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From: gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us (Gary S. Trujillo)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.eastern
Subject: Re: Body and Soul?
Message-ID: <1990Sep14.012517.21556@nas.nasa.gov>
Date: 14 Sep 90 01:25:17 GMT
References: <1990Sep13.000952.27231@nas.nasa.gov>
Sender: prabhu@nas.nasa.gov (Dinesh K. Prabhu)
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In <1990Sep13.000952.27231@nas.nasa.gov> hugh@cs.adelaide.edu.au
	(Hugh Garsden) writes:

> Suppose we accept that there is a soul, and that we are reincarnated...

I have a related question.  I am wondering how such knowledge comes about,
particularly in traditions which are not based on notions of believing the
elements of some canon of doctrine to be essential items of "faith" and
where the doctrine is developed from essentially rational analysis of
"revealed" scripture (as seems to be the case in Christianity).

Are understandings about before- after- and between-life the sorts of things
that come about as the product of a certain form of meditation, or are they
developed even in these traditions as the product of thinking about how
things must be (or, somewhat cynically, how we might like them to be)?

I ask these things as sincere questions.  I have been puzzling about such
matters lately, and don't know how to go about getting answers.  On a re-
lated note, do readers of this newsgroup have any opinions on the flurry
of books on the subject of near-death experiences?  Do the phenomena being
described in these books (like Raymond Moody's now-classic _Life_After_Life_,
or Kenneth Ring's _Life_at_Death_) have anything to do with the subject of
souls and reincarnation?  (I also read a paperback called _Life_Between_Life_,
written by a Canadian psychiatrist, who describes accounts of patients under
hypnosis who talked about "remembering" disembodied states prior to entering
a new body.

Comments?

--
    Gary S. Trujillo                            gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts              {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,ima,cdp}!gnosys!gst