Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays I believe in past and future lives. The rest of the time I’m happily agnostic. It can be a lot more interesting not knowing than thinking you do.

As for old souls… it’s just another form of vanity.

well, I have opinions and thoughts… I wanted to leave a comment to let you know how much I liked this one.

after reading the first comment I feel prejudged for anything I might say short of agreement.

Have had many snippets of past lives come in various ways. Once I dreamt I was lying on a bed soaking up sunshine streaming through a window - I looked down at my body and saw a dark skinned male body (in white clothes) with hairy, muscular arms. I was so stunned, I quickly jumped out of the dream.
A friend once healed several past deaths of mine via a pendulum. Also once under hypnotherapy I received information that my present guides were my parents in a past life.
These days I don’t persue this kind of information any more. I accept I ‘may’ have had past lives. It has been said to me that this life is like a day in school, and we are all to expect many.
All these snippets may simply identify that the soul lives on.
As to Old souls/Young souls - I simply don’t know or see how it matters - we all have something to offer regardless. Even with proof of past lives the challenge is to live fully in the present.

I believe it, but have no personal evidence to support that belief. I have never had a regression, and have no memories of past lives. I figure if there were issues in my past lives that I didn’t work out, they’re still with me in this one, and if there were issues I dealt with I don’t need to exhume them now.

I don’t know where I stand on the past life thing. I generally lean towards believing just about anything metaphysical by default; but hesitantly. Half of me believes, and half of me tells the other half it’s being silly. I have no problem with the old soul/new soul thing; I just don’t use those terms myself. I do know that if I have had past lives; most of them have been male. Being a chick seems so novel to me a great deal of the time.

I do believe in old souls.
I accept many people feel this is superstition. I accept it because it doesn’t bother me if people don’t agree with me on spiritual matters. I thoroughly enjoy hearing what other people think. (Unless they are rude and beligerent and then I make a quick exit). And I know that at the end of the day, I’m going to die and go off somewhere and I may meet you later, but the journey to that place is going to be made by me and me alone.

Michelle - thanks for sayin’ so. I like it when my dipshit-ness is appreciated! There is nothing finer for Elsa!!

I’ve been trying to reconcile human sapience with my understanding of the universe for awhile now. The universe is casual but human beings don’t behave in casual manners. This is not to say that volition is free from causality but that choice does exist in a casual way, that we exercise free will (compatibilism).

Another thing is that an integral part of sapience is creativity. Human beings create and sustain things that don’t conform to scientific realism all the time. I’m not just talking about creativity in the sense of art or music, I mean social constructs, different styles of coffee mugs, how an individual elaborates and responds - humans do it all the time as individuals and as groups.

Now here is the stickler. I know that who I am is caused by my brain. A surgeon can crack open a skull and cut out cognition, memory, language skills etc.. And once it’s gone it’s gone - people don’t recover from a lobotomy.

With these casual restraints on human experience and yet the readily apparent fact that I and other people not only exercise free will but also spontaneous creativity, I’m left with personally accepting that spirit does exist.

The human brain has evolved to the point where sapience exists. I believe the brain acts something like an antenna for souls. Allowing souls to register in the physical universe and proof of this is human volition and creative potential.

Now souls cant exist in the transient universe due to the tree of life - from microscopic organisms to sponges to fish to amphibians to reptiles to mammals to humans, so to speak. Because the way that life survives is through self propagation. You or I come from a long line of life that leads back to that first single cell organism, each of us uniquely. I mean in one form the evolutionary tree of life is the study of common ancestors and specication. Every Homo Sapien one this planet can be traced back to a common ancestor. The point of this diatribe is that if a soul is defined by sapience then a chimp or a fish cant have one since they aren’t sapient. And a coupling doesn’t pass on their souls to their child. A child is a new person that makes its own choices, creates its own future. It is not the sum total of its parentage.

So I’m left with accepting that souls exist metaphysically outside time and space. And as souls are timeless and universal having one life to live doesn’t make any sense to me. So I believe in reincarnation. Souls will continue to register phenomenally as long as there is a system (ie human brain) in place that can retain sapience.

The universe is casual.
Human choice and creativity exist contradictory to casuality.
Human choice and creativity are integral for sapience.
The human brain is a systemic physical casual object critical for sapience to emerge.
Emmergence is metaphysical.
Therefore sapience is a transcendential (metaphysical) phenomenon that exists outside the space-time continuum (aka the universe).
By virtue of existing outside the space-time continuum, human sapience is partially timeless and universal (the other definition of universal, the non-spatial one).
This timeless and universal aspect is whats known as the soul or spirit.
And as the soul is timeless and universal it is not contigant on life, even ones own life, and can reicarnate at whim.

Soooooooooooo yes I believe in reincarnation. But “old” and “young” souls are only applicable to the present life experience. Souls exist timelessly and universally. You may be an “old soul” in this life but a “young” soul in your next life, as it pretains to each life experience for whatever your soul is incarnating for. And more importantly, as far as the soul is concerned, it experiences both lives (and every life incarnation) simulataneously! Remember time only exists so that everything doesn’t happen at exactly the same moment.

Anyway I doubt I’ll ever stop thinking about it but this about as far I’ve gotten so far on the subject.