Interesting and insightful as usual, Mr Tanner :).
I was reading Kurt Gödel a few weeks ago, & his concept (as I understood it, which may be incorrect) seemed to be that humanity possesses something extra which no other animal has, which exceeds the simple need for survival and which drives our production of art, music, philosophy, complex language skills etc. Gödel puts it down to an eternal spirit, something within us which is separate from our body and core senses, & which will exist once those things have perished.
Maybe. I can see that. Makes sense.
Then I was reading some Einstein (Gödel's close friend), who said that he, Einstein, had no special skills, just insatiable curiosity.
Curiosity. Sound of nail being hit firmly on head....
And then I thought, why? Why do we have this curiosity? (well you would, wouldn't you :) ). It far exceeds any need for survival. Knowledge of, and fear of, death doesnt cover it. That is obviously the driving force behind many people's religious views, but it doesnt begin to explain curiosity.
I'm not offering any answers. Just that this curiosity is the driving force behind all human advancement, and we, and only we, have it. And it obviously isnt a natural accident. It's something beyond that.
I'm in an interesting position. When I was three years old, I don't know if I even had a concept for death. But I did have a reincarnation memory. I suppose I couldn't have had the reincarnation memory without some concept of death, but I probably had never seen a dead person. The point is that I did not have anxiety about what happens when you die, because all I had was a memory of a previous lifetime in which I became a monk in China.
At the time, I was the son of two highly religious Mennonite spiritual leaders, but I was too young to really understand most of my dad's sermons. Mostly, I was in Sunday School when he preached them, anyway.
I think that one of the most valuable lessons that one can get from past-life memories that one has when one is a toddler is that those memories protect you from anxieties that everyone else seems to have all their lives.
Thanks, Don. It took courage to share this, especially when so many people rush to dismiss or mock anything like it. I respect your experience and can understand what it means to you.
Working out why some children genuinely go through this is exactly what science should be doing. Laughing off reincarnation doesn't change what these kids actually live through, and turning away from them is just cowardice.
True. We're biased because Homo sapiens is the only extant human species, so we forget that modern humans haven't always been the only ones. Any member of the genus Homo is as human as sapiens, and we know for a fact that other human species buried their dead too.
The problem is that we experience a Newtonian world and think in Newtonian terms, so when something falls outside that, it can come across as supernatural rubbish. This is despite the fact that we know perfectly well Einstein's relativity and later quantum physics showed the universe isn't fundamentally Newtonian. Our everyday experience just keeps confirming the Newtonian picture, which is why anything beyond it feels wrong.
Interesting and insightful as usual, Mr Tanner :).
I was reading Kurt Gödel a few weeks ago, & his concept (as I understood it, which may be incorrect) seemed to be that humanity possesses something extra which no other animal has, which exceeds the simple need for survival and which drives our production of art, music, philosophy, complex language skills etc. Gödel puts it down to an eternal spirit, something within us which is separate from our body and core senses, & which will exist once those things have perished.
Maybe. I can see that. Makes sense.
Then I was reading some Einstein (Gödel's close friend), who said that he, Einstein, had no special skills, just insatiable curiosity.
Curiosity. Sound of nail being hit firmly on head....
And then I thought, why? Why do we have this curiosity? (well you would, wouldn't you :) ). It far exceeds any need for survival. Knowledge of, and fear of, death doesnt cover it. That is obviously the driving force behind many people's religious views, but it doesnt begin to explain curiosity.
I'm not offering any answers. Just that this curiosity is the driving force behind all human advancement, and we, and only we, have it. And it obviously isnt a natural accident. It's something beyond that.
Hope that doesnt sound too nonsensical.
Not at all. On the contrary, thanks for sharing this.
I'm in an interesting position. When I was three years old, I don't know if I even had a concept for death. But I did have a reincarnation memory. I suppose I couldn't have had the reincarnation memory without some concept of death, but I probably had never seen a dead person. The point is that I did not have anxiety about what happens when you die, because all I had was a memory of a previous lifetime in which I became a monk in China.
At the time, I was the son of two highly religious Mennonite spiritual leaders, but I was too young to really understand most of my dad's sermons. Mostly, I was in Sunday School when he preached them, anyway.
I think that one of the most valuable lessons that one can get from past-life memories that one has when one is a toddler is that those memories protect you from anxieties that everyone else seems to have all their lives.
Thanks, Don. It took courage to share this, especially when so many people rush to dismiss or mock anything like it. I respect your experience and can understand what it means to you.
Working out why some children genuinely go through this is exactly what science should be doing. Laughing off reincarnation doesn't change what these kids actually live through, and turning away from them is just cowardice.
It's not just homo sapiens who have buried their dead, with posessions to take to the next life.
In relation to some of these comments, the issue of what is meant by "human" is the big one.
True. We're biased because Homo sapiens is the only extant human species, so we forget that modern humans haven't always been the only ones. Any member of the genus Homo is as human as sapiens, and we know for a fact that other human species buried their dead too.
Science is not done. Science will certainly answer the spiritual question. Just wait some time.
The problem is that we experience a Newtonian world and think in Newtonian terms, so when something falls outside that, it can come across as supernatural rubbish. This is despite the fact that we know perfectly well Einstein's relativity and later quantum physics showed the universe isn't fundamentally Newtonian. Our everyday experience just keeps confirming the Newtonian picture, which is why anything beyond it feels wrong.
Thanks for reading, and I’m happy it landed.