a physicalist position according to which consciousness derives from and/or is reducible to physical phenomena such as neuronal activity occurring in the brain.[102][103]
The implication of this premise is that once the brain stops functioning at brain death, consciousness fails to survive and ceases to exist.[104][105]
Psychological proposals for the origin of a belief in an afterlife include cognitive disposition, cultural learning, and as an intuitive religious idea.[106]
In one study, children were able to recognize the ending of physical, mental, and perceptual activity in death, but were hesitant to conclude the ending of will, self, or emotion in death.[107]
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Metempsychosis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Metempsychosis (Greek: μετεμψύχωσις) is a philosophical term in the Greek language referring to transmigration of the soul, [especially its reincarnation after death].
Generally, the term is derived from the context of ancient Greek philosophy, and has been recontextualised by modern philosophers such as Arthur Schopenhauer[2] and Kurt Gödel;[3] otherwise, the term "transmigration" is more appropriate.**
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**Conceptual definitions [Added sources for clarification]
The word "reincarnation" derives from Latin, literally meaning, "entering the flesh again".
The Greek equivalent metempsychosis(μετεμψύχωσις) derives from meta (change) and empsykhoun (to put a soul into),[12] a term attributed to Pythagoras.[13]
An alternate term is transmigration implying migration from one life (body) to another.[
Selected and edited from Wikipedia - reincarnation
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Transmigration is the movement of a soul into another body after death.
Selected and edited from Vocabulary dot com (Definition)
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transmigrate
: to cause to go from one state of existence or place to another
1of the soul: to pass at death from one body or being to another
Edited from Merriam-Webster
[End Addition for Clarification]**
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Return to Wikipedia and Metempsychosis
Europe before the pre-Socratic philosophers
It is unclear how the doctrine of metempsychosis arose in Greece. It is easiest to assume that earlier ideas which had never been extinguished were utilized for religious and philosophic purposes.
The Orphic religion, which held it, first appeared in Thrace upon the semi-barbarous north-eastern frontier. Orpheus, its legendary founder, is said to have taught that soul and body are united by a compact unequally binding on either; the soul is divine, immortal [and aspires to freedom, while the body holds it in fetters as a prisoner].
Death dissolves this compact, but only to re-imprison the liberated soul after a short time: for the wheel of birth revolves inexorably.
Thus, the soul continues its journey, alternating between a separate unrestrained existence and fresh reincarnation, round the wide circle of necessity, as the companion of many bodies of men and animals." To these unfortunate prisoners Orpheus proclaims the message of liberation, that they stand in need of the grace of redeeming gods and of Dionysusin particular, and calls them to turn to God by ascetic piety of life and self-purification: the purer their lives the higher will be their next reincarnation, until the soul has completed the spiral ascent of destiny to live forever as a God from whom it comes. Such was the teaching of Orphism which appeared in Greece about the 6th century BC, organized itself into private and public mysteries at Eleusis and elsewhere, and produced a copious literature.[5][6][7]
In Greek philosophy
The earliest Greek thinker with whom metempsychosis is connected is Pherecydes of Syros;[8] but Pythagoras, who is said to have been his pupil, is its first famous philosophic exponent. Pythagoras is not believed to have invented the doctrine or to have imported it from Egypt. Instead he made his reputation by bringing the Orphic doctrine from North-Eastern Hellas to Magna Graecia, and creating societies for its diffusion.
The real weight and importance of metempsychosis in Western tradition is due to its adoption by Plato. In the eschatological myth which closes the Republic he tells the myth how Er, the son of Armenius, miraculously returned to life on the twelfth day after death and recounted the secrets of the other world. After death, he said, he went with others to the place of Judgment and saw the souls returning from heaven, and proceeded with them to a place where they chose new lives, human and animal. He saw the soul of Orpheus changing into a swan, Thamyras becoming a nightingale, musical birds choosing to be men, the soul of Atalanta choosing the honours of an athlete. Men were seen passing into animals and wild and tame animals changing into each other. After their choice the souls drank of Lethe and then shot away like stars to their birth. There are myths and theories to the same effect in other dialogues, the Phaedrus, Meno, Phaedo, Timaeus and Laws.[ In Plato's view the number of souls was fixed; birth therefore is never the creation of a soul, but only a transmigration from one body to another.[9] Plato's acceptance of the doctrine is characteristic of his sympathy with popular beliefs and desire to incorporate them in a purified form into his system. The extent of Plato's belief in metempsychosis has been debated by some scholars in modern times. Marsilio Ficino (Platonic Theology 17.3–4), for one, argued that Plato's references to metempsychosis were intended allegorically.
In later Greek literature the doctrine appears from time to time; it is mentioned in a fragment of Menander (the Inspired Woman) and satirized by Lucian (Gallus 18 seq.). In Roman literature it is found as early as Ennius,[10] who in his Calabrian home must have been familiar with the Greek teachings which had descended to his times from the cities of Magna Graecia. In a lost passage of his Annals, a Roman history in verse, Ennius told how he had seen Homer in a dream, who had assured him that the same soul which had animated both the poets had once belonged to a peacock. Persius in one of his satires (vi. 9) laughs at Ennius for this: it is referred to also by Lucretius (i. 124) and by Horace (Epist. II. i. 52). Virgil works the idea into his account of the Underworld in the sixth book of the Aeneid (vv. 724 sqq.). It persists in antiquity down to the latest classic thinkers, Plotinusand the other Neoplatonists.
Post-Classical occurrence
Metempsychosis was a part of the Neo-Manichaen dogma of the Albigenses around France in the 12th century.[11]
Created in the early XVth century, the Rosicrucianist movement also conveyed an occult doctrine of metempsychosis.[12]
In literature after the classical era
"Metempsychosis" is the title of a longer work by the metaphysical poet John Donne, written in 1601.[13] The poem, also known as the Infinitati Sacrum,[14] consists of two parts, the "Epistle" and "The Progress of the Soule". In the first line of the latter part, Donne writes that he "sing[s] of the progresse of a deathlesse soule".[14]
Metempsychosis is a prominent theme in Edgar Allan Poe's 1832 short story "Metzengerstein".[15] Poe returns to metempsychosis again in "Morella" (1835)[16] and "The Oval Portrait" (1842).[17]
Metempsychosis is referred to prominently in the concluding paragraph of Chapter 98, "Stowing Down and Clearing Up", of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.
Metempsychosis is mentioned as the religion of choice by the minor character Princess Darya Alexandrovna Oblonsky in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
Herbert Giles uses the term metempsychosis in his translation of the butterfly dream from the Zhuangzi (Chinese: 《莊子》).[18]The use of this term is contested by Hans Georg Möller (de), though, who claims that a better translation is “the changing of things”.[19]
Metempsychosis is a recurring theme in James Joyce's modernist novel Ulysses (1922).[20] In Joycean fashion, the word famously appears in Leopold Bloom's inner monologue, recalling how his wife, Molly Bloom, apparently mispronounced it earlier that day as "met him pike hoses."[21]
In Thomas Pynchon's 1963 premiere novel V., metempsychosis is mentioned in reference to the book "The Search for Bridey Murphy" by Morey Bernstein, and also later in chapter eight.
Selected and edited from Wikipedia
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2214 hours. Have I included the punctuation, bold, and underlining for emphasis where you wish?
You have. The next assignment if going through the above as an explanation as to how I intend to use the background for the Soul, the Afterlife and the humanity of the heartansoulanmind. - Amorella
2221 hours. This is interesting. We are developing a hypothesis as to how the metaphysical connections will be by choosing from past human concepts and theories.
The point is to make a theory, a modern mythology as an explanation of how it is metaphysically to be a human being beyond the fields of science and philosophy to a reasonable modern approach to the subject of human beings having an Afterlife without the usual politics and religion investments. - Amorella
2228 hours. I am curiouser and curiouser as to what we might write.
In this enterprise [blog] we are co-authors. - Amorella
2231 hours. No question about it along with the help of mostly the free use of Wikipedia. This is for my personal information and made sharable through the blog. It is a form of self-learning from a lifetime of personal experience and education. - rho
Post. - Amorella
