Inasmuch as I talk about the social imagination as the social reality, the individual reality is not to be misunderstood. I am not saying that there is no individual in that phenomenon. Its true we are a composite of all social encounters and interaction but at the end of the day, all of information defines you... who you are and are not largely based on all the agreements by choice that you made from day one of your life... including recognizing your own mother's voice.
And, as a 'singular' collective, at the end of the day and as you move into the next day, you are still an individual and a member of something much bigger. Your body is a whole and yet your hand is different from your foot. Without either one, your body would not be the whole of who you are. So, why would reincarnation be necessary in that context? It would not because if the one changes or is remade in order to transmigrate, we would first have to consider the whole first. The whole of society and even of all human history.
Now, the Greek Philosopher Plato saw himself as a spiritual man and had many ideas on religion and theology. First and foremost, Plato believed in reincarnation. He taught that human souls had previously existed in a perfect world and there enjoyed the presence of God.
Somehow these souls committed some sin and fell from God's presence and were placed into physical bodies on Earth as a punishment. The purpose of life is to correct the soul's initial mistake and to return to God.
This could only be done through the attainment of knowledge, and since God is omnipotent Plato believed it ridiculous to assume that one's soul could gain enough knowledge to return to God in one lifetime.
In Psychology today, a very important point was made against reincarnation. Given what we now know about the enormous size and power of the unconscious—about just how much of "us" lies beneath the surface of our conscious minds—we have to admit that the defining core of who we are may, in fact, be located mostly, if not entirely, beneath our awareness (our conscious minds being mostly spectators and interpreters of our unconscious selves).
But what does even this mean? That our unconscious beliefs and habits define who we are? Does our conscious awareness, the values we're able to articulate to ourselves, have nothing to do with our identity? And what about our memories of who we've been? Without those, would not some essential part of the self be lost?
Other philosophies (Buddhism i.e.) argue the sense that we even have a self is an illusion, that despite our feeling that a unique something lies at the core of what we are, such a something doesn't, in fact, exist.
However, there has to be something of who we are and are not within our psyche in order to be a conscious social actor. This ‘constant’ about us is our sense that something about us exists or remains constant, and that who we are is comprised both of stable parts (personality, beliefs, attitudes, and so on) and unstable parts (retrievable memories, moods, interests, and so on)—and that to change any one of them (whether in the realm of the conscious or unconscious) is to change who we are in proportion to their relative stability (changing a belief, for example—like a belief in God—would represent a major change; changing a mood, on the other hand, merely a minor one).
COMMENTARY: I will first address Plato’s mistake in believing in reincarnation. 1- Plato did not take into account the state of entropy that man exists in – the second law of thermal dynamics. 2- Plato did not take into account the idea of the psyche as we just read above and how that ‘self’ would ‘mess up’ any new self in context of reincarnation … as he thought was necessary in order for man to get back to God.
Why? Because, past lives have baggage that would cause a problem for ‘moving forward’. The same baggage would also cause problems for Buddhist ideas of the non-existent self. Whether a single self or wider collective self, it’s still a life. Every life, whether ‘our own’ or a collective conscious contains residual information that would not just go away every ‘new loop’. Unless, there is someone to erase it.
Now, why would reincarnation not be necessary for Christians? Because, the living God died once and for all so that this life is the one and only one we need to live. But, even if it were possible and had been occurring before God’s incarnation (Jesus Christ His Son); we know that Christians are defined by God’s incarnation, His life, death and resurrection.
We believe that through one ‘man’ (God-Man) all sins were forgiven once and for all; thus, after Christ resurrected, reincarnation, would no longer be necessary. Jesus (God) broke that vicious circle of the sin nature recycling and attempting to move forward but forward how? Who determines what forward is?
When God (the Son, Jesus Christ, the Word) entered in only one lifetime was needed to be restored to God the Creator and His eternal Kingdom / eternal life.
If not for Jesus Christ, it would be ridiculous to assume that one’s soul could gain enough knowledge to return to God in just one lifetime.
But knowledge of what? All that God is/knows and does. First, all knowledge in this fallen world, is a mere fraction of all the knowledge that belongs to God.
All truth/knowledge like the flesh are subject to entropy – decay. Which means that all flesh and knowledge/information is necessarily the winding down of energy and matter and time included as a constraint of the fallen world’s death date. Thus, we could never keep returning to a state of entropy as all previous knowledge which was closer to the truth would be already lost.
Now, in this fallen condition, we could never know all things anyway. Adam knew all he needed to know but he sinned by not believing that he did and he questioned it. Sin is questioning and doubting God and His authority, His right as the Supreme Being.
Perhaps, we could imagine that sin would be winding down and that as it does, we would become further from sin and closer to the truth… closer to the knowledge of God. But, only to be closer to Him in an appropriate relationship as His creation. That He is God. He alone is all knowledge. Thus, we cannot nor do we need to know/have or contain all knowledge. That is for God alone. Trying to be God is not possible for His creation. That was the sin (lie) that the first man fell into.
The social imagination of one is the same as it is for the whole from which it sprang but yet it is different. It is as different as a branch on a tree that is way up at the top compared to one down lower or one in the middle or one closer to the trunk. Yet, it is the same thing... all branches make one tree. And it is the one tree that caused all branches. It would not be necessary for the one branch to be reincarnated unless the tree was first. And, if the tree was first, why even recognize and or discuss the reincarnation of the branches...?
In the One there are many and the One is always the many. There is no reason to be on a repetitive path to gain what is already known... there is only one path - Jesus Christ!
ONLINE SOURCES ~ https://epubs.utah.edu/index.php/historia/article/view/578#:~:text=Although%20the%20idea%20of%20reincarnation,as%20Valentinus%20and%20Basilides%20of
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-in-world/201210/the-problem-reincarnation
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