[LongTimeLurker72]

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I always liked the idea of living my life over and over again. For the longest time I tried to argue that with an oscillating universe this would have to happen.

The other idea of spending existance as each and every creature always seemed fair but way too vast to comprehend.

I've tossed around both those ideas as well, and if there is anything I'd roll with one of those two.

Regretablly I think they're way to hopeful and that when I die I won't even be aware of it, my body will become mud and the planet will go on spinning. Unless we can hurry up and fix that whole aging thing.

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Actually, in reality that IS what would happen even under this theory, that in "real" time (which is relative to perception and therefore debatable you could even call it that) your body would indeed become mud, it would be all over. But in YOUR mind, you just start over. The ONE thing that makes me think this is more than just wishful thinking is because of time being relative. Time only marches on if these is someone around to observe it marching on. If you are NOT around to observe it, time does not continue from your perspective. Your mind can only see that time which it exists in. As I said before, it goes back to the beginning not because it CAN, but because it MUST. And you living your life over and over is actually an illusion (though indistinguishable from the real thing). The rest of the universe will have moved on, but your mind continues to experience the time that was your life because time is not linear. In fact, you could argue that the rest of the universe has only appeared to "move on" to those people still alive, as only they perceive time as forward-moving.

Geez. . .this is a really, really hard concept to explain. I sat here trying to type out something explaining how relative time means no end, and I've ended up deleting and rewriting it several times and STILL haven't found a good way of saying what I mean. Maybe the best way to put it is that relative time does not mean eternal life, but a life without end. Think of it like the physical universe, where space is curved. The universe is finite, yet it has no boundaries, no ends. Since space and time are intertwined, the same must hold true for time, and therefore us.