Belief In Reincarnation Among Native North Americans

[Thoth101]

The belief in some form of rebirth or reincarnation is widespread among indigenous people throughout the world,1 so it is not surprising to find it in native North American cultures. The earliest recorded mention of Amerindian reincarnation is in an account from 1612 by William Strachey, concerning the Powhatan of Virginia.2 Jesuit missionaries with the Huron and other Iroquoian groups recorded reincarnation beliefs among them beginning in the 1630s.3 For more than a century after that, there are no allusions to Amerindian reincarnation, and then only occasional mentions until the last decades of the eighteenth century, when references become more plentiful.4 Anthropologist Antonia Mills speculates that the beliefs were under-reported, partly because early settlers and missionaries did not expect to find them and so did not ask the right questions concerning the postmortem destiny of the soul. Also, Amerindian ideas of survival and reincarnation are complex and varied, making simple characterizations impossible.5

 

Amerindian ideas differ in important respects from the Hindu and Buddhist precepts that many people connect with reincarnation. Amerindian beliefs lack the concept of karma and do not uniformly allow for humans to return as nonhuman animals or for nonhuman animals to return as humans. Several societies posit either transmigration across species lines or human-to-human reincarnation, but not both.6 Some societies credit neither cross-species transmigration nor human-to-human reincarnation. By contrast, the assumption that nonhuman animals reincarnate in their own species is common, perhaps universal. Mills found the belief that the souls of game animals returned in their own species in all ten of the Amerindian societies she surveyed.7

 

A curious feature of Amerindian beliefs about the soul—shared with animistic belief systems throughout the world—is the idea that part of the spirit can persist in the afterlife while another part reincarnates. For some peoples, the body is associated with more than one type of soul during life and these different souls go their separate ways at death; for other peoples, a unitary soul splinters at death.8 When it comes to human-to-human rebirth, some Amerindian cultures expect it only for those who die young or those who die violently. Generally, reincarnation is thought to occur within the society. In groups with unilineal social organizations—where kinship is reckoned strictly through either the mother or the father—reincarnation follows a similar pattern. In some groups, it is thought possible to decide on one’s next parents before one dies. A few cultures—mostly in the Arctic and the Pacific Northwest—say that more than one soul may possess a single body at the same time or one spirit may divide or replicate postmortem, then reincarnate in multiple bodies simultaneously.9

 

Reincarnation is not embraced with the same intensity throughout the continent. In some societies, belief is left to the individual, whereas in others, it is an element of the common culture. Interestingly, however, wherever they are found, human-to-human reincarnation beliefs are linked to the same set of signs that appear in conjunction with reincarnation beliefs throughout the world. These signs include dreams and apparitions announcing rebirth;10 birthmarks and other congenital physical traits;11 behavioural traits; and past-life memories. There may also be memories of the intermission period between lives.12 Sometimes shamans or similar practitioners may tell who a baby was before, but often announcing dreams, birthmarks, and telltale behaviors are employed to identify a newborn so that he or she may be given the same name as before and stand to inherit property, prerogatives, and status enjoyed in the previous life.13

The following is a list of North American native children with past-life memories. These cases were studied and reported by Mills and other anthropologists and by Ian Stevenson.

 

North American Native Children with Past-Life Memories

https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/native-north-american-children-who-recall-previous-lives

Edited July 11, 2020 by Thoth101

[Vmedvil2]

The belief in some form of rebirth or reincarnation is widespread among indigenous people throughout the world,1 so it is not surprising to find it in native North American cultures. The earliest recorded mention of Amerindian reincarnation is in an account from 1612 by William Strachey, concerning the Powhatan of Virginia.2 Jesuit missionaries with the Huron and other Iroquoian groups recorded reincarnation beliefs among them beginning in the 1630s.3 For more than a century after that, there are no allusions to Amerindian reincarnation, and then only occasional mentions until the last decades of the eighteenth century, when references become more plentiful.4 Anthropologist Antonia Mills speculates that the beliefs were under-reported, partly because early settlers and missionaries did not expect to find them and so did not ask the right questions concerning the postmortem destiny of the soul. Also, Amerindian ideas of survival and reincarnation are complex and varied, making simple characterizations impossible.5

 

Amerindian ideas differ in important respects from the Hindu and Buddhist precepts that many people connect with reincarnation. Amerindian beliefs lack the concept of karma and do not uniformly allow for humans to return as nonhuman animals or for nonhuman animals to return as humans. Several societies posit either transmigration across species lines or human-to-human reincarnation, but not both.6 Some societies credit neither cross-species transmigration nor human-to-human reincarnation. By contrast, the assumption that nonhuman animals reincarnate in their own species is common, perhaps universal. Mills found the belief that the souls of game animals returned in their own species in all ten of the Amerindian societies she surveyed.7

 

A curious feature of Amerindian beliefs about the soul—shared with animistic belief systems throughout the world—is the idea that part of the spirit can persist in the afterlife while another part reincarnates. For some peoples, the body is associated with more than one type of soul during life and these different souls go their separate ways at death; for other peoples, a unitary soul splinters at death.8 When it comes to human-to-human rebirth, some Amerindian cultures expect it only for those who die young or those who die violently. Generally, reincarnation is thought to occur within the society. In groups with unilineal social organizations—where kinship is reckoned strictly through either the mother or the father—reincarnation follows a similar pattern. In some groups, it is thought possible to decide on one’s next parents before one dies. A few cultures—mostly in the Arctic and the Pacific Northwest—say that more than one soul may possess a single body at the same time or one spirit may divide or replicate postmortem, then reincarnate in multiple bodies simultaneously.9

 

Reincarnation is not embraced with the same intensity throughout the continent. In some societies, belief is left to the individual, whereas in others, it is an element of the common culture. Interestingly, however, wherever they are found, human-to-human reincarnation beliefs are linked to the same set of signs that appear in conjunction with reincarnation beliefs throughout the world. These signs include dreams and apparitions announcing rebirth;10 birthmarks and other congenital physical traits;11 behavioural traits; and past-life memories. There may also be memories of the intermission period between lives.12 Sometimes shamans or similar practitioners may tell who a baby was before, but often announcing dreams, birthmarks, and telltale behaviors are employed to identify a newborn so that he or she may be given the same name as before and stand to inherit property, prerogatives, and status enjoyed in the previous life.13

The following is a list of North American native children with past-life memories. These cases were studied and reported by Mills and other anthropologists and by Ian Stevenson.

 

North American Native Children with Past-Life Memories

https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/native-north-american-children-who-recall-previous-lives

Reincarnation doesn't happen, all religions are false when you die your brain rots and the electrical charges that make up your mind stop. There is no soul, no god, nor any sort of transfer of these. You return to nothing just as you were before you were born.

Edited July 11, 2020 by VictorMedvil

[A-wal]

That view is far more batshit than anything found in any religion! What does the electrical charges in the brain stopping have to do with the continuation of consciousness? There's a huge chasm there between mechanical brain processes and subjective experience that people like you like to just pretend isn't there. Electrical charges aren't conscious, lol.

[Vmedvil2]

That view is far more batshit than anything found in any religion! What does the electrical charges in the brain stopping have to do with the continuation of consciousness? There's a huge chasm there between mechanical brain processes and subjective experience that people like you like to just pretend isn't there. Electrical charges aren't conscious, lol.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_theories_of_consciousness and https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-04747-004

Edited July 11, 2020 by VictorMedvil

[A-wal]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_theories_of_consciousness,https://books.google.com/books?id=pRzIou5XDUUC&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=electric+charges+cause+consciousness+in+the+brain&source=bl&ots=2wu9i0Eand&sig=ACfU3U38bmk6fYwgcF875nSBZYIdpw43Sg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi1-76n-MXqAhUTHc0KHb6xCQcQ6AEwDXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=electric%20charges%20cause%20consciousness%20in%20the%20brain&f=false and https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-04747-004

Nothing there can explain how in the hell you think electrical signals is the same thing as (or at least are directly responsible for) consciousness. You're fcuking insane!

[Vmedvil2]

Nothing there can explain how in the hell you think electrical signals is the same thing as (or at least are directly responsible for) consciousness. You're fcuking insane!

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-neuroscience/

 

"A neuroscientific explanation of consciousness adduces properties of the brain, typically the brain’s electrical properties. A salient phenomenon is neural signaling through action potentials or spikes. A spike is a large change in electrical potential across a neuron’s cellular membrane which can be transmitted between neurons that form a neural circuit. For a sensory neuron, the spikes it generates are tied to its receptive field. For example, in a visual neuron, its receptive field is understood in spatial terms and corresponds to that area of external space where an appropriate stimulus triggers the neuron to spike. Given this correlation between stimulus and spikes, the latter carries information about the former. Information processing in sensory systems involves processing of information regarding stimuli within receptive fields.

Which electrical property provides the most fruitful explanatory basis for understanding consciousness remains an open question. For example, when looking at a single neuron, neuroscientists are not interested in spikes per se but the spike rate generated by a neuron per unit time. Yet spike rate is one among many potentially relevant neural properties. Consider the blood oxygen level dependent signal (BOLD) measure in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The BOLD signal is a measure of changes in blood flow in the brain when neural tissue is active and is postulated to be a function of electrical properties at a different part of a neuron than that part tied to spikes. Specifically, given a synapse which is the connection between two neurons to form a basic circuit motif, spikes are tied to the presynaptic side while the BOLD signal is thought to be a function of electrical changes on the postsynaptic side (signal flow is from pre to post). Furthermore, neuroscientists are typically not interested in the response of a single neuron but rather that of a population of neurons, of whole brain regions, and/or their interactions. Higher order properties of brain regions include the local field potential generated by populations of neurons and correlated activity such as synchrony between activity in different areas of the brain (neural oscillations were postulated to be central to consciousness by Crick & Koch 1990)."

 

You have no soul A-Wal, stop believing in delusions of you having one!

Edited July 11, 2020 by VictorMedvil

[montgomery]

"

 

You have no soul A-Wal, stop believing in delusions of you having one!

Nobody has any fkng souls Victor, you made that clear already. It's all supernatural bullsh-t for the masses and Thoth.

Edited July 11, 2020 by montgomery

[A-wal]

You have no soul A-Wal, stop believing in delusions of you having one!

'Soul' is simply another word for consciousness, so yes of course I have one. Stop pretending that electrical signals firing is somehow an explanation for consciousness you batshit mofo.

Edited July 11, 2020 by A-wal

[A-wal]

Nobody has any fkng souls Victor, you made that clear already. It's all supernatural bullsh-t for the masses and Thoth.

You can't explain subjective experience as a mechanical process, obviously. That's like trying to explain gravitational dynamics with Roman history, it makes no damn sense! They're entirely different things.

[Vmedvil2]

You can't explain subjective experience as a mechanical process, obviously. That's like trying to explain gravitational dynamics with Roman history, it makes no damn sense! They're entirely different things.

 

'Soul' is simply another word for consciousness, so yes of course I have one. Stop pretending that electrical signals firing is somehow an explanation for consciousness you batshit mofo.

You believe in false religion and false gods, consider for a moment you speak scientific fallacy, of course consciousness is nothing more than a physical process happening in the brain everything in your body is no more than a physical process happening such as Biochemistry or fluid dynamics.... why would the brain be any different?

Edited July 11, 2020 by VictorMedvil

[A-wal]

You believe in false religion and false gods,

I believe in no such thing.

 

consider for a moment you speak scientific fallacy,

You can't possibly be that thick? You really believe science has had any success in explaining consciousness? I assure you it hasn't, nor has it made any serious claim to.

 

of course consciousness is nothing more than a physical process happening in the brain

Utter nonsense! That is literally the equivalent of me giving you a list of Roman emperors and then pointing to a solar system's gravitational dynamics and saying, there, see.

 

everything in your body is no more than a physical process happening such as Biochemistry or fluid dynamics.... why would the brain be any different?

Of course everything in my body including my brain is a physical process. What on Earth does that have to do with the subjective experience of being conscious, you batshit mofo?

[Mutex]

That view is far more batshit than anything found in any religion! What does the electrical charges in the brain stopping have to do with the continuation of consciousness? There's a huge chasm there between mechanical brain processes and subjective experience that people like you like to just pretend isn't there. Electrical charges aren't conscious, lol.

 

 

 

What does the electrical charges in the brain stopping have to do with the continuation of consciousness?

 

You might want to consider something like... I don't know.. A COMPUTER!!.. There it is under your desk doing processing, working with inputs and outputs.

 

What is that computer doing? It's electrical charges, So what happens when you turn that computer OFF?  Would you like to have a guess? Have a shot in the dark, see if you can come up with some bat **** crazy description of what happens? 

Does all that information go to some other place to be reincarnated, or does it go to heaven? Or is it just GONE? 

[A-wal]

You might want to consider something like... I don't know.. A COMPUTER!!.. There it is under your desk doing processing, working with inputs and outputs.

 

What is that computer doing? It's electrical charges, So what happens when you turn that computer OFF?  Would you like to have a guess? Have a shot in the dark, see if you can come up with some bat **** crazy description of what happens? 

Does all that information go to some other place to be reincarnated, or does it go to heaven? Or is it just GONE? 

Wtf are you on about? My computer isn't conscious!

 

It wouldn't work as an analogy even if my computer were conscious. The information isn't gone when I switch the computer off, it's stored. Some of the ram goes, that's equivalent to losing short term memory.

 

Yes my computer works using electrical charges. For one thing those charges aren't where the information is stored and for another the electrical charges certainly don't cause the machine to have the subjective conscious experience of being a computer. :)

 

This is absolutely fukcing hilarious!

Edited July 12, 2020 by A-wal

[Mutex]

Wtf are you on about? My computer isn't conscious!

 

It wouldn't work as an analogy even if my computer were conscious. The information isn't gone when I switch the computer off, it's stored. Some of the ram goes, that's equivalent to losing short term memory.

 

Yes my computer works using electrical charges. For one thing those charges aren't where the information is stored and for another the electrical charges certainly don't cause the machine to have the subjective conscious experience of being a computer. :)

 

This is absolutely fukcing hilarious!

 

OK, if that is your world view, I'm not going to argue with you. But yes, the information is lost, the processing is lost and the computer (or brain) does not work as a computer (or mind) if it is turned off. 

 

Do you really think consciousness exists in some place that is separate from the physical brain? 

 

BTW: Thankyou for being so polite and respectful... It's big of you... It's a very mature attitude to have.. Makes me think you are a mature and respectful and considerate person.... /S

[Thoth101]

That view is far more batshit than anything found in any religion! What does the electrical charges in the brain stopping have to do with the continuation of consciousness? There's a huge chasm there between mechanical brain processes and subjective experience that people like you like to just pretend isn't there. Electrical charges aren't conscious, lol.

I think many of us are trying to figure it all out and I don't think anybody knows for sure how it all works. These links are quite interesting.

 

The prevailing consensus in neuroscience is that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain and its metabolism. When the brain dies, the mind and consciousness of the being to whom that brain belonged ceases to exist. In other words, without a brain there can be no consciousness.

But according to the decades-long research of Dr. Peter Fenwick, a highly regarded neuropsychiatrist who has been studying the human brain, consciousness, and the phenomenon of near death experience (NDE) for 50 years, this view is incorrect. Despite initially being highly incredulous of NDEs and related phenomena, Fenwick now believes his extensive research suggests that consciousness persists after death. In fact, Fenwick believes that consciousness actually exists independently and outside of the brain as an inherent property of the universe itself like dark matter and dark energy or gravity.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/think-well/201906/does-consciousness-exist-outside-the-brain

https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/828324/Human-consciousness-universe-quantum-theory

It is possible that consciousness may exist by itself, even in the absence of matter, just like gravitational waves, -excitations of space- that may exist in the absence of protons and electrons, suggests Stanford University’s Russian-American theoretical physicist, Andrei Linde in Life, Universe, Consciousness, about the central mystery of our time. “Will it not turn out, with the further development of science, that the study of the universe and the study of consciousness will be inseparably linked, and that ultimate progress in the one will be impossible without progress in the other?”

https://dailygalaxy.com/2019/09/the-ultimate-mystery-consciousness-may-exist-in-the-absence-of-matter-weekend-feature/

Edited July 12, 2020 by Thoth101

[Thoth101]

Nobody has any fkng souls Victor, you made that clear already. It's all supernatural bullsh-t for the masses and Thoth.

I think it may be crazier to think we only live one time and that is the end forever and ever. I thought this article was very interesting. Many people believe that you only live once so I don't blame you for thinking that. I think the truth lies in between science and religions and everything isn't just black and white.

 

Most Americans and Europeans are told since the day we are born that we only have 2 choices. You either die and that is the end forever. Or you are part of a religion and go to a heaven or a hell or that you must believe in some god to continue to exist. I think their maybe something to the Eastern Philosophies such as Hindu and Buddhism and the Native North Americans. Along the lines I think we have forgot a lot of things. Although Quantum Physics is coming to find certain things that go along with the Eastern Philosophies.

 

Ponder this for a moment. If you believe you only have one life you are a lot more easily manipulated through the fear of death. If you escape the fear of death you can't be controlled through being given the fear of death.

[Thoth101]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_theories_of_consciousness and https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-04747-004

Thanks for you input Victor. Very interesting!