NOTE: This is an experimental idea, not subject to scientific tests or surveys. This article is not religious; it merely offers a new outlook on life and human psychology.

While everyone ponders the question of what happens after life, not many have stopped to wonder; what comes before life? First of all, it must be assumed that a soul exists, which, by all scientific standards is hard to prove, but is widely accepted among human beings due to our ‘self-awareness.’ A soul, for the purpose of this article, will be defined as an outer-body awareness of self which shares certain common personality traits and common memories, however faint. This concept is used in the fields of theology and psychology, and it will be assumed to be a correct, proven scientific theory here.

The human assumption is that the ‘soul’, in contrast to the body, which decays, is eternal. If the soul is eternal, then, rationally, it exists before and after the duration of a human life. Therefore, our essence of self, a synonym for ‘soul’, is recycled in some manner.

Therein comes the concept of “past lives.” A past life is not someone identical, or even similar to the present person. Past lives are a concept common to Hindu religions and other beliefs. However, they can be looked at from an objective point of view, rather than connected to mysticism or cult theories. A past life is merely another individual (yes, individual), with who you happen to be sharing a soul.

However, since “eternal” is a vague and dubious term (and hard to be proven, at any rate), it can be assumed that there is some beginning of a mega-life (a term signifying a full life-cycle of a soul, rather than simply one human life.)

By that logic, people of the same age can be significantly older or younger than one another in terms of the ‘mega-life.’ Each mega-life can be seen, by comparison, as a ladder, in which each human ‘awareness’ starts at the lowest rung of the ladder, and climbs up with each life.

The masterpieces of humanity that we call ‘geniuses’ are the oldest of these recycled souls. From the gathered memories of each stage of eternity (in one direction, only), they combine it all to become the greatest in their genres—or even in several, such as in Da Vinci’s case. However, a disproportionate number of them, such as Sigmund Freud, Edgar Allen Poe, and Albert Einstein, are not well adapted mentally or socially to the everyday aspects of human life. The question is, why? Are there expiration dates not only on milk cartons, but on souls as well?

If the spirit of each one of us is perfected with every cycle (even as new souls start from zero), why, then, is the world not overflowing with geniuses? The world mostly maintains the same, small count of people extraordinary in their abilities beyond the normal.

Think of souls as recycling—literally. The paper created from trees is the strongest, and after the same paper is recycled several times, the fiber eventually falls apart. Therefore, the most stable paper is original paper—made directly from trees.

The “young” possess a larger vigor for life, although less of a consciousness of the overall picture of life. At the early stages of the mega-life, human beings cannot grasp the concepts deeply enough to influence the world around them, but easily succeed in achieving personal happiness. By the time the cycle reaches the “genius” stage, an epitome of mental ability, the “soul” is tired from its many cycles. This contributes to an overall trend of mental breakdowns, fragile social lives, and other problems. Therefore, these old souls are (rarely) reused once, and then—they die.

Theoretically, if the initial “pulp” is strong enough—and if the intermediate carriers of the soul do not make significant progress, a soul can be eternal. Why bother, however, when there are always new trees to grind up?