Hey everyone!
In the last post I promised to take a look at 2 questions. Let me answer them right away and go into detail afterwards.
- Why are we here? – We are here to learn and collect experiences.
- Where do we go? – To a place we can't comprehend with our limited senses.
Both questions and their answers are connected to the question 'What happens after death?‘. They interrelate, it’s a huge complex of different things. If you understand ‘Who you are‘ (Part 2) it will be easier to follow. Imagine a couple of pieces that make up a puzzle. Each part is as important as the others. Ideally I'd like to talk about all of them at once but that would go out of control and probably no one could follow anymore. I try to describe each single piece of this puzzle with these posts. The puzzle itself can be seen as a synonym for my belief, view on things, comprehension of the world, of life… call it whatever you think is appropriate. It’s all the same.
Let’s take a closer look on the question ‘What happens after death?’ and my answers to 'Why are we here?’ and 'Where do we go?‘.
There are different views and different answers to the question ‚What happens after death?‘, ‚Is there a life after death?‘. You can find basically 3 different views which made their way through the history of mankind.
-/ 1. Something which has become very popular during the last centuries in our culture: Nothing.
There is nothing after the physical death. This view is established on an world view that says: There’s nothing else besides matter. The human body is just a ‘connection of chemistry’, organic matter, which decays right after death. And nothing else remains. This view of the world goes back to the antiquity and was omnipresent in different cultures. It is very typical for our time, the so called age of enlightment and it is declared to be the ‘right one’. Basically due to natural scientists who mainly affect the view of the world for many people. They believe everything comes to an end after death and ‚we’ are nothing more than this body.
I can't share this view.
2. On the other hand there’s a second opinion which is also very prominent in our cultural area for centuries.
We have 2 parts here and it affects approx 2/3 of all human beings on our planet. 2/3 ! That’s a lot! If we take into account that about 15% of the population is irreligious (mostly China) the combined amount of both religions and their followers is just incredible.
a) The answer of the ‚church‘ and I’m struggling to call it ‚christianity‘ but it's easier so you know what I mean. (‚Christianity‘ is one of the most misunderstood terms in the world, that would be a different topic though).
b) the answer of Islamic culture
Both have something in common (if you break it down, I don’t want to start a fight here :): Judgement day.
Koran, Sure 4:136:
‚O you who have believed, believe in Allah and His Messenger and the Book that He sent down upon His Messenger and the Scripture which He sent down before. And whoever disbelieves in Allah , His angels, His books, His messengers, and the Last Day has certainly gone far astray.‘
Bible, Evangelium of Matthew, 25:31-46:
‚Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels…Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.‘
This view is established on the world view that ‚we are more than just the body’. The body dies but a part of it, the crucial part, survives – the soul. The individual. And this individual soul enters an intermediate zone right after death, some sort of waiting room until judgement day. And right there someone decides if you’re going to spend the rest of eternity in hell and burn in flames or if you are going to spend the rest of eternity in the heavens, next to ‚god‘. I believe many of you have heard this story and were teached it at school, I was as well.
I can’t share this view.
Both views, 1 and 2, are not really comprehensible for me let alone convincing. I don’t feel ‚mortal‘, it’s not like I’d stop to exist right after death.
The answers you get – both christian or islamic - are not convincing. In fact they are very much built on a strange black & white thinking: Either you are a good human being and you’ll enjoy the heavens for eternity or you’re a bad human being and suffer the purgatory flames of hell for eternity.
That’s basically pretty superficial, the world is much more differentiated to say that there are just 2 destinations after death.
3. If you study and research this topic you’ll inevitably stumble upon a 3rd option which is definitely not officially teached at school.
And this is an option I can present with full conviction: Transmigration of souls.
This view basically has one thing in common with option 2: We are more than just our body. There is an eternal and immortal soul. But with the great difference that this soul migrates from your former body to a new one, to collect experiences e.g. on this planet we call earth. (That’s the answer to the question ‘Why are we here?‘) This migration ultimately leads to a new question: What is all this for?
Is it an endless or infinite gathering of experiences or is there a goal at some point?
The goal of the transmigration of souls, the recurrent reincarnation, is to be not born again.
To go back in to the freedom we initially came from, to where this journey started. And to be able to get back you definitely need more than just one life. At least the most of us – most of the souls on this planet. That opens up a complete new horizon.
If you consider you make a mess of 1 life, your current one and you’d have to burn in the purgatory flames for the rest of eternity – that would be pretty unfair. A lifetime is only a few decades and suffer for the rest of eternity? God is never ever so unfair.
Death is definitely no longer an unfathomable mystery of which we have to be afraid of due to lack of knowledge. Death is a doorway and our existence continues on the other side, that’s something I realized very quickly. All of those who believe it stops, all of those who have to believe it or just are afraid to believe something else – it doesn’t stop. How it continues though depends on your current life. There’s no paradise for all of us, there’s no hell for all of us, it’s a continuation of a path, this current life is a part of this path.
YOUR path.
Where do we go?
We can’t comprehend this ‘place‘ or 'situation’ with our limited senses. We don’t have the words to describe it. There are no words to describe it. You’ll be able and allowed to critically examine your past life though, yourself. You are and were responsible for it. You’ll judge your achievements and failures. Judge the chances you took and the ones you’ve missed.
… to be continued in the next post.
Next time I’ll talk in detail about transmigration of souls and reincarnation. Both terms are inseparable. This would go beyond the scope of this post.
Thank you again for your attention,
Have a beautiful sunday!