You won't believe who I might be!! Who might you really be!!

[Jayson1]

Would that really matter? After all, you'd look totally different and you'd have no recollection of your previous life. Not to mention the age difference between your new self and your old acquaintances that'd keep you apart.

Well it could matter if we have some endpoint where we become beings that recall all our past lives. Plus I guess it would prove we have a soul which I would think mean something else but i'm not sure what. Maybe we someday would live so many lives that we start relieving our past lives in the distant future.

Jason

 

[Gary7]

I'm afraid it's much less ego lifting than you think.

Our inner being or "soul" that inhabits this corporeal form is reintegrated into the "great link". Your identity was with your corporeal self... and you're later reintegrated into a massive pool of paranormal energy. When the next human being is conceived, a "soul-seed" departs the pool and merges into the organic matter forming, helping it to develop. The whole existence of life evolves that seed into a more defined and substantive "soul"... that then returns. Lather, rinse, repeat. There is no individual to repeat their previous existence in another body. Too well stirred back into the pot. It's depressing to imagine existence not as we are now, but that's how we were before we got here.

 

[rhubarbodendron]

I'm afraid I differ rather a lot from the general opinion. From my pov 'soul' is just another word for self-awareness. When we die, our self-awareness, being a brain function, dies with us and that's it. Our bodies dissolve and our atoms get recycled. Part of us goes into the atmosphere, part of us gets built into bacteria, flowers, tress, centipedes, ants etc. On the material level we are indeed immortal.

However, that's just my theory. Others have other theories. Wich one is true, we'll all find out when we die. Personally, I strive to remain in this blissful ignorance for as long as possible (i.e. the next 50 years since 105 seems to be pretty much the limit of a single lifetime )