Trivia. On this:
Hardly surprising. Anyone/any human population pondering what happens post-death usually tends to conclude variations on that a. 'surely we must go on, this can't be all there is/my consciousness can't terminate/what's the meaning or purpose of the accumulation of experience otherwise, etc' which may or may not be valid musings, or b. 'we don't go on, there's only evidence of death, no afterlife, let's not make stuff up about the unknown, meaning: cessation of life ends identity/consciousness', or the more curious, heathen but less common c. 'this is the inner dream, and with death we actually keep waking into an outer/encapsulating dream, which is the truer reality, until we unpeel the final onion layer/wake into the final, true reality' type notion, basically: we're 'dreaming' and death awakens us into 'reality' (and indeed, this whole world/kosmos is also seen as the Dream of the Dreamer).
And then a is split further into: 1. we go to some permanent hereafter, at its simplest it leads to notions of 'we can bury/burn/mummify our belongings - even our bones - with us' to take into the afterlife, or 2. some indivisible essence of ourselves keeps re-appearing in new forms, in which case it makes sense not to get too attached to stuff we won't be taking with us when we die, or 3. a [simple to complex] combination of 1 and 2, and a bit of c. The latter notions then derive further, more complex notions, like on what 'essence' is guaranteeably preserved/what we *do* take with us when we die, a definition of fundamental minimum/irreducible identity of sorts. So some people concluded that transmigration is only within the community, others think it happens only within ethno-geography but within any community or species therein, the general notion of all 'living'/sentient things known to one's *own* cosmology, and - in far more modern views - that tomorrow we may born among E.T.s or at the least in foreign earthly lands never known to ancestors. And perhaps day-after-tomorrow we'll amend it to being born even as artifice or other 'unsentient' and deathless thing [and why not really, since in Shinto at least, everything has a spirit].
(More unique/unexpected/non-straightforward developments combined b with a variation on 2, but nowhere appears to have done so originally/without precursor.)
Enz.
Ancient human communities already had notions of transmigration and developed on it to various degrees and often quite in depth. That the Hellenes or Hindus or Taoists etc logically did so too is hardly remarkable or revelatory. (Also, that such might not be the *only* view concerning 'the afterlife' for (any of) these or other heathen communities, or even the primary one, or even the most common one, would also not be remarkable.)
And repeating the only bit worth reading (I didn't write it) in these last two posts:
Quote:Such views [as transmigration], as also monism, are terribly common (but not the sole views) among ancient established heathenisms - in general lines of course, as specifics differ.
Hardly surprising. Anyone/any human population pondering what happens post-death usually tends to conclude variations on that a. 'surely we must go on, this can't be all there is/my consciousness can't terminate/what's the meaning or purpose of the accumulation of experience otherwise, etc' which may or may not be valid musings, or b. 'we don't go on, there's only evidence of death, no afterlife, let's not make stuff up about the unknown, meaning: cessation of life ends identity/consciousness', or the more curious, heathen but less common c. 'this is the inner dream, and with death we actually keep waking into an outer/encapsulating dream, which is the truer reality, until we unpeel the final onion layer/wake into the final, true reality' type notion, basically: we're 'dreaming' and death awakens us into 'reality' (and indeed, this whole world/kosmos is also seen as the Dream of the Dreamer).
And then a is split further into: 1. we go to some permanent hereafter, at its simplest it leads to notions of 'we can bury/burn/mummify our belongings - even our bones - with us' to take into the afterlife, or 2. some indivisible essence of ourselves keeps re-appearing in new forms, in which case it makes sense not to get too attached to stuff we won't be taking with us when we die, or 3. a [simple to complex] combination of 1 and 2, and a bit of c. The latter notions then derive further, more complex notions, like on what 'essence' is guaranteeably preserved/what we *do* take with us when we die, a definition of fundamental minimum/irreducible identity of sorts. So some people concluded that transmigration is only within the community, others think it happens only within ethno-geography but within any community or species therein, the general notion of all 'living'/sentient things known to one's *own* cosmology, and - in far more modern views - that tomorrow we may born among E.T.s or at the least in foreign earthly lands never known to ancestors. And perhaps day-after-tomorrow we'll amend it to being born even as artifice or other 'unsentient' and deathless thing [and why not really, since in Shinto at least, everything has a spirit].
(More unique/unexpected/non-straightforward developments combined b with a variation on 2, but nowhere appears to have done so originally/without precursor.)
Enz.
Ancient human communities already had notions of transmigration and developed on it to various degrees and often quite in depth. That the Hellenes or Hindus or Taoists etc logically did so too is hardly remarkable or revelatory. (Also, that such might not be the *only* view concerning 'the afterlife' for (any of) these or other heathen communities, or even the primary one, or even the most common one, would also not be remarkable.)
And repeating the only bit worth reading (I didn't write it) in these last two posts:
Quote:Quote:[...] the neo-Platonist Porphyry considered Athene in the Cave of the Nymphs to have taught Odysseus detachment from earthly goods and expounded the doctrine of transmigration.(The above is written by a Brit non-Hellene.)
[...]
No less than his philosophical opponents, Porphyry wrenches his author's text, presuming in him a knowledge of ancient mystery cults which is incompatible with the whole tenor of the poem. I take it that in the Homeric world some knowledge of these things had survived, but that in the poet's [color="#800080"][Homer's][/color] own environment it had almost altogether faded. The Odyssey keeps many vestiges of older traditional religion -- one would be perplexed if it did not. The Cave of the Nymphs with its human and its divine entrance is indeed a natural place for initiation; the four paradisal streams on Calypso's island belong of course to ancient cosmogony, but for Homer these things seem no more numinous than [color="#800080"]<analogy irrelevant and unfamiliar to present audience>[/color].
[...]