Consider the difference between the two types of globemaps of planet Earth, the physical and the political. The first is a marvelous wiggly affair, b… - Alan Watts

In sum, then, I have tried to show that reincarnation has very strong theoretical probability, without resorting to the paranormal evidence and even without being able to explain the transmission of memories. I have carefully avoided bringing in the moral and retributive arguments, since they have little force, and I do not find a person’s fortunes or misfortunes explained by a former life. I find the explanation postponed, as in all attempts to explain the present by the past. But it is basically an intellectual block to find it incredible that you have more than one life. It is just as incredible that we have this one. It is still more incredible to suppose that what has happened once cannot happen again.

We learn nothing of very much importance when it can be explained entirely in terms of past experience. If it were possible to understand all things in terms of what we know already, we could convey the sense of color to a blind man with nothing but sound, taste, touch, and smell.

As soon as we freed ourselves from the mirage of hurrying time — which was nothing more than the projection of our own impatience — we were alive again, as in childhood, to the miracles and ecstasies of ordinary life. You would be astounded at the beauty of our homes, our furniture, our clothes, and even our pots and pans, for we have the time to make most of these things ourselves, and the sense of reality to see that they — rather than money — constitute genuine wealth.