Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Save It For Later

You can't take it with you, but....
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This Idea is for any Religion that promotes reincarnation. It is also thoroughly half-baked, as you will quickly notice.

Basically, in reincarnation philosophy, your soul will eventually acquire a new baby body, and you will grow up not knowing anything about a previous life. For believers, though, deep hypnosis supposedly can bring up past-life information. And occasionally there are reports of young children claiming to remember stuff that turns out to be verifiable.

Well, what of the stuff you accumulated in your most recent past life? If you knew you were likely to be born again, wouldn't you like to claim it, instead of having to collect it from scratch all over again? I'm talking mostly about stuff that has sentimental value, not the kind of stuff that the typical grave-robber would be interested in. Your journal or diary, for example. Maybe a collection of books or magazines. Favorite toys.

So, as you approach the end of the present life, instead of buying a plot of land to hold a worthless corpse, you plan on burying a time capsule there, instead. Well-sealed against deterioration of its contents, of course.

Later, after being reborn, and learning who you used to be, all you need to do is prove it enough that you can then claim ownership of the time capsule's contents. That's the Half-Baked part of this Idea, of course!

Vernon, Feb 03 2015

Dogbert's version of this Idea http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-08-28
He seems to be assuming that you get reborn shortly after you die. But what if a century goes by, first? Dogbert probably isn't going to live that long.... [Vernon, Aug 28 2016]

[link]






       I am, and I do.   

       Some popular series of detective private eye novels have equally strange premises.   

       Examples: Dexter the Medical Examiner who is also a serial killer. Didius Falco is private dick for the Roman Emperor.   

       A time capsule detective working for Citibank, Chase, or LLoyds seems almost tame. All you need is a past life detection gimmick that is half way believable.
popbottle, Feb 04 2015
  

       Sooner or later your legs give way, you hit the ground
Save it for later don't run away and let me down.
Sooner or later you hit the deck you get found out
Save it for later don't run away and let me down, you let me down.
normzone, Feb 04 2015
  

       Nice. [+]
Voice, Feb 04 2015
  

       So not a full reincarnation. Just a half baked one, dragged down by baggage.
wjt, Feb 05 2015
  

       [+]. I think it makes sense to do this even if you don't believe in reincarnation because in a way that stuff is more you than your body is. How about a method of disposing of the dead which is utterly unsentimental about the bodies but sentimental about the personal and cultural impact of the personality? So you just use the body for medical purposes and compost it or something, but revere the diaries and pottery.   

       Regarding reincarnation itself, it always seems odd to me that people seem to remember geographically and historically local lives in the past rather than a random selection of lives throughout space and time. The passage of time is just something we experience in our own lives, surely? Why would it apply to the non-living phase of experience? Why don't we remember a life as a lobster-like lifeform living in an ocean of liquid ammonia somewhere in the Whirlpool Galaxy a few billion years in the future or something? Why is it always Cleopatra?
nineteenthly, Feb 06 2015
  

       I have this recurring nightmare that I've died in my sleep and been reincarnated as a middle-aged scientist in Cambridge who suffers from recurring nightmares. And every damn time I wake up, it turns out to be true.
MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 28 2016
  
      
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