My Problem with Reincarnation, Organized Religion, and Eternity
What happens, when cultural standards are demolished?
Perception is nearly completely conditioned to focus on what the prominent culture and the actual subculture, where a child is brought up, consider dangerous or rewarding. What happens, when cultural and family standards are demolished?
The following might assist with urgent existential considerations at a time, when the next moment for everybody can be the last. What I am saying is strictly logical to me, and is not meant to convince or offend anyone. This is only what I have found realistic in my life, which might or might not serve as inspiration for others.
About 35 years ago, at graduate school, I asked a graduate student from India how come in his culture, people were ignoring the sick and the dying in the street, the answer was, “They are going to reincarnate, anyway.”
It’s hard to argue against the observation that all religious or spiritual practices that have survived in history for more than a few decades were successfully utilized as official ideologies to secure social stability. The rest was persecuted and eradicated. No competing standards have ever been allowed to make it, unless they confirmed the legitimacy of the rulers and convinced the masses that they deserve their fate. In the system of reincarnation, the disenfranchised must accept that they deserve their lot because of their previous lives, assume that if they behave, they will be better off next time, while the idea of having unlimited chances to correct one’s life removes much of the burden of irreversibility for all participants.
Humans can toy around with all kinds of ideas of how to live or whatever, if anything, comes after death, but they rarely know who they are or what they want. As the Romans used to say, “You cannot desire what you do not know,” so humans model even their best possible future after their current experiences within their earthly confines. The bad news is that, if there is a divine perspective, it’s infinitely more complex than humans, so accessing the Divine is only possible through divine revelation, and only as long as it exists. Once humans also realize that they will always remain imperfect even if they are re-born a trillion times, they might also notice their need for divine redemption, assuming they want to believe in something like eternal life. As for me, I cannot envision eternal life, because it doesn’t make sense to me the way I exist: the way I experience myself is strictly bound to time and space, which cannot be eternal. In fact, if I had to generate a credible Hell, I would say it’s this world, in which nobody can die, and everyone’s wishes come true irrespective of the way that affects others or the persons themselves. In a feasible form of eternal life, humans must be re-created and placed into some completely different mode of existence that “eyes have not seen and ears have not heard”:
Of course, it’s always been a question what it means to “love” and, furthermore, “to love God,” but I’ll leave that up to everyone’s decisions. After all, their lives depend on the answers.
The bases that can be used for finding something true, false, right, or wrong, exist in a simple system whose fundamental premises are strictly personal:
What Makes You Think You Are Right?
Sometimes facts speak for themselves. Who or what is going to speak for you?
No matter what, it always boils down to personal experiences, as it did for me:
Both approaches are traps. The “western” one-life-only exerts incredible pressure: you must be a success in your life. If you fail, which is inevitable because you have no experience in success, your net worth goes negative. Problem. If you manage well, but you fail at some time in the future, your peers will do the thing. Check stock quotes and how they depend on whims of “stakeholders”.
This fear of not finding the right balance between failure and success in progress pushes the mind into various directions. Everywhere, except the now. And you focus on work, business, management, at the expense of your family, children, relationships with neighbors and with yourself.
The “eastern” way means “whatever you do, you can do nothing about things as they develop”. If you fail, it comes from your past karma. If you succeed, who knows, maybe you will fail tomorrow. No need to worry. Next lifetime, you will do better. And the now is neglected, although in a different way.
Too much mind, too much time.
Just be here. You cannot predict any future, even a minute. Dragging your past with you is pointless, you can do nothing about it. The now is the only energy alive.
There was a Twilight Zone of exactly that; A criminal and murderer who dies in a shootout with the police. In the afterlife, he has everything he ever wanted: A beautiful penthouse apartment, all the money he wants, beautiful women, he wins every time he gambles. After a few weeks he finds himself going crazy and he says to his guardian angel: "I think I had enough of heaven. I'd like to try the other place." And the angel responds: "What made you think you were in heaven? This IS the other place."