Death, rebirth & the playing consciousness
Idea #1: Rebirth
Whoever deals with the subject of rebirth inevitably comes into contact with the question "Who am I really". A worldview that defines me as a body, as a physical and mental construct, that is, as that which I can attack and think, naturally has difficulty with the idea of rebirth. For it is no secret that all living things decay, that is, that every body passes away and eventually dies, and with it the brain and thus also thinking.
Only when I integrate the idea of consciousness and assume that what animates the body is consciousness do I have a way of looking at options beyond that.
Christianity does offer the idea of a soul that continues to exist after death, but this soul is seen as an esoteric part of a unique and seemingly randomly chosen body, and an associated life.
Statements such as: "You only live once", or "Rest in peace" are testimony to a world view, according to which one has exactly one attempt called "life", is judged by it and is finally put into an eternally beautiful or unpleasant state. Doesn't that sound, in view of completely contrary destinies which a human being can or must live through, like a sky-scraping injustice?
In contrast to this is the Hindu or Buddhist concept of the continuum of consciousness, that is, a consciousness that enters again and again into the cycle of becoming and passing away and grows with each life through the experiences made.
The driving life force here is therefore consciousness, which can neither die nor become ill.
This view has a few very decisive advantages over the Christian view. First of all, there is a completely different view of death. For now I have the possibility of seeing again a loved one who has died, and perhaps even coming into contact again in a future life. And my own death is also an experience I have as the observing consciousness, but it is by no means the end of all experiences. Also, a completely different view of the individual circumstances of life opens up now: if I am a beggar in my life, struggling with poverty and sickness, at least I have the perspective of being a rich king in the next life. And vice versa, as a privileged person, I might develop a completely different compassion towards less fortunate members of society, because I have to reckon with the fact that I might have this very experience in the next life.
The perception, therefore, that one is favored by chance and blessed by pleasant experiences, while the other must live through the other spectrum of life, is thus dissolved.
I will tell a story towards the end of this session that pushes the idea that everything is one to the point where, in truth, only one being animates all people simultaneously.
So if we accept the idea of rebirth, and instead of identifying with the body, identify with an observing consciousness, another perspective opens up:
Idea #2: I choose my circumstances consciously
Because now it becomes possible that I from the Bardot, thus the fine-material area where all not incarnated souls stay, - in the Christian Christian understanding that would be the heaven - select me life circumstances and incarnations purposefully. That is, I look at this young couple, see the qualities inherent in them - good as well as bad - plus the circumstances surrounding them, and now say, as with a travel booking: yes, I feel like it, these should become my parents.
So I consciously choose my playing field for the next life, browse through the catalog of life circumstances, and book whatever I feel like at the moment. Now I hear you say: but then who would get into any negative situations?".
And so we come fluently to the next philosophical idea, which allows a new view on healing.
Idea #3: Consciousness uses human existence as a game.
Why would consciousness want to have experiences?
Let's imagine we are watching a movie in the theater. In this movie, an absolutely perfect life is depicted. In a faraway land where the sun shines constantly and fresh fruits and vegetables can be harvested all year round, a little daughter is born in the perfect royal house. Sheltered and enveloped by parental love, she grows up in perfect harmony, surrounded by well-meaning and wise servants and teachers and exclusively loving and delightful friends. Every day is pure joy and the king's daughter is blessed by positive life circumstances every minute. There are only loving fellows and enthusiastic hobbies and even learning gives her great pleasure and of course she has only the best grades in school. At the age of 18 she makes an encounter with a king's son of the neighboring country and again lightning shoots the two of them the infatuation that should not leave them for a lifetime. Naturally, they marry, unite the kingdoms into an even larger and more harmonious one, have children, whom they lovingly take care of in a perfect way, and so on and so forth....
I assume that you would get out of such a movie after half an hour at the latest, because it bores you so much.
And so one can also understand the consciousness that joyfully engages in a game of life in which there are obstacles, difficulties, problems, tensions, and so on, in which there is something to do, something to experience, in which there is excitement, in which solutions can be found, in which some kind of growth is possible.
And just as we want to see a movie where things are not all just fine, so the consciousness plays various games, goes into different existences to be able to have the appropriate experiences.
Now again to the question, why should consciousness want to make experiences? And where does the consciousness come from at all? At the latest now it becomes clear that our mind is completely overtaxed with such questions. It was simply not made for that. The mind is like the ant in the library. Surrounded by an almost infinite treasure of knowledge, but with the available instruments not able to grasp it even rudimentarily. We invent finer and finer measuring instruments and decompose matter into smaller and smaller parts and the realization from this is that the mind is simply no longer suitable from a certain point on to interpret, let alone understand, what is recognized and measured there. It becomes clear e.g. with the double-slit-experiment where it emerges that always that is found what the scientist is looking for, and these are particles in the one case and in the other case a wave form, thus two completely contrary manifestations although the experimental arrangement is always the same.
At a certain point, our only chance is perception. The inner knowledge, so to speak. To give you an example, I will tell you a story from my own life: I can still remember well that as a small child, whenever I was alone with myself and in nature, I had the perception that there was a camera looking over my shoulder and recording my whole life.
"Well that will probably be the dear God they all talk about and who sees everything and nothing is hidden from him."
That's how I explained it to myself at the tender age of 4 or 5. Because, after all, that's what I had been told until then. So there was this perception of this camera, was an inner knowledge that there is an external force that has an interest in my experience.
Today I explain it to myself in such a way that I myself am the camera that records everything. I watch myself virtually every minute of life. And I do not record thousands and thousands of hours of trivialities, but every minute of the film enriches my consciousness.
The question that now almost suggests itself is: Can the life game also be modified or perhaps even another game be started? In other words, what are the possibilities of modifying the originally chosen game into a form that I like better now?
Can this only be done by entering a new life, or can I also restart the game in the same life?
How would you personally answer these questions? As we stated earlier, it is not possible to do this with the mind. It would be like me asking the ant in the library for an explanation of relativity. Even if the ant were to read Einstein's book, it would have no chance of grasping the answers.
Idea No. 4: Individualized Consciousness Arises from the "One"
To the concept of life played by consciousness fits the idea that the individualized consciousness is itself a part of the Supreme, a part of the One that is in everything and from which everything emerges.
To my mind, water has always been the closest analogy to the universal divine force. Water is in everything living that surrounds us, Our body is made up of about 70% of it. Could consciousness perhaps be imagined as a drop of water emerging from the ocean, and then beginning its individual journey, no later than the time it falls out of a cloud?
Whatever individual path this drop of water may take, at some point it is reunited with the ocean. One may end up in a European mountain stream, the next in a tropical rainforest, and the third would perhaps remain for some time in a glacier of the polar ice caps. But one day they would all return to their origin, the ocean, and feed the experiences of their individual journey into the greater whole.
We've illuminated a lot of ideas and concepts so far that I think make it easier to understand and support a healing process.
To summarize: we have first talked about self-identification as consciousness and the related concept of rebirth, we have secondly looked at the choice of life situation, we have thirdly considered whether life could be understood as a game played by consciousness in order for it to evolve, and we have finally also considered whether individualized consciousness could possibly be only parts of one universal consciousness.
Finally, then, the promised fantastic story By Robert Heinlein, which is the "Everything is one concept" to the extreme, and thus wonderfully overtaxes every mind.
Before the story begins, a short preface. Numerous physicists have independently provided theoretical proof that time travel is also possible into the past. The wormhole time machine of the physicist Kip Thorn has brought it to some fame. The construction of a wormhole time machine still represents an insurmountable technical difficulty according to today's state of the art. But in history it was often the case that something that was theoretically found to be possible could actually be realized with later technical achievements. The following story could therefore one day become reality with a technology that has yet to be invented.
Summary of Robert Heinlein's story "All you Zombies."
In 1945, an infant is mysteriously abandoned outside an orphanage in Cleveland. Lonely and unloved, Jane grows up not knowing who her parents are. One day, in 1963, she feels a strange attraction to a drifter and falls in love with him. But just when Jane's situation seems to be taking a turn for the better, a series of disasters occur. First, she becomes pregnant by the drifter, who subsequently disappears. Second, during the complicated birth, the doctors discover that Jane has both male and female sex organs and, in order to save her life, are forced to convert the she into a he.
Finally, a mysterious stranger steals the baby from the delivery room. Under the shock of these events, outcast from society and shaken by fate, he (formerly she) becomes a drunkard and a drifter.
Jane (now male) has lost not only her parents, whom she has never met, and her lover, but also her only child.
Years later, in 1970, chance leads him (formerly her) to an abandoned bar called Pop's Place, where he (formerly her) tells his tragic story to an elderly bartender. The understanding bartender offers the drifter (formerly Jane) the chance to get revenge on the stranger who impregnated and abandoned her - on the condition that he join the Time Travel Corps. After the two board a time machine, the bartender drops the drifter off in 1963.
He, the drifter, feels a strange affection for a young orphan who soon becomes pregnant. As a result, the bartender flies 9 months into the future with his time machine, steals the female infant from the hospital, goes back to 1949 and abandons the baby in front of an orphanage.
Afterwards, the bartender transports the completely confused drifter to the year 1985, where he joins the Time Travel Corps. Now, finally, the drifter manages to get his life in order, becomes a respected and honorably graying member of the Corps, assumes the disguise of a bartender, and in this role is assigned his most difficult task: a date with his destiny, a meeting with a homeless man in Pop's Place in 1970!
Those who have come this far know that a prowler with a sex change is about to enter the bar....
