M.J. Rose

Our many lives are fleeting, like clouds in the sky.

Enjoy a magnificent visual metaphor for this idea, a time-lapse piece by artist ken Murphy called A History of the Sky… (“Long Shorts” are short films that exemplify long-term thinking.  You can find more of them on the Long Now Blog.)

“Art project in progress A History of the Sky features lots and lots of time-lapse videos of the sky that are synchronized so that they’re all showing the same time of day.  Ken Murphy is the artist that created it and he hopes to one day manifest all the data he’s collecting as a video installation that’s always displaying the skies of the last 365 days.  The project was recently featured at the Exploratorium, but it’s still in a need of a home for the installation.”

Click here to watch A History of the Sky

Watch and listen…

This week’s Reincarnationist Q&A is with author David Sakmyster.

David Sakmyster is an award-winning author and screenwriter, with over two dozen short stories and three novels in print, including THE PHAROS OBJECTIVE, book one in a series about remote-viewers and psychic archaeologists searching for ancient mystical artifacts.

The Questions:

What do you think happens when we die?

Just being a logical and fair-minded human being, I have to believe not only that there’s something more in store for our consciousness (the conservation of energy theory – it’s gotta go somewhere), but also that all this may be some sort of larger reality.  I think our time here is meant to be in sequential choice-based phases, kind of like when we played role-playing D&D type games as kids.  I didn’t want to just be a noble knight all the time; in another session I’d choose a cleric, a bard or an evil mage.  Or a thief or assassin.  Man, woman, gnome, etc.  I kind of think it’s like that – there are choices for our higher level selves and maybe we’re not done until we’re tired of the variety, bored with playing and feel we’ve experienced everything (good and bad) that we wanted to.  Now the interesting part about that, however, is for it to truly work and for us to get the full experience in each new life – we have to have this amnesia effect so we can’t recall who/what we really are.  If we can see the strings, then the dance loses its value.  (So in that sense, hypnosis and past-life recollection is cheating.)

What is your most marked characteristic that you believe could be a hold over from a past life?

I’ve always been considered the ‘odd one’ in the family because I’m always so drawn to the ancient past.  Everyone else is worked up about recent history and everything going on in the present, yet I just have always felt this massive pull from the past – especially regarding the culture, achievements and beliefs of Egypt, Sumeria and early Meso-america.  I’m not sure if that means there’s a past life in there still asserting itself or if there was something left undone that I’m perhaps pursuing through storytelling.

What do you find most intriguing about reincarnation?

Something MJ Rose has worked into her novels, and one I’m using in a separate book (where I won’t say any more to avoid spoilers) – the concept that if you gain access to these past life memories, you can in a sense, become immortal.  My idea is that maybe the early Pharaohs and mystics in Tibet with their Book of the Dead – laid out instructions on how you can condition your soul to hold on to your ‘self’ and maintain at least some parts of your consciousness in the next life (and thus maintain some sense of immortality while merely inhabiting different bodies).

You write about the psychic ability of ‘remote-viewing’.  Do you feel there’s a connection between RV and Reincarnation?

While I was writing and researching THE PHAROS OBJECTIVE, I was struck by the similarity of the RV experience and the aspect of hypnosis in bringing out past life memories.  I think the theory is similar – both can draw on Jung’s Collective Unconscious for potential explanations.  But it’s all speaking about the same thing – being able to experience something other than our personal reality.

What is your principle defect that you believe may be inherited from a previous incarnation?

My temper.  And don’t ask me more about it.  I’ll get mad…

What three people from history would you like to have over to dinner for a discussion about reincarnation?

Herodotus and Lao Tzu.  And then, to keep those two in line and keep it real, I’d invite Ben Franklin.

When you come back next time, who (or what!) would you like to be?

I’d like to be an eccentric inventor or scientist who lives all by himself up in the mountains coming up with crazy but potentially world-saving devices – possibly even a game-changing invention that lets us travel in time or remote-view our past…

For more about David Sakmyster and his books, including THE PHAROS OBJECTIVE, please visit his sites:
www.sakmyster.com
www.whatwouldyouview.blogspot.com