If people reincarnate on death - why and how have so many traditions ancestor worship

[Takingcharge]

Whats up everybody,

 

so im wondering If people reincarnate on death - why and how have so many traditions ancestor worship.  Where they dont just “honour” their ancestors.

 

but establish contact etc or communicate with their ancestors within ancient traditions. 

 

isnt this part of the person supposed to die off while the greater higher part of the being gets sucked into the stream to be reincarnated?

 

how do both these things exist? This confuses me

[Eduardo]

1 hour ago, Takingcharge said:

Whats up everybody,

 

so im wondering If people reincarnate on death - why and how have so many traditions ancestor worship.  Where they dont just “honour” their ancestors.

 

but establish contact etc or communicate with their ancestors within ancient traditions. 

 

isnt this part of the person supposed to die off while the greater higher part of the being gets sucked into the stream to be reincarnated?

 

how do both these things exist? This confuses me

 

Regarding death and eventual post-mortem existence, no one knows anything for sure.

 

 

[Nungali]

4 hours ago, Takingcharge said:

Whats up everybody,

 

so im wondering If people reincarnate on death - why and how have so many traditions ancestor worship.  Where they dont just “honour” their ancestors.

 

but establish contact etc or communicate with their ancestors within ancient traditions. 

 

isnt this part of the person supposed to die off while the greater higher part of the being gets sucked into the stream to be reincarnated?

 

how do both these things exist? This confuses me

 

Its certainly confusing . The more 'in depth'   a system the more complex this is .

 

Dead ?   - go to heaven .   You dont need to know much about the soul ... its a spiritual .... 'thingy' that survives after death and goes and lives happy foreverafter with Jesus  .... la-la-laaar.

 

But a few of the deeper systems*  have complex psyche arrangements , aspects , 'parts' of the soul that must combine at death, go through a process and then certain parts do various things .  Not that they are 'split apart' again, they still  'are held together' - but time and space work differently 'on that side' .

 

* Ancient Egyptian , Zoroastrian , Judaism , etc .

 

One way of looking at it is ,  you have ancestors , but their physical identity now resides in your own genetic coding .  Ancestral memory and communication could be done via this medium 

 

See circuit 7 on this handy chart

 

https://www.tedwilliams.co/deoxy/cirtable.htm

 

or specifically on this circuit

 

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL4907639M/Exo-psychology

Edited August 26, 2022 by Nungali

[Lairg]

10 hours ago, Takingcharge said:

If people reincarnate on death - why and how have so many traditions ancestor worship.

 

Usually it takes time before reincarnation occurs.  Both my parents entered graded classes immediately after death.  My mother is learning energy work and my father, relationship.

 

After World War 2, there was a great rush to reincarnate.  Many lives were cut short before achieving goals and many wanted to make the grade before the cut-off in about 1997.

 

Family gestalts seem to extend across many lives. 

 

A few years after I was married, I disliked touching my wife, when she complained, I looked into it and it turned out there was a feud between our family gestalts.  That certainly explained strange things about the marriage day.  For example one of her brothers threatened not to come into the ceremony and reception but sit out in his car and drink.  He was a policeman.

 

So I fixed the feuding gestalts.  I forced a merger and a few minutes later 95% of my reluctance to touch was gone.  It was never a problem again

 

Ancestor interference in families is quite common so traditional societies try to keep the ancestors quiet.   

 

Some cultures bury their parents bodies where they will not decompose quickly in the hope that the parents will hang around and assist the descendants.  Sometimes that works. 

 

I lived next to a farm.  When the farmer died I could feel his hanging around - as could his widow.  When she sold the farm he was gone immediately 

 

 

Edited August 26, 2022 by Lairg

[Master Logray]

14 hours ago, Takingcharge said:

Whats up everybody,

 

so im wondering If people reincarnate on death - why and how have so many traditions ancestor worship.  Where they dont just “honour” their ancestors.

 

but establish contact etc or communicate with their ancestors within ancient traditions. 

 

isnt this part of the person supposed to die off while the greater higher part of the being gets sucked into the stream to be reincarnated?

 

how do both these things exist? This confuses me

 

 

The simplest and most logical explanation is that, reincarnation is not an universal compulsory immediate after death system.  Reincarnation may happen under some conditions.  That is all.   Many traditions simply don't believe in reincarnation, some others have quite different views on its workings.

 

Take Taoism as an example, Taoists believe in reincarnation.  But when a person dies, the spirit can simply wander around or stuck in the original place.   This condition can last for decades or centuries (it is the reasons for the hauntings).  Spirits would go to the Hell Court to be punished first before they have a chance to reincarnate.  This invariably take very long time.  And reincarnation, when it happens, is not a clean slate, but rather continuation of punishment.  If you do bad things, you have a very hard life, like born deformed etc.

 

Most Chinese worship ancestors, regularly pay respect to ancestor tombs, burning incenses, joss paper money, clothes, houses, cars, iphones, offer chickens, wines, snacks....   From these practices, I believe no one really believe in immediate reincarnation, or at all?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Takingcharge]

On 26-8-2022 at 12:41 AM, Eduardo said:

 

Regarding death and eventual post-mortem existence, no one knows anything for sure.

 

 

But arent there authenticly eightened masters ? They should have a fairly accurate grip on universal mechanics

 

 

[Takingcharge]

On 26-8-2022 at 1:33 PM, Master Logray said:

 

 

The simplest and most logical explanation is that, reincarnation is not an universal compulsory immediate after death system.  Reincarnation may happen under some conditions.  That is all.   Many traditions simply don't believe in reincarnation, some others have quite different views on its workings.

 

Take Taoism as an example, Taoists believe in reincarnation.  But when a person dies, the spirit can simply wander around or stuck in the original place.   This condition can last for decades or centuries (it is the reasons for the hauntings).  Spirits would go to the Hell Court to be punished first before they have a chance to reincarnate.  This invariably take very long time.  And reincarnation, when it happens, is not a clean slate, but rather continuation of punishment.  If you do bad things, you have a very hard life, like born deformed etc.

 

Most Chinese worship ancestors, regularly pay respect to ancestor tombs, burning incenses, joss paper money, clothes, houses, cars, iphones, offer chickens, wines, snacks....   From these practices, I believe no one really believe in immediate reincarnation, or at all?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hmmm…. I always  tought Daoists had quite a complex andd accurate grip on all the mechanics due to their level of development and working directly with so many aspects of the thing especially in neidan.  And going after spiritual immortality in some traditions,

 

Surely daoists must have it mapped out more clearly then this?

 

 

i was always under the impression that hauntings when human spirits are some fragment splinter of the person rather then the actual spirit

 

 

 

[steve]

Is it possible that some of these traditions aren’t overly stuck in the conventional concept of time? Just because our ancestors are not presently incarnate in a form we recognize, there is much we have access to and can connect with from when they were occupying familiar forms. This connection is very real and alive for us even in their absence, whether we imagine them as occupying a heaven, a hell, another human form, or any of a number of other possibilities. All of these possibilities exist for us in our conceptual mind while our ancestors are actually far more concrete than that - they live in our DNA, our patterns of behavior, our possessions and preferences, our memories and families, our legacies and opportunities, as well as our challenges and obstacles. Practicing and communing with our ancestors can be profoundly liberating and empowering.

[Master Logray]

2 hours ago, Takingcharge said:

i was always under the impression that hauntings when human spirits are some fragment splinter of the person rather then the actual spirit

 

 

I think there could be many scenarios.   Let say, some hauntings are merely replay of the past events due to whatever reasons.  But sometimes hauntings could involve entities with some form of intelligence.   An advice on dealing with such thing is to talk to the being.  If it keeps on saying the same things like a recording, then it might be a fragment.  If this being can talk back, or even mentioning news like Ukraine, then it is a different story.

 

[Vajra Fist]

According to Buddhism, reincarnation doesn't exist, but rebirth does. This is something I find quite confusing.

 

This is because the self doesn't exist. So there's not an eternal soul which leaves one body and travels to the next at the point of death. 

 

Instead, what does carry over to the next lifetime are the so-called aggregates - the postnatal conditioning, as well as what you brought along from previous lives.

 

That being the case, I have no idea what goes on with ancestor veneration. Perhaps you're making offerings to aid in unpicking of karma for those aggregates that have been reborn. Or maybe its just a pre-Buddhist paradigm that has somehow found a place in modern Buddhist societies in the East.

Edited September 1, 2022 by Vajra Fist

[Lairg]

1 hour ago, Vajra Fist said:

there's not an eternal soul which leaves one body and travels to the next at the point of death. 

 

It seems as if the solar angels that commonly seek to overlight human soul bodies (neschama) cultivate up to a dozen human incarnations each at once.  This increases the chance of developing a human transparent to divine light.

 

The parallel processing also allows learning transfer, often in dreams.

 

Once a human is sufficiently transparent to light, the solar angel withdraws and the human progresses through the stages of enlightenment and beyond.

 

In my observation of deceased relatives, they have all been allocated to appropriate learning groups until their next incarnation.

 

Incarnation is usually with individuals known well in earlier lives.  It often takes quite a few lives to establish a balanced and constructive relationship. 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 1, 2022 by Lairg

[Gerard]

Like all religions they a have in common two things:

 

1. Tradition, custom, respect to the deceased

2. Underlying element of fear 

 

The actual process of 'reincarnation' doesn't work like that at all, in fact it's a lot more complex and has got nothing to do with a spirit leaving the body after death. 

 

Taoism isn't concerned about reincarnation. Before it was contaminated by Buddhism it was only concerned about the science of yin & yang (eg. I Ching) and understanding how the two major forces and their five sub forces influenced everything and how to treat illness due to the lack of harmony and balance (Huangdi Neijing). It's the world's oldest science! 

 

 

[Gerard]

On 26/8/2022 at 10:55 AM, Nungali said:

One way of looking at it is

 

It's like the process behind physical death in each of the sequences of YOU that are generated ALL at ONCE. 

 

I just read one of your posts in a different thread about the old lady in the hospital ward wanting to die which she was unable to. She wasn't aware of one fact:

 

https://youtu.be/43VhRKJX_sk

 

You 'die' when you run out of gas whether you want it or not or like it or not. Not before then. 

[Nungali]

7 minutes ago, Gerard said:

 

It's like the process behind physical death in each of the sequences of YOU that are generated ALL at ONCE. 

 

hey G . First I note your post is not  an attack on mine  but usually when peeps do that they edit out my relevant bits  and then quote the selcted bit without context and then 'vent their superiority' on it .

 

But they usually dont just copy edit out and copy  nearly all of it except  " One way of looking at it is " 

 

and nothing else !     Dude !     you removed the whole context of EVEN a single sentence ! and eliminated the whole contextual syntax of the phrase ?

 

and you didnt even include the conventional    " One way of looking at it is  ....... "  to show it was an edit .

 

Whats with that ???? 

 

But anyway , let's go on .

 

7 minutes ago, Gerard said:

I just read one of your posts in a different thread about the old lady in the hospital ward wanting to die which she was unable to. She wasn't aware of one fact:

 

https://youtu.be/43VhRKJX_sk

 

You 'die' when you run out of gas whether you want it or not or like it or not. Not before then. 

 

yeah, I often think that .   Why aren't I dead already ?  FOUR TIMES  I should have been , but it didnt 'come off'

 

Once instead , I recovered and ended up with beautiful young GF and her 3 kids ... just when I thought my life was ending .

 

Another time I had to convince the police  I was the driver  in a car crash they insisted no one could have survived and was hassling poor old Nungers , in his post accident traumatic state  " Where is the body ... what did you do with the body ! "    God bless that woman witness that intervened and swore I  was the only person that got out that car ( via passengers window ) . The still didnt believe and took us to the car and showed us and asked how someone could have done that .

 

Regarding  'running out of gas'  . I guess one of these had been installed in me ;

 

 

 

[Gerard]

I chopped off most of your post in order to reply to you specifically. I just took a random bit, that's it. 

 

FOUR TIMES  I should have been , but it didnt 'come off'

 

Well it's not you who is deciding when to stop anyway. I mean this Earth-based Nungali but the higher YOU. The other YOU.

 

 

From VF's post:

 

According to Buddhism, reincarnation doesn't exist, but rebirth does. This is something I find quite confusing.

 

This is because the self doesn't exist. So there's not an eternal soul which leaves one body and travels to the next at the point of death. 

 

To answer that, from my experience.

 

1. Hindu view: soul/spirit moves from body to body after death (incorrect). This is reincarnation. Other traditions, including some Taoist branches believe/follow this model.

 

2. Buddhist view (very close to what really happens but it doesn't give you the full picture which is a lot broader and complex). Spirit/Mind remains but the karma continues (new body after death). This is rebirth. 

 

3. Quantum Mechanics. It ticks all the boxes and it is a very accurate model but it doesn't talk about rebirth, new life/cycle after death and such.  It misses the simplicity of the following model. Too complex, which makes sense as it is a major branch of Physics (Western science), so we won't be hearing any specific discussions about this subject. Out of the question. They do care about consciousness though but in their theoretical model.

 

4. Pre-Buddhist Taoist (Tao Teh Ching). Buried under a layer of metaphors and poetry it gives us a big picture of what is exactly going on even though rebirth isn't mentioned anywhere or how the process takes place; eg. Tao gives birth to One,
One gives birth to Two,
The Two gives birth to Three,
The Three gives birth to all universal things. Very good stuff and IMO the core of Taoism itself plus a simple and deep explanation of Reality. Still a very metaphoric explanation of what is really going on.
 

 

Edited September 3, 2022 by Gerard

[Cobie]

16 hours ago, Gerard said:

... Taoism isn't concerned about reincarnation. Before it was contaminated by Buddhism …

 

“ Right from the start of their culture, the Chinese believed in a cyclical return of the soul in a new physical body.”
(Stefan Kappstein,Shen Shu, Dutch translation p 449 )

[Cheshire Cat]

On 25/8/2022 at 10:41 PM, Takingcharge said:

how do both these things exist? This confuses me

 

Ancestor worship is an old "shamanic" practice that is present in all cultures and generally survives as the religions evolve one on top of the other.

 

For example, the old vedas discuss ancestor worship. Much later, the upanishads (the first ones written roughly when the Buddha walked this earth) started to develop the idea of the Atman and reincarnation. At first, they were incompatible.

 

Sometimes the two views cohexist in various forms ... and sometimes they don't.

Someone may say that the "land of the ancestor" is a place where relatives are reborn, for example.

 

 

[Ajay0]

On 8/26/2022 at 2:11 AM, Takingcharge said:

Whats up everybody,

 

so im wondering If people reincarnate on death - why and how have so many traditions ancestor worship.  Where they dont just “honour” their ancestors.

 

but establish contact etc or communicate with their ancestors within ancient traditions. 

 

isnt this part of the person supposed to die off while the greater higher part of the being gets sucked into the stream to be reincarnated?

 

how do both these things exist? This confuses me

 

Hinduism has reincarnation as part of its doctrine as well as ancestor worship known as Shraadh.

 

The understanding is that the rituals and worship in Shraadh provides spiritual merit to the souls of one's ancestors or parents who may be in astral dimensions, heavenly or hellish as per their life karma or actions.

 

Those in the hellish astral dimensions will have their negative karma reduced by Shraadh while those in heavenly dimensions will be able to stay there more or even get to better dimensions or get a good birth the next time they reincarnate. The latter would reincarnate in ideal circumstances conducive to wisdom , noble company and enlightenment, thereby liberating themselves from the cycle of death and rebirth.

 

This is what is explained in the Hindu scriptures.

 

Paramahamsa Yogananda in his book, ' The autobiography of a Yogi'  had also described the astral heavenly and hellish dimensions as explained by his resurrected master Sri Yukteshwar.

 

Edited September 14, 2022 by Ajay0

[Eduardo]

According to my thinking, the only way to reconcile these views, regarding the post-mortem existence, is by believing in reincarnation and believing in the afterlife in the realm of the ancestors, is through the existence of various types of bodies that are separated when dying and have some persistence in certain places.
Most ancient Egyptian funerary texts refer to numerous parts of the soul:
1.- Khet or the "physical body" constituted by the elements of Mendeleev's periodic table
2.- Ka or the "double" the shadow or astral body of the human being, could be considered as the energetic body in the pranic or chi body sense. The Egyptians also believed that ka was sustained through food and drink. For this reason, offerings of food and drink were presented to the dead, although what was consumed was the ka within the offerings, not the physical aspect. To date, many cultures present food offerings to the deceased.
3.- Ba (Personality) was everything that makes an individual unique, similar to the notion of 'personality', in occult terms it becomes the body of desires.
4.- Swut or the shadow or silhouette of a person, is always present. Because of this, the Egyptians assumed that a shadow contains something of the person it represents. Through this association, statues of people and deities were sometimes referred to as shadows. A kind of ghost of the deceased because in ancient texts it is described as a kind of entity that emerges from the tombs.
5.- Sekhem the divine part in man that subsists in the hereafter after individual judgment (a place within which Horus and Osiris dwell in the underworld)
6.- Ren (name) It is the identity of a person, his experiences and memories of his whole life, the name is what evokes the being and is a key in the occult.
7.- Akh (intellect) in occult terms is the superior mind in the human being, it was associated with thought, but not as an action of the mind; rather, it was the intellect as a living entity per se.
8.- Ib (Heart) It was thought that an important part of the Egyptian soul was the Ib in the Egyptian religion, the heart was the key to the afterlife. It was essential to survive death in the underworld, where it bore witness for or against its possessor. A kind of conscience that judges beyond the mortal desires of man, symbolized by the heart, was considered the seat of thoughts and emotions according to Egyptian beliefs. It was one of the most important spiritual elements. This is evidenced by many everyday expressions in the Egyptian language that incorporate the word ib, such as aut-ib "joy" (wide-hearted).
9.- Sahu (spiritual body) The sahu, Atmu (note the similarity with the word atma and atman of the ancient Hindus) or spiritual body, which obtained a degree of knowledge, power and glory, becoming durable and incorruptible, being able to associate to the soul and converse with it. It is the Ultimate Mystery, the spiritual cause of man himself. Thus, he will be able to ascend to Heaven and dwell with the sahu of the righteous and gods.

Thus ancestor worship is homage and offerings to ancestors who live in a realm or plane of existence and who are present to aid their living successors.

[manitou]

On 8/27/2022 at 7:54 AM, steve said:

Is it possible that some of these traditions aren’t overly stuck in the conventional concept of time? Just because our ancestors are not presently incarnate in a form we recognize, there is much we have access to and can connect with from when they were occupying familiar forms. This connection is very real and alive for us even in their absence, whether we imagine them as occupying a heaven, a hell, another human form, or any of a number of other possibilities. All of these possibilities exist for us in our conceptual mind while our ancestors are actually far more concrete than that - they live in our DNA, our patterns of behavior, our possessions and preferences, our memories and families, our legacies and opportunities, as well as our challenges and obstacles. Practicing and communing with our ancestors can be profoundly liberating and empowering.

 

 

This!

 

Linear time is an illusion.  Were it not for planetary rotation, time wouldn't exist at all.  Our ancestors are here with us now.  We are here with us now.  People who haven't been born yet are here with us now.  Yes, on the DNA!  I AM General Stark of the American Revolution!  How incredible this all is!

[liminal_luke]

It's never too late to have a happy childhood.

-- Tom Robbins