John Locke May Have Been Onto Something…
Reincarnation. It’s a process.
We live in the best time period in human history to prove whether there is truth to the possibility of Reincarnation. When we look back hundreds of years, people recorded their experiences through written words, drawings, and paintings. It has not even been that long since humankind developed the ability to take photographs, which have come along to help document our past, but that covers such a small sliver of human history.
We see it all the time. Pictures of a celebrity look-alike from hundreds of years ago. Is this something that will become more and more common over the next hundred years as well?
This is where I think Locke’s theory of the blank slate comes into play.
The human soul simply cannot move on from a previous life if it still has an emotional connection to its past life. It would be like a divorce. You could certainly move on and start a new life, but the past remains, regardless of whether or not you acknowledge it.
Que in the Blank slate process. It is a survival mechanism developed by the soul to help transition into the next life, free of any lingering emotional attachments.
Sure, we keep certain memories we already know we’re going to re-learn, our ability for learning communication, for one. Or the ability to watch, learn, and adapt, etc.
But that successful marriage in the past life? Gone. Those beautiful children you never wanted to leave? Memories. Gone. That traumatic childhood you had to endure? That won’t affect you anymore in the new life. Again, it’s not the soul trying to be cruel, it’s just carrying on.
The process isn’t always perfect. Hence the stories where kids talk about previous experiences in life or can explain buildings or countries they’ve never been to perfectly.
But what is this entire process for? Why would we die, reincarnate, live life, die, and repeat the process repeatedly? I will admit, I have read little on Buddhism — it is a subject I’m dying to learn about, since a lot of questions I have kept leading me to Buddhism for the answers.
Despite that, what is the point? Achieve perfect karma and escape the cycle?
