So what happens if you believe in reincarnation?

The problem with the way the current afterlife scheme works is that it implies that you have to believe in a specific afterlife. So what happens when you believe in reincarnation instead?

Maybe religion works differently in Felarya, where when you have a certain belief it can be made official, and depending on what someone believes in, that's what will happen wen they die. Although that's just my opinion/thoughts.

I'm curious about this too since I may be making a pred who believes in reincarnation... >__> Maybe they have an afterlife that's like a replica of Felarya, and it's almost kinda lime they reincarnated?

This is why I still believe some generic paradise is better than multiple afterlives. Just go there, whether you believe in this or that, and just be glad you're not in hell.

But if we have that we lose the current god system. Anyway nobody can really 'be good enough' to get into heaven by themselves. The current system of multiple divinities making an afterlife for their followers works fine.

Hmm... I always had a concept that you go to heaven/hell for a while depending on how good/bad you were, then for the majority (save for the super good/bad) are then reincarnated, starting over with a "fresh slate" in order to try over again. Otherwise heaven and hell are gonna get overloaded with souls.

Jasconius wrote:

Otherwise heaven and hell are gonna get overloaded with souls.

hell doesn't get overloaded with souls, Mennysann just gets a good meal.
As for heaven, I thought that the more souls were in that particular divinity's domain and there more living believers, the bigger the domain became.

Only Felaryians go to these "versions" right, not everyone in every dimension (as the first Mennysan's story implied)? You'd have to take into account the shear amount of deaths every second if you count all realities, alternate universes, outer plains, etc... and thats not even counting alien life (which strangely no race has yet encountered Felarya, or at least left a major impact on it)

Well, Felarya's a sort of dimensional crossroads, right? While we have seen that it has its own afterlife, isn't it also possible that when disconnected from physical forms, spirits have the potential seep into other worlds?
Or perhaps some souls simply escape the "gravity" of Heaven and Hell and make their ways to new forms? After all, there are ghosts, so we know that not all souls are taken somewhere...

Or is the dilemma how a soul is reincarnated? I always figured that a reincarnated soul just sort of took root in an organism before it got its own soul, like a fetus...

Oh, and while I'm at it, I might as well ramble about a theory of how Heaven and Hell work. In Felarya, it does appear to be fairly random, but supposing there is a sorting system, perhaps there's some particular element of a soul (note: I think of souls like codes made of energy) that holds its last owner's core inclination (the last owner would have altered the core. A formerly evil person could reincarnate to a good one and vice-versa). These aren't necessarily the configurations for "good" and "evil" so much as they are patterns similar to the prevailing essence of Heaven and Hell. After that, when it comes to souls, like attracts like and both realms work like spiritual black holes for their own element.

Apologies if that didn't make any sense to anyone. I blame the TV being inconsiderately blared from the next room over.

itsmeyouidiot wrote:

The problem with the way the current afterlife scheme works is that it implies that you have to believe in a specific afterlife. So what happens when you believe in reincarnation instead?

In one of my stories, a character who does not believe in an afterlife dies. She meets a psychopomp angel who tells her she will probably be placed in an illusion of continued life. She'll forget she ever died, and she will believe that she's simply continuing her life - except that it will be a more idealised version thereof.

So perhaps those who believe in reincarnation are then merely led to believe that they've been reincarnated. Illusions to match their expectations.

Or maybe, after all, they really are reincarnated. I'm sure it can be made to work.