• WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    I always liked the “one soul” theory. The concept is toyed with in the short story The Egg.

    Basically reincarnation is real. Except if a soul can jump through space between lives, there’s no reason it can’t also jump through time. Space and time are one and the same.

    Imagine if when you die, you wake up being born in another life. But that life could be anywhere in the past, present or future. Your consciousness doesn’t move linearly forward through time in a series of lifetimes arranged in a line. It bounces all over the place. 21st century US one lifetime, 8300 BC Peru the next, 12000 AD Alpha Centauri after that. And the whole chain of consciousness is a closed loop. Ultimately, there is just one soul, just one consciousness, bouncing back and forth across all of the history of creation. And when the soul’s path is complete, when it has lived every life there is to live? It loops back on itself.

    You are a being of this universe. You are the consciousness of this universe. As am I. You and I are literally the same mind, separated perhaps by billions of lifetimes. Or perhaps I will live your life next, or you mine. Eternal life is real, but contained entirely within our finite universe. An endless loop of awareness echoing throughout all of creation. And we need to be kind to one another, as when I hurt you, I am literally hurting myself.

    I don’t really think it’s something I personally believe, but it is a really cool concept that I love.