We have struggled to define the imprint that we reincarnate into. But lets look at it this way, that it is itself what we have become. It is no longer visible, or there is no possibility of seeing it, as now it is who we are. We are the imprint, manifested.
At any time we make an effort to come to a sense of ourselves, instead of taking our physical selves or even our mind as the point of origin from where we look out, we can take the power of awareness itself, as origin. We make this shift in our frame of reference.
Imagine a process of a coalescing and precipitation taking place in a glassful of liquid. So is this body formed. If we grasp the origin as defined above, there is no specific point where we can really say it is. We do not become aware of ourselves. The awareness exists first, this sense of 'us' ness is floating in it.
What relates one such coalesced form to another, so we can say that it becomes that? They form, they reach some size according to the properties of the liquid and then they break up and dissolve. How may we say that something persisted and became the cause for the next to form?
When I examine the process of memory, I see it has an existence unlike say, thoughts. A persistence even. I can go back to some recent event, say a time when I was waiting for a bus, and can extract further details from it, as though I am looking at a picture. And this picture is imprinted in my mind. In the experience, a physical etching took place in some subtle part of myself that I see only in my mind. And like a written page it revives for me, and I can live again what happened the first time. It belongs to the physical part of myself, and ages with time, and is dissolved with the body.
When considering the idea of reincarnation our greatest doubts arise because we cannot in the faintest way recollect anything of our past life. But, since memory is an attachment to our physical selves, it is not where we should hope to find those details, as we do when revisiting our memories. The imprints instead, is who we are. They shine through us as a mixture of our own characteristics.
We cannot foretell the events to come, or even a predisposition of events to take place, unless we free ourselves from this sense of identity. Then what is to be, comes to us with an assurance. At present we pull away from that projection, and connect the facts to those we know and others we are sure will take place. We may lose this assurance if we see something intervening with which the sequence to the original event is not definite. Yet, even inexplicably sometimes, we know that something will be so. Like flowing into something, somewhere, we haven't been before, and yet were certain it would be there.
We may insist on calling these projections our imagination. But just as easily we could accept their veracity, their existence, an until then un-manifested existence that we have the power to perceive.
At any time we make an effort to come to a sense of ourselves, instead of taking our physical selves or even our mind as the point of origin from where we look out, we can take the power of awareness itself, as origin. We make this shift in our frame of reference.
Imagine a process of a coalescing and precipitation taking place in a glassful of liquid. So is this body formed. If we grasp the origin as defined above, there is no specific point where we can really say it is. We do not become aware of ourselves. The awareness exists first, this sense of 'us' ness is floating in it.
What relates one such coalesced form to another, so we can say that it becomes that? They form, they reach some size according to the properties of the liquid and then they break up and dissolve. How may we say that something persisted and became the cause for the next to form?
When I examine the process of memory, I see it has an existence unlike say, thoughts. A persistence even. I can go back to some recent event, say a time when I was waiting for a bus, and can extract further details from it, as though I am looking at a picture. And this picture is imprinted in my mind. In the experience, a physical etching took place in some subtle part of myself that I see only in my mind. And like a written page it revives for me, and I can live again what happened the first time. It belongs to the physical part of myself, and ages with time, and is dissolved with the body.
When considering the idea of reincarnation our greatest doubts arise because we cannot in the faintest way recollect anything of our past life. But, since memory is an attachment to our physical selves, it is not where we should hope to find those details, as we do when revisiting our memories. The imprints instead, is who we are. They shine through us as a mixture of our own characteristics.
We cannot foretell the events to come, or even a predisposition of events to take place, unless we free ourselves from this sense of identity. Then what is to be, comes to us with an assurance. At present we pull away from that projection, and connect the facts to those we know and others we are sure will take place. We may lose this assurance if we see something intervening with which the sequence to the original event is not definite. Yet, even inexplicably sometimes, we know that something will be so. Like flowing into something, somewhere, we haven't been before, and yet were certain it would be there.
We may insist on calling these projections our imagination. But just as easily we could accept their veracity, their existence, an until then un-manifested existence that we have the power to perceive.
