Reincarnation and Past Lives Essay Example for Free

Reincarnation and Past Lives Essay Reincarnation is the belief that when one dies, ones body decomposes but something of oneself is reborn in another body. It is the belief that one has lived before and will live again in another body after death. The bodies one passes in and out of need not be human. One may have been a Doberman in a past life, and one may be a mite or a carrot in a future life. Some tribes avoid eating certain animals because they believe that the souls of their ancestors dwell in those animals. A man could even become his own daughter by dying before she is born and then entering her body at birth. The belief in past lives used to be mainly a belief found in Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, but now is a central tenet of much woo-woo like dianetics and channeling. In those ancient Eastern religions, reincarnation was not considered a good thing, but a bad thing. To achieve the state of ultimate bliss (nirvana) is to escape from the wheel of rebirth. In most, if not all, ancient religions with a belief in reincarnation, the soul entering a body is seen as a metaphysical demotion, a sullying and impure rite of passage. In New Age religions, however, being born again seems to be a kind of perverse goal. Prepare yourself in this life for who or what you want to come back as in the next life. Belief in past lives also opens the door for New Age therapies such as past life regression therapy, which seeks the causes of todays psychological problems in the experiences of previous lives. L. Ron Hubbard, author of Dianetics and the founder of Scientology, introduced his own version of reincarnation into his new religion. According to Hubbard, past lives need auditing to get at the root of ones troubles. He also claims that Dianetics gave impetus to Bridey Murphy and that some scientologists have been dogs and other animals in previous lives (A Note on Past Lives in The Rediscovery of the Human Soul). According to Hubbard, It has only been in Scientology that the mechanics of death have been thoroughly understood. What happens in death is this: the Thetan (spirit) finds itself without a body (which has died) and then it goes looking for a new body. Thetans will hang around people. They will see a woman who is pregnant and follow her down the street. Then, the Thetan will slip into the newborn usually two or three minutes after the delivery of a child from the mother. A Thetan usually picks it up about the time the baby takes its first gasp. How Hubbard knows this is never revealed. Channeling, like past life regression, is distinct from reincarnation, even though it is based on the same essential concept: death does not put an end to the entirety of ones being. In classical reincarnation, something of the consciousness of the deceased somehow enters a new body but as that body grows only one unified consciousness persists through time. Channeling might be called temporary intermittent past life invasion because there is a coming and going of the past life entity, which always remains distinct from the present self-conscious being. For example, JZ Knight claims that in 1977 the spirit of a Cro-Magnon warrior who once lived in Atlantis took over her body in order to pass on bits of wisdom hed picked up over the centuries. Knight seems to be carrying on the work of Jane Roberts and Robert Butts, who in 1972 hit the market with Seth Speaks. Knight, Roberts, and Butts are indebted to Edgar Cayce, who claimed to be in touch with many of his past lives. One would think that channeling might muck things up a bit. After all, if various spirits from the past can enter any body at any time without destroying the present person, it is possible that when one remembers a past life it is actually someone elses life one is remembering. From a philosophical point of view, reincarnation poses some interesting problems. What is it that is reincarnated? Presumably, it is the soul that is reincarnated, but what is the soul? A disembodied consciousness? Reincarnation does seem to offer an explanation for some strange phenomena such as the ability of some people to regress to a past life under hypnosis. Also, we might explain child prodigies by claiming that unlike most cases of reincarnation where the soul has to more or less start from scratch, the child prodigy somehow gets a soul with great carryover from a previous life, giving it a decided advantage over the rest of us. Reincarnation could explain why bad things happen to good people and why good things happen to bad people: they are being rewarded or punished for actions in past lives (karma). One could explain deja vu experiences by claiming that they are memories of past lives. Dreams could be interpreted as a kind of soul travel and soul memory. However, past life regression and deja vu experiences are best explained as the recalling of events from this life, not some past life. Dreams and child prodigies are best explained in terms of brain structures and genetically inheritable traits and processes. And since bad things also happen to bad people and good things also happen to good people, the most reasonable belief is that there is no design to the distribution of good and bad happening to people. Stories, especially stories from children, that claim knowledge of a past life, abound. One collector of such stories was the psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, who made a weak case that the stories offered scientific evidence for reincarnation. Finally, since there is no way to tell the difference between a baby with a soul that will go to heaven or hell, a baby with a soul that has been around before in other bodies, and a baby with no soul at all, it follows that the idea of a soul adds nothing to our concept of a human being. Applying Occams razor, both the idea of reincarnation and the idea of an immortal soul that will go to heaven or hell are equally unnecessary. Reference http://www.skepdic.com/reincarn.html

Attending a Speech on Brown versus Board of Education -- Linda Brown C

The Brown Sisters Revisited Five weeks ago I made my way through the atrocious March weather to Foellinger auditorium to hear the sisters whose name introduces the landmark case of 1954 which began the uphill process of integration. On that chilly March day, Linda Brown and Cheryl Brown Henderson spoke to a crowd of about five-hundred consisting of students, faculty and local citizens. The sisters addressed the assembly consecutively, Linda Brown being the first to speak. Their topics ranged from their first-hand memories of the case to their continuing efforts to fight for equal education through their efforts with the Brown Foundation. The familiarity of the Brown decision became a little easier to grasp after seeing this marquee event of the Brown v. Board of Education jubilee celebration. I first heard of the Brown decision in elementary school. For four years I attended a progressive Montessori school in my hometown of St. Paul, MN. The school had an enrollment smaller than most of my lectures here at the University. My teacher for those four years was a seventy year old woman named Joan who to this day I revere as the best educator I had besides my parents. Joan had more intelligence than most college professors and more social consciousness than a human rights activist. In February of my first grade year, roughly twelve years before the Brown sisters’ presentation at Foellinger, Joan loaded up the Civil Rights movement film strip. After lunch and recess, the lessons usually revolved around a video or a film strip. Afternoon instruction topics ranged from early Greek art to the Theory of Relativity and everything in between. Often the antiquated film strip machine would break and w... ...le girl had helped change the way America thought about race relations. I learned the emotions, the dialogue and the family ties that facilitated the early movement. These were things that even Joan, bless her heart, could not teach me. One cannot learn the inside details and feelings of those who went through such tumultuous times and rode the waves of a sea of change. Usually when I am assigned to do something outside of school I don’t get much learning out of the assignment. But this assignment proved invaluable to my understanding of the Civil Rights movement and I am in debt to the educational powers that be for requiring me to go. Would I go see this speech without the required assignment? The answer unfortunately is no. I have come to realize over my years of education that it is the events outside of school in which one learns the most.

Freudian Analysis of “Beauty and the Beast” Essay

           In â€Å"Beauty and the Beast†, Beauty, the dreamer, successfully travels through the phallic stage and the Oedipus complex into the latency and genital stages. She is at first attached to her father, and wants to protect him. She mentions that she is willing to even die for him so that he can live a happy life. Beauty eventually realizes that she is actually in love with the beast (Brett, n.p).             Beauty starts out in the phallic stage of development. She is starting to recognize the difference between male and female, however, she still views males as beastly, and chose her father over them. When the beast comes into the story, Beauty offers to sacrifice her life for her father. This shows the Oedipus complex of Beauty. She still is competing with other people for her dad. Beauty’s father depicts phallic symbolism of a man through the efforts that he undertakes to especially by portraying that he is a self-made man, that is wealthy and makes use of common sense (Brett, n.p). Beauty’s father is portrayed as a self-made, wealthy man with common sense. Despite his bad luck and loss of his wealth, he still manages to bring up his six children and provide them with quite a comfortable life, talking the role of the man of the house and ensuring that his family is provided for despite all the circumstances.             Beauty stays in the Oedipus complex when she is brought into the castle. She still views other males as gross (the beast) and puts her father first. When the beast asks to marry her, she quickly rejects him. However, the Beast continues to see her regularly, day after day (Brett, n.p). The beast offers for Beauty to see her father, except that he would die if this happened. This is when Beauty starts entering the latency stage.            When Beauty visits her father and her sisters, she starts to realize how much she is longing to see the Beast. She starts to get annoyed by her sisters, who are jealous of how beautiful she is. However, she spends most of her time with the same sex, a sure sign of the latency stage. Beauty is seen to be very close to her father in a way and has what is referred to as an â€Å"electra complex† which is an â€Å"oedipal complex†, a female version (Brett, n.p). She sees her father as one that never does anything wrong and is always a good person. There is no fight between her and her mother over her dad hence she becomes quite closer to him although she undergoes a very quick transition (Brett, n.p).          When Beauty sees Beast at the end of the story, she is scared that the Beast will kill himself since she did not keep her promise. The Beast is upset about this, but still says how happy he is to see her and that he will die satisfied. This is where the genital stage begins. Beauty explains her love for him and that she cannot live without him. She is basically starting to go through puberty, a sure sign of the genital stage (Brett, n.p).          As Beauty passes through the stages in her life, she has the desire to read but also has more desires that she wants to satisfy and is not sure of the place or the person to find it from but this change when she starts developing interest and liking for the Beast. On the other hand, the Beast is seen as unconsciously searching for some form of help as well as someone that can be able to love him for who he is. As the picture and symbol of morality, Beauty finally develops a super-ego that is great (Brett, n.p).             Beauty passes through all of the stages of psychosexual development without much of a problem. She overcomes a little bit of trouble with the Oedipus complex, but seems to finally get to the genital stage when the story is over (Brett, n.p). The end of the story represents the rest of the genital stage where Beauty recognizes her love for the opposite sex. She has to renounce her affection and care for her father for a suitor that she would be spending the rest of her life with (Brett, n.p). In this part, the Beast, despite the nature of that he has, undergoes a lot of struggle in trying to contain and control the urges that he has just to have someone to love him. The refinement of the Beast in to something that is more human is not a mere facade, but it is part of who he really is and also forms part of the reason why he is able to succeed in controlling his lust (Brett, n.p).               The Beast is symbol of dual nature of the males whereby the outside portrays the rough and manipulative males while the inside is full of love and care, similar to Beauty’s father. He is strong on the outside and strict with his daughters although in the inside he is compassionate and loves them hence takes care of them despite losing his wealth (Brett, n.p). From the overall story, male presence is dominant and the Beauty has to make a choice between men that she is emotionally attached to in her life. Her father has been part of life for a long time but she then finds love and intimacy in the Beast, of which she wants to experience in her life as she also loves the Beast. Reference Brett, Jan. Beauty and the Beast. New York: Clarion Books, 1989. Print. N.p Source document

Sleep And Gpa Comparison At Culver Stockton College Essay

Sleep and GPA Comparison Earl W. McPike Jr. October 13, 2016 INTRODUCTION: Sleep coincides with a college student because the amount of sleep one gets should determine how one functions throughout the day and most importantly how well a person does in school. The more sleep that a person gets at night should make a person more energized causing them to perform better in sports, at work and in school. If a person is going off of only a small amount of sleep, they should do poorly in a school and work setting and in any other activities that they are involved in. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM: In the fall semester of 2016 at Culver-Stockton College, I plan on conducting a correlational research study between the hours of sleep a person gets at night and how it affects their grade point average. This study will include all current Culver-Stockton College student athletes that are enrolled as full time students that live on campus. These students will be asked to fill out a survey questioning what activities that they are involved in on campus as well as if they have a job or not. The activities include what sport they are a part of and if they are involved in Greek life also. Other questions that will be asked are how many hours of sleep do they get at night in addition to how much time they spend on homework at night. Students will be asked how many hours a week do they have practice and how long they stay up. The reason these student