Why thank you very much for a mild and respectful opening riposte EZL.
I have never professed a belief in past lives nor have I ever scorned the idea
And...
True scientific proof of past lives is not possible. No matter how well I could identify my former ast life as a reporter and foreign correspondent for a major New York paper, graduate of a New England college it would not prove that it was I who lived that life. In fact all of us who have significant and profound spiritual experiences are in awe of how these consistently elude either scientific or forensic proof
Prior to Scientology, I liked the ideas of Hinduism, specifically the idea that everyone is on a path to enlightenment, on a route back to Godhead. You can't prevent yourself from reaching back to Godhead - you can only delay it by not learning your spiritual lessons quickly, but eventually we will all be enlightened and infinitely blissful.
When I got into Scientology, I learned that it was absolutely vital to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible, because "in all the endless trillenia" blah blah blah and "you will be around for eternity. It will be a good eternity or a bad one. For you, my friend, I hope it is a good one". This is essentially a fire and brimstone scenario. Do what we say, or you will burn in hell, FOREVER.
If it's true, then we are all fucked for leaving Scientology. That is why people put up with so much nonsense for decades in Scientology, because, what are a few decades compared to an eternity of agony at the bottom of the tone scale, total failure. It's the same reason people cling to Abrahamic religions, long past the point where they have stopped REALLY believing them.
But if that eschatology is FALSE, then it is REALLY pernicious. Because it has people terrified that, if they leave Scientology, they will suffer forever at the bottom of the tone scale.
If the choice for what is true is no future lives exist, versus they do and the Scientology (as opposed to the Hindu) story of their enfoldment is true, then I would prefer the former to be true. If you are a one-lifetime being, then no matter what your suffering, it will come to an end after three-score-and=ten years, and you will NEVER suffer again after that. But if the Scientology reality is true, then what do you have to look forward to? You might even get up the Bridge (supposing one actually existed), and exist for a time at a super-high level on the tone scale. But the odds are that eventually, even if it takes trillions of years, you will end up sliding back down the tone scale, and eventually bounce along its bottom, destined to stay there for the rest of eternity. After all, we did that slide once before, and the odds are (even with a Scientology education) that we will do it again, because thetans will be thetans, selfish bastards that they eventually always are. So ultimately, I don't think the Scientology picture is a very optimistic view of eternity.
If reincarnation does exist, then let's hope, for all our sakes, that the truth is something closer to the Hindu view, that spiritual beings are ineluctably attracted to the "top of the Bridge", not the bottom of it, regardless of what you or anybody else does on the way.
Oh, and if we ARE all one-lifetime beings, then fuck global warming - I couldn't give a fuck. And if Monsanto want to wipe out the bee population, and the Chinese want to hunt the tiger to extinction (because, hell, tiger cock is much better than Viagra), then let them get on with it. My great-great-great grandkids will just have to fend for themselves, like I had to. Hehehe.