Reading the comments, and continuing with my reading of books that compare the Abrahamic religions with those of the East, I have had some thoughts on reincarnation. As commonly understood by practitioners of Hinduism and Buddhism (although not always with the adepts), reincarnation is an endless, grinding wheel of cause and effect that is in many ways the East's version of hell. Without ego loss and full realization, one is condemned to pay for past misdeeds and to create new ones, ad infinitum. The New Age take on this is that the reincarnations are limited, and an overall benign learning process. Christianity, as Rooson has pointed out, denies reincarnation for various reasons, including Catholicism's claim, stated in the Nicene Creed, that we, like Christ, may be resurrected in the body, not in one of many. And Eastern adepts often downplay the role of reincarnation - again, like New Agers, seeing in it more signs of opportunity than of punishment; for them, as for all mystics, life is a sign and a sign only of the Absolute, not an immovable obstacle to the divine.
It all gets much deeper than that, so deep that some of us - me - have to hold our heads and groan from the weight of such metaphysics. I will not add to that specific pain here. Rather, what has occurred to me is what might be called the Reincarnation of History. This is not my idea - the East is filled with mandalas of historical cycles and ages, and the West has toyed with it in its description of history and what the future might hold - see Toynbee's "The Study of History," which ( I have been told) not so coyly compares the decline and fall of other civilizations to our own. The point being, are the cultures that make up history necessarily inclined towards certain fates? For, unlike an individual, a culture cannot readily "opt out" of cycles by self- realization, for it is not a self, but a pattern- much more like the image of the reincarnating individual than the individual himself. One can imagine a culture that uniformly rises to godhead, but one can also see that the likelihood of this is extremely remote. As far as I know, none have.
Instead, each culture seems to have built within it the seeds of its own demise. While this is hard to see in primitive hunting and gathering cultures, these nonetheless were transformed from within and without into the hierarchical systems we see today that compose the modern nation states. And it is among these where the seeds of destruction are so much more readily apparent. But are they trapped in an absolute system of cause and effect which they cannot transcend? Are cultures, then, on that ugly, grinding wheel of Karma more irrevocable than that of an individual soul? Or can they be saved by some sort of divine intervention, such as we often believe is true of the individual?
Many of us know the story of Quetzalcoatl, the "white" Aztec god who was supposed to return over the eastern ocean (the Caribbean) on great wings to transform their culture into a New Age. Of course, what they got were the white men from the east in sailboats who did, indeed, transform their culture. Did they understand in this future the internal seeds of destruction in their own, undeniably violent culture? We might also site the tale of Lono and the Hawaiians - how Captain Cook arrived at the time of Lono (the god) and circumnavigated the islands in precisely the fashion that Lono was to take on his periodic return. To the king of Hawaii, Lono was supposed to be greeted and appeased then sent on his way, for if he returned, he would usurp the power of the king and set up his own reign. As it turned out, Cook did return, and was subsequently killed so that this eventuality would not take place. But his discovery made that eventuality, in the form of Western culture, inevitable. Did the Hawaiians, too, understand somewhere down deep the seeds of their own destruction?
In Western society - and in many ways, most of the world is now "Western," we believe we see the seeds of our own destruction. However, the seeds of which we conceive are remarkably diverse (itself a "seed of destruction"). On the one hand, we have those who are convinced that capitalism, with its need to constantly expand consumption and growth, will devour the resources of the planet. That this is happening right now is hard to deny, although we do not know if this will lead to destruction or to greater, and more ecological, inventions. On the other hand, many believe that the destruction of Christian- Western values will be the cause of our demise, and with that there is also much evidence (breakdown of the family, increased drug use, STDs, loss of respect for authority and so on), although one might claim that Christian values were seldom at the center point for those in power. In either case, or any other case that one can think of, we are already waiting the collapse of our civilization. It is as if we know we have run our course and it is only a matter of time - and not that much time at that. But do we envision the god that will save/condemn/destroy us?
For the environmentalist followers of Tielhard de Chardin, God is indeed laying a path for us out of the thickets, through a form of holy evolution. Our culture - this big, world culture of ours - is being transformed into something unique in history and ultimately beneficial. For traditional Christians, it seems the jury is still out - can prayer and a return to sacred tradition deliver us, or is it the time of the antichrist - our Western tradition's version of Lono or Quetzalcoatl? For secularists, they await the great man to reorder society - could he be the next Lono? And for others - UFO's, the most in line with the beliefs of the Hawaiians and the Aztecs.
I have gone on way too long. Comments? Perhaps a little more on this tonight or tomorrow. Until then, FK
It all gets much deeper than that, so deep that some of us - me - have to hold our heads and groan from the weight of such metaphysics. I will not add to that specific pain here. Rather, what has occurred to me is what might be called the Reincarnation of History. This is not my idea - the East is filled with mandalas of historical cycles and ages, and the West has toyed with it in its description of history and what the future might hold - see Toynbee's "The Study of History," which ( I have been told) not so coyly compares the decline and fall of other civilizations to our own. The point being, are the cultures that make up history necessarily inclined towards certain fates? For, unlike an individual, a culture cannot readily "opt out" of cycles by self- realization, for it is not a self, but a pattern- much more like the image of the reincarnating individual than the individual himself. One can imagine a culture that uniformly rises to godhead, but one can also see that the likelihood of this is extremely remote. As far as I know, none have.
Instead, each culture seems to have built within it the seeds of its own demise. While this is hard to see in primitive hunting and gathering cultures, these nonetheless were transformed from within and without into the hierarchical systems we see today that compose the modern nation states. And it is among these where the seeds of destruction are so much more readily apparent. But are they trapped in an absolute system of cause and effect which they cannot transcend? Are cultures, then, on that ugly, grinding wheel of Karma more irrevocable than that of an individual soul? Or can they be saved by some sort of divine intervention, such as we often believe is true of the individual?
Many of us know the story of Quetzalcoatl, the "white" Aztec god who was supposed to return over the eastern ocean (the Caribbean) on great wings to transform their culture into a New Age. Of course, what they got were the white men from the east in sailboats who did, indeed, transform their culture. Did they understand in this future the internal seeds of destruction in their own, undeniably violent culture? We might also site the tale of Lono and the Hawaiians - how Captain Cook arrived at the time of Lono (the god) and circumnavigated the islands in precisely the fashion that Lono was to take on his periodic return. To the king of Hawaii, Lono was supposed to be greeted and appeased then sent on his way, for if he returned, he would usurp the power of the king and set up his own reign. As it turned out, Cook did return, and was subsequently killed so that this eventuality would not take place. But his discovery made that eventuality, in the form of Western culture, inevitable. Did the Hawaiians, too, understand somewhere down deep the seeds of their own destruction?
In Western society - and in many ways, most of the world is now "Western," we believe we see the seeds of our own destruction. However, the seeds of which we conceive are remarkably diverse (itself a "seed of destruction"). On the one hand, we have those who are convinced that capitalism, with its need to constantly expand consumption and growth, will devour the resources of the planet. That this is happening right now is hard to deny, although we do not know if this will lead to destruction or to greater, and more ecological, inventions. On the other hand, many believe that the destruction of Christian- Western values will be the cause of our demise, and with that there is also much evidence (breakdown of the family, increased drug use, STDs, loss of respect for authority and so on), although one might claim that Christian values were seldom at the center point for those in power. In either case, or any other case that one can think of, we are already waiting the collapse of our civilization. It is as if we know we have run our course and it is only a matter of time - and not that much time at that. But do we envision the god that will save/condemn/destroy us?
For the environmentalist followers of Tielhard de Chardin, God is indeed laying a path for us out of the thickets, through a form of holy evolution. Our culture - this big, world culture of ours - is being transformed into something unique in history and ultimately beneficial. For traditional Christians, it seems the jury is still out - can prayer and a return to sacred tradition deliver us, or is it the time of the antichrist - our Western tradition's version of Lono or Quetzalcoatl? For secularists, they await the great man to reorder society - could he be the next Lono? And for others - UFO's, the most in line with the beliefs of the Hawaiians and the Aztecs.
I have gone on way too long. Comments? Perhaps a little more on this tonight or tomorrow. Until then, FK
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