I don't think about it much. I'm pretty sure that if reincarnation does happen we won't be aware of it, so it really makes no difference.

Seriously, I think we can't entirely dismiss the possibility. There is something beyond physical reality, even if we haven't got an idea of what it is. Have you ever watched your own room from another dimension? Have you ever felt the sensation of not being " all there"? Have you ever felt that your guardian angel is here near you? It's all in our brain, you can say. But what if our brain has somewhat caught some whiff of "Otherness"?

I'm hardly ever "all here" cos I'm a dopey moo most of the time, but I don't think there is anything in that!

I am very skeptical about religious people who claim they have been "touched by jesus" and what have you. I've been there. I was young and vulnerable, and when you are in a room filled with euphoria its very easy to get carried away, I remember being sure I had just been visited by the Holy Spirit. Went all warm and felt completely euphoric. In those mass evangelical gatherings they sometimes have in the US and Africa -- if you don't know what I'm talking about, they fill a stadium with people and have a preacher and a choir, etc., etc. -- they often claim to heal people, people speak in tongues and every one feels touched by Christ. It's a mass hypnotism. The incessant talking by the preacher, the excitement of people near you and the chanting of the choir and the music hypnotizes everyone. And that's science. They've proved it. FREAKY!

The only really out-of-body feelings I've had have been drug-related (mostly legal drugs!), as I've had lots of general anesthetics and a bad reaction to a opiate-based painkiller (apparently I'm quite sensitive to opiates, he he) where I really tripped out. Quite frankly I didn't enjoy any of the experiences and wouldn't want to have an out-of-body type experience by choice!

Until a few years ago, I consider most kinds of religious or spiritual experiences people described to be bullshit, because people were just faking themselves into thinking it. However, after I became more open-minded to experiences and began doing energy work, I could understand the reality of those experiences.

I don't have much interest in Christianity or any other organized religion, because such systems don't work for me, but I believe they use the same energy, so people can heal one another and experience invisible power based on their faith. Even if such experiences are taking place in a system which I might not value too much b/c it's repressive, rigid, narrow-minded, it doesn't mean there isn't honest value in it.

Even now, when I occasionally visit a church (Methodist, Catholic, whatever), I don't connect with the beliefs, but I can connect with the singing and tell there in is fact a spirit living among the congregation. It's that camaderie/brothership you speak of, that sentiment of "We are human, we are alive, we have hopes, please be kind to us, spirits of the world."

I think if I found a belief system that I was happy with I might follow it.

What I don't like is that feeling of being a slave to a certain being. Having to follow every thing exactly for fear of being outcast when your time comes. Somehow that just doesn't seem the right way to live to me. I think that you should have the strength to believe in your own morals and choices. If a deity existed that helped me in that and not force me into a particular way of seeing things, then I might be convinced.

I also treasure my uniqueness of thought -- I want the freedom to be able to form opinions of my own about things. I don't want some organizationtelling me that being gay is wrong or being a woman prevents you from holding certain offices etc (those are just two examples from Christianity). We should have the freedom to be ourselves -- I guess that's what I dislike about many religions.

Although I don't have any interest in church, the church I grew up attending was very good at certain things -- chiefly teaching tolerance and understanding for fellow human beings and inspiring people to try their best to be good people and do good things on earth. Hell, my own minister told me there wasn't a hell, so how bad was that?! He said that all that talk about Heaven and Hell was something devised to make people live in fear and feel bad about themselves, but that in the end, everybody would go to the same place and be embraced by God.

(Did I mention that I have quite warped view of Methodism, based on this sort of liberalism of the church I attended? And that this church is "reconciling and welcoming" to gays and supports the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage?)

Anyway, I've trashed religion many times myself and absolute loath religious conservatives and their aims to foist their beliefs on the public via government and law, but I would say, there has to be tolerance well and acknowledgement that they are not completely "broken."

I won't get into this argument, I liked the death one better. Your list seems to me silly because you could keep going back and back to a time w/o organized religion and you'd wind up thousands of years ago. Everything in history is inextricably tied together and you can't take out one element without it affecting the whole, so saying "without organized religion" such and such wouldn't have happened... It doesn't work really.

Wendy, I agree with you; while it's easy for us "enlightened" souls to point and laugh at all the ills that organized religion is responsible for (and they are many), it has brought some good things, too. If attending a church, synagogue or temple keeps a child (or an adult) from getting into trouble, then that's a small victory. As you mentioned, the preservation of culture by the clerics during the Dark Ages is a larger one.

There are many different paths to follow; if the ultimate end -- basically, the Golden Rule, "Do unto others..." -- is the same, who are we to say which path is the sole correct one? Indeed, if the end result is right, are any of the paths provably wrong?

As for life after death, I find it hard to get excited about it. "Who cares?" sums up my feelings, too. I don't need an afterlife or a reincarnation to goad me into trying to do my best, or being nice to other people; to me it just comes with the job description.

I think just the idea of not getting into Heaven was supposed to be enough of a motivation to follow Christ -- unfortunately it didn't really work that way so they invented Hell.

Some interesting history about death and "passing over" can be found in the ancient texts of: Tibetan Buddhism, the Tibetan Book of the Dead; and there is also, the Egyptian Book of the Dead; the Hindu's and Shavite's, have wonderful stories of the great dark Lord of death, Yama. Native American and Aboriginal tribes also honor the time of transition in magnificent ways.

It seems like all the Spiritual Paths of this world, have quite similar tales about death, if one takes the time to sift through the dogma, the theme remains; honor others, honor yourself, be kind, always, seek the light!

Now, I figure there must be some reason all these notions came about and have had power for so long.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says: