Reincarnation. Believed by some, disbelieved by others.

Believers

     To some , it gives a sort of hope. Nothing’s ending with this life. I’ll get another chance. Like not playing well in this match because you’ll have a chance in the next match anyway. Like putting off things for tomorrow. Putting off hopes and dreams and wishes and emotions until the next life. They somehow forget that even if they return, it might be in a form which may not allow them to pick up on their hopes and dreams, pick up on their previous lives, where they left off. The new life may be confined to instinct, which is the case with most non-humans. (And most humans, according to me.)

     To others, it’s an exciting thought. They dream of people they might be in the next life —rock stars, scientists, leaders, poets. They look at it as a life different from what they have now. As if by some miracle they will be destined to be the person of their dreams the instant they begin that life. They miss a small point. Life in itself will not change, whether it’s this or the next. And what you become ultimately comes down to what you wish to become and how much you put behind it, two parameters that are independent of which life you are in. So if you can dream of being a rock star in your next life, why not in this one? Because either way you have to battle it out yourself. Next Life won’t be fairyland, will it? What’s more, Next Life may not be, in the first place. So what do you say you try that dream right now?

     There’s a third species that falls under this head. But I’ll come to that later.

Non-believers

     The first sort is the type that puts it off right away. Seriously, this is the twenty-first century! Nothing much to say about them.

     The second type. Roze is one. She commented on almost all my blog entries. She has a lot of patience. Her point, it’s too much like a routine: you live, you die, you live, you die. I said in What You Reap is What You Sow that we carry on wisdom to the next life, if there is one. She said it makes it even more mundane. It appears like putting things off for tomorrow, like I mentioned. She’s not ready to agree right away.

[It appears I misunderstood Roze. Anyways, in that case, just assume there’s a certain imaginary person called Roze who believes so. ;-)]

Again, there’s a third species. And again, I’ll be coming to that later.

My Belief

Imagine a player not giving his best in a warm-up game because he always has the next match to do it. And imagine a student who passes from an education centre, with a certificate. When he returns to it, he won’t, of course, have to go through all of it again. He gets to study higher things, and when he’s done this for a few times, he may have reached a stage where he might even be able to teach. That’s the carrying-over. It doesn’t die. It’s often forgotten, though, like I mentioned in What You Reap is What You Sow. But in case of certain individuals, the forgotten knowledge nudges from inside, at strange times of the day, sometimes violently. And sometimes, it all manages to come back again. And then you pick up from where you left off and continue the journey, without ever realizing most of what you thought or realized was not a voluntary or conscious thought process, but rather a recall. That’s the catch. That’s where it gets out of hand. Voluntary thought lies in your control. Remembering doesn’t. You might feel a nudge in the shower, or a nudge in the middle of the night, and wonder but I wasn’t even thinking about it. That’s where it becomes violent. (It happened to me. It still is happening. Take a look at Gift or Curse?) But remember, it’s only a memory that’s coming back. At least I believe so.

     Now you begin to think I believe in reincarnations. In Next Lives. Right. And wrong. Not many of  life’s important questions can be answered like twenty questions, in yes or no. Not in one word. They need paragraphs, stories, entire books. Here’s a try at explaining my belief.

     I seriously don’t know about reincarnation. But everything seems to point towards it. Everything seems to leave a gap like puzzle piece where a particular thing should fit. And reincarnation fits extremely well. Again there are gaps where it does not fit, things that don’t agree with reincarnation. It’s confusing. But on the whole, I’d like to believe there are levels; levels of life, levels of reason, levels of truth and lie. Like a game. You pass level 1, and you’re never coming back to it. Next Life will be a higher level, with higher reasons, higher truths, a higher physics and less rules. So that even if you return, you do not return here. Now can you connect with what I tried to say in that student scenario? A player gets the same environment, same rules, same odds to battle with and same skill in this match and the next. But the student passes, he progresses and graduates, opening the doors for higher things. Those of you who have read Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach will realize that he talked of the same thing through the story of a seagull’s life. But he was an extremely free and strong-minded seagull, and through himself he put forth all the necessary qualifications for a good grade, for a graduation certificate. And he passed to higher things. I believe all that. The third species in the Believers’ group is people like me. You might be one too.

     Now it comes down to the harder part. Stop thinking about Next Life. It’s already there, let’s say. Now if that is there, there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be Past Lives. Who knows, this might be Level 2, or Level 13, or Level 100843.

     Read the last paragraph well. It does not matter whether you believe it or not. Answer a simple question and don’t lie to yourself. Does it really matter to you now, sitting in front of the computer screen, whether you lived once or twelve times or a hundred thousand eight hundred and forty-two times before? Does it matter at all? Is that count able to change anything about you — your life, your dreams, your knowledge, who you are now? Does it really matter what you went through in your past lives – if they existed – what you learnt and the emotions you gathered? Does it even matter whether past lives exist or not? Your life now is confined to Level 2, or Level 13, or Level 100843, or whatever. Your birth. Your death. And everything in between. That’s the only thing that matters. Not which level this is. Not how many levels you crossed before. You might have learnt a lot of things before. But right here, right now, this life is all it comes down to. It simply does not matter whether you had past lives or not. You don’t remember, some don’t believe, and one thing I know, is that you don’t care. That’s it. You don’t have to. Me and my life is just that. This me and this life. And if their existence makes no difference, why count past lives at all? Why waste time thinking about them? And thus, I conclude, I don’t believe in Last Life or Next Life. I only believe in This Life. And in the games where you find levels, you also find characters with 3 or 4 lives. I apply it here, and what comes out is that I have one life. As long as I have this life, I have only one. And now you can count me into the third species that form the non-believers’ group. And that, again, is the story behind my nickname.

1Life.