In reading a fascinating book this weekend - Brian Weiss's "Many Lives, Many Masters" - I was struck by two points in particular. This is an account by a psychiatrist with ivy league credentials and many professional accomplishments who, in treating one woman at his hospital, came to the shocking and possibly career-damaging conclusion that reincarnation was true. Written in the 1980's, it did not ruin his career, but it did add huge momentum to the possibility of previous lives, and helped sketch out the schemata of the meaning of our life (lives). It is probably familiar to the reader: we live to learn, and to learn from our mistakes, so that we can come closer to eternal Love or, as theists would put it, to God. Additionally, he found that many of our problems in this life are hold-overs from previous lives, problems that we have to solve before we can move on to a higher plain.
This account is, by my reckoning, absolute true as far as the author is concerned. He is convinced, and the facts he gives us are stunningly convincing. I am convinced, although I have no wish for many lives - once is enough, in my view, and the Christian belief that the Christ will take us past future pain sits nicely with me. And it occurs to me that the outline he has given us of our cosmic path is too simple, too pat. Is it really that simple? Is our current view of humanistic love really the eternal truth? Do we really pass through gradations of life and dimensions like children at school?
Perhaps so - but for now, on to those two major points taken from the book mentioned in the beginning. One: that we are here, in this dimension (reality) because it suits our moral frame of reference. According to Weiss, there are many dimensions - and ours, which includes pain, sickness, war and death, is exactly what we not only need, but deserve. We are all of the same grade, you and I who are here. Our reality is, indeed, made by ourselves, and for ourselves (or by those he calls the Masters who help us help ourselves).
Oddly (or maybe not, given all my readings of the weird) this is the conclusion that I have come to myself, the long way. We have not God to blame for our miseries, but ourselves, including the facts of this reality, those which are inescapable. In point, though, they are escapable - through our deaths after a perfect life. That perfect life would include perfect love, perfect faith, perfect selflessness - something so impossible for most of us that we do, indeed, need some sort of savior. But it is all ours, this world - we own it and deserve it. And we can change it, or at least our individual circumstances, if we change our basic nature.
Which leads to the second point, one that is deeply disturbing: that we as a species are doomed. This information was given to the author through his patient while in a "resting" zone - that is, while reliving that time between lives when the soul is rested and temporarily healed. It is not knowledge from her own mind, though, but from the aforementioned Masters, those who care for us from a much higher level of knowledge. Said this Master, when asked if there was anything we could do to stop our demise, "No. You are made such that you cannot change enough, and you will destroy yourselves. Other life will continue, but your species will be gone. The work you need to finish will be done in another dimension." I protested inwardly when I read this, but then had to reflect on reality - that our population just 10,000 years ago stood at 10 million, and is now at 7 billion; that it seems we will expand until our resources are insufficient; and that we have poisons and bombs and more than enough hate to use them to finish the job.
And so it is that our flawed souls may be incapable of working through their troubles in this reality. This news is blunt, but could well be true. We have progressed technically and, in many ways morally, but could that be enough? The Master says no, and it is hard to refute him. But we have heard of the end of world before, just as many civilizations have throughout time, and we are here, still. For Christians, there is the eschaton, however, the final apocalypse before the "elect" are taken from this world, or dimension. For the perennialists, those who grasp all the great religions in one intellectual embrace, we simply will live out the clock of our "age" and start all over again - as some Eastern religions say as well.
But I am still paying my taxes, and will not put on sneakers and drink cyanide with the next visible comet. My son has told me that not one of his friends believes that we will be around in one hundred years, and the darkness in them all, in their generation, is palpable. But we do not know our time; only that this time will come to each of us individually, as we understand the pattern of life and death. Beyond that...I will leave it to the Masters. But the reflection of our souls in our reality does show a striking need for personal reform. No one can honestly deny that. FK
This account is, by my reckoning, absolute true as far as the author is concerned. He is convinced, and the facts he gives us are stunningly convincing. I am convinced, although I have no wish for many lives - once is enough, in my view, and the Christian belief that the Christ will take us past future pain sits nicely with me. And it occurs to me that the outline he has given us of our cosmic path is too simple, too pat. Is it really that simple? Is our current view of humanistic love really the eternal truth? Do we really pass through gradations of life and dimensions like children at school?
Perhaps so - but for now, on to those two major points taken from the book mentioned in the beginning. One: that we are here, in this dimension (reality) because it suits our moral frame of reference. According to Weiss, there are many dimensions - and ours, which includes pain, sickness, war and death, is exactly what we not only need, but deserve. We are all of the same grade, you and I who are here. Our reality is, indeed, made by ourselves, and for ourselves (or by those he calls the Masters who help us help ourselves).
Oddly (or maybe not, given all my readings of the weird) this is the conclusion that I have come to myself, the long way. We have not God to blame for our miseries, but ourselves, including the facts of this reality, those which are inescapable. In point, though, they are escapable - through our deaths after a perfect life. That perfect life would include perfect love, perfect faith, perfect selflessness - something so impossible for most of us that we do, indeed, need some sort of savior. But it is all ours, this world - we own it and deserve it. And we can change it, or at least our individual circumstances, if we change our basic nature.
Which leads to the second point, one that is deeply disturbing: that we as a species are doomed. This information was given to the author through his patient while in a "resting" zone - that is, while reliving that time between lives when the soul is rested and temporarily healed. It is not knowledge from her own mind, though, but from the aforementioned Masters, those who care for us from a much higher level of knowledge. Said this Master, when asked if there was anything we could do to stop our demise, "No. You are made such that you cannot change enough, and you will destroy yourselves. Other life will continue, but your species will be gone. The work you need to finish will be done in another dimension." I protested inwardly when I read this, but then had to reflect on reality - that our population just 10,000 years ago stood at 10 million, and is now at 7 billion; that it seems we will expand until our resources are insufficient; and that we have poisons and bombs and more than enough hate to use them to finish the job.
And so it is that our flawed souls may be incapable of working through their troubles in this reality. This news is blunt, but could well be true. We have progressed technically and, in many ways morally, but could that be enough? The Master says no, and it is hard to refute him. But we have heard of the end of world before, just as many civilizations have throughout time, and we are here, still. For Christians, there is the eschaton, however, the final apocalypse before the "elect" are taken from this world, or dimension. For the perennialists, those who grasp all the great religions in one intellectual embrace, we simply will live out the clock of our "age" and start all over again - as some Eastern religions say as well.
But I am still paying my taxes, and will not put on sneakers and drink cyanide with the next visible comet. My son has told me that not one of his friends believes that we will be around in one hundred years, and the darkness in them all, in their generation, is palpable. But we do not know our time; only that this time will come to each of us individually, as we understand the pattern of life and death. Beyond that...I will leave it to the Masters. But the reflection of our souls in our reality does show a striking need for personal reform. No one can honestly deny that. FK
RSS Feed