Friends

[MistOfTheSea86]

I have heard an idea that your friends in this life were somehow connected to you in a past life, what are your views on this?

I personally believe that your close friends are somehow connected to you, but like once in a while aquantinces(sp?) are not.

[Myst]

I believe some friends are and some friends aren't - it doesn't seem likely to me that all my friends and I stay together throughout lives, because we probably need to learn stuff from all kinds of people. I also believe "soul friends" or soulmates may or may not be with in us in every life in succession - like they might be several times but not in every life, or only for a few lives, until what can be learned between us is.

[Ben Gruagach]

It doesn't make sense that every person who is alive today necessarily had a human soul in a previous incarnation. The human population keeps getting bigger and bigger. Around 1950 there were an estimated 2.5 billiion people. Now it's closer to 6 billion, and they estimate it to be 8 billion by 2030. (I got the numbers from http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/world.html )

If the soul of every baby came from someone who died, we'd have to have a stable human population with no growth (i.e. a person dies, and a new person is born to take its place.) That's not the case though.

So while it is possible that you might have an "old soul" and some of the people you know might also have "old souls," it is also likely that some of the people you know have "new (human) souls" and so you couldn't have known them as people in a past life. Maybe you knew them in another form, though!

In any case, the theory that you might know someone from a past life doesn't mean that EVERYONE you know was someone you knew in a past life.

[Mithrea]

Well what the crap am I doing back here, if it's just to meet the same boring people over and over and over again? :lol:

Ben, what you say makes sense if you believe in a definable quanitity that is a soul. For what you say to be true, then there are only a certain number of souls and they are all finite and unchanging.

On the other hand, if you believe that we are all parts of one large soul, then there is no telling how small a piece of that soul we are getting or how boundless the soul was to begin with. Perhaps when there were only 1 million people on the earth, we weren't using all the soul up, or perhaps we are each getting a smaller piece of that soul as the years go by.

[Ben Gruagach]

Mithrea, the idea that a soul isn't necessarily a discrete unit which passes intact from body to body makes sense to me. And if that's the case, then the idea people could have been friends/family/whatever in a past life is probably much less likely.

Personally, I think of it like the Cauldron of Cerridwen. In that huge cauldron, She has bubbling the "soul liquid" which we all draw from to provide that "drop of soul" in our bodies. And when we die, I think our "drop of soul" goes back into the big cauldron again, to mix with the rest and bubble and ferment, until it's very likely indistinguishable as a distinct drop again. And more drops are drawn out constantly to go into new bodies, new life forms. I don't think that cauldron has just human souls, but the souls of everything, big and small. And as the "soul drops" go back into the cauldron after death, they bring with them the life experiences and change the flavour of the overall brew. Our goal should always be to live the best lives we can, so that when we give back to the cauldron/group soul we are adding something good to make the whole thing that much better.

Getting back to having friends from past lives, it is possible that bits of past lives of friends or family could intermingle into the soul of current friends and family. But as I said, I'm not sure that the soul moves from one body to the other as a distinct, discrete unit.

This would also imply that as individuals, we don't really have distinct past lives, either. But it could also mean that a number of people could very well have bits of past lives of the same person in common - for instance, maybe that "past life friend" thing is really a recognition that your current friend and you both have a little bit of the soul from a common past life.

This stuff is all speculation, as I'm not sure there is any way to test and prove past lives really. Unfortunately, that also means it remains in the realm of unproven speculation.

[Mithrea]

Righto :)

I was agreeing with you. :) Though rereading my second paragraph I see that's not clear ;)

I was just pointing out that it all hinges on how you think on the nature of the soul in the first place. Many people do believe that the soul is a discrete gift from the divine, unique and special.

I'm really interested in the notion that we could share past lives. It explains alot of stuff I hear about past life regression. And I seriously doubt there is anyway to prove this stuff on this plane.