Labels: फिलोसोफ्य ऎंड थे कॉस्मिक मंद


Monday, December 3, 2007
माय दिफ्फिकुल्टी विथ करमा ऎंड रेंकर्नाशन  (HINDI)

REFUTING THE BELIEF IN करमा

Karma is a belief that a person has to live many lives and improve in each until they become an ascended master and finally lose self-awareness into the mindless soup of the cosmic mind. Alternatively, one chooses ones own next life from the spiritual plane in order to learn something in the next. It is claimed by some variants of this illogical belief that one might have to live sometimes millions s of lives before becoming perfect to escape the cycle of birth and rebirth and find enlightenment.

I believe this Karma is nonsense and will list my objections to this belief below:

1. The bible says it is appointed for a person once to live and then the judgment.

2. Karma says that a soul must live many mortal lives to reach perfection. Thus humanity undergoes must undergo many many incarnation from a bad human until one finally becomes an enlightened master, One, nevertheless, must start out as a lowly life form such as a cockroach or garden Lilly and finally, after countless millions of years progress to become human For the life of me how does a bad cockroach or garden Lilly become a "good cockroach or garden Lilly". This belief if it where not so tragic would be very very funny indeed.

3. Karma says that if we have a weakness or fault in this life, we must return reborn, again and again and overcome our failings in the previous in the next life, or horrors upon horrors maybe revert to been a cockroach again.

4. Therefore, any suffering we have to endure in this life, be it cancer, aids, all other sicknesses poverty, etc, etc is our own fault due to the evil or bad things we did in our past life. This is a cruel belief as many saintly people suffer and die in the most horrific manner. What soul would choose to be a Jew in the Second World War and see their beloved’s torn from them in the holocaust and consumed in the ovens of Hitler’s death camps?

5. the above paragraphs shows that Karma is idiotic nonsense, how can one so often be punished so terribly for something they do not even remember from a sinful forgotten past life. In my case I have had to endure a lifetime the unimaginable pain, horror, desolation of a sever mental illness. Is this the punishment for something I did in past life, that I have absolutely no recollection. (Manic Depression)

6. Another view favored by spiritualists and modern day channerers is that between lives we sit in some other dimensions and decide exactly what kind of life we choose be it beggar, rich person or what ever. Therefore, our fate is coconsciousness decide by ourselves, what nonsense.

7. What then about souls like Hitler, Stalin, Nero and the numerous depraved people on earth at the moment, did they deliberately choose a life of depraved evil and what they could learn by there wicked actions? They will degenerate further and further through each life as they are totally depraved without any redeeming good qualities what so ever. Surely, this type of person deserves judgment and eternal punishment, not escape into karma.

8. If we look at the out of control world population we see an exponential increase in the total world population, which is already a frightening 6.5 billion and growing faster and faster by the day. Where are all these people coming from? If karma is true, surely people should be reaching perfection and escaping the cycle of life and the worlds population decreasing. Not so?

9. Again, if karma is true we should be observing just the reverse. With more and more people becoming better and better and finally reaching enlightenment and escaping the relentless birth and rebirth with a subsequence decrease in the world population.

10. Although people are no more evil now than they were in the past (middle age horrors as an example), they are also no better, if we read our daily newspaper or listen to the news on the electronic media. We just have to read up on the mechanized world wars of the past century and see the awful weapons humanity has developed and continue to develop to kill one another, with more and more sophisticated tools of death. Where is Karma in all of this?

11. Where are all the enlightened masters? There seems to me so few in these latter days. Please could one name just one living master for me?

12. A person I would call an enlightened master in present times would be mother Teresa and she did definitely not believe in the law of Karma but believed and practiced active love caring and charity nearly all the years of her long life.

13. If the law of karma is true, why are we still having more and more conflicts and wars all over the planet, instead of peace?

14. How then are the memories some claim come from past lives? I believe that locked up in our genes and encoded within the colossal D.N.A. molecule racial memories could be stored. Perhaps these ghosts of memories could perhaps leak into the conscious mind of some people who then believe they are remembering past lives.

15. Another fact that, has been proven, is forgotten childhood memories that are remembered in the case of trauma or under hypnoses.

16. My personal search for an explanation has shown not one indisputable past life memory in anyone. All could be explained rationally.

17. My own personal view on Karma and past life regression is that I hope this awful concept is not true. Who wants to live repeatedly? Anyway, 99.999999999+++ of people just like me have no memories of past lives. In addition, if I lived in the past and have no recollection of that life, the person I was then is truly dead.
18. I believe I exist now because years ago my beloved parents decided (NOT me) to make love. I am sure I did not choose this life and am positive it is the only life I have ever had. What comes after, if anything remains an enigma to me and to everyone else on eat?

19. I therefore reject the concept of karma as a potentially cruel false idiotic belief and nonsense to any logically rationally thinking person.
REGARDS
Alan

Alan -
  First off I want to point out a couple things that a Western person or Christian can appreciate about karma and reincarnation.  First its a system of justice that is automatic and impartial, which contrasts with many misconceptions about Christianity.  There are two types of afterlife justice that we can think about - one that is more law, automatic based or one that is more personally based.  An example here would help.  If a child takes a cookie before dinner, and the mother becomes exasperated at the situation.  A law based or consequence based system of justice would be for her to respond with something like just simply saying, "ok, your appetite is spoiled", and indeed the kid wont' be able to enjoy dinner as much.  The second type of example would be if the mom spanked the kid for the transgression, a more active, personal type of justice.  I think that most people see Christianity as like a mother who not only spanks the kid, but tortures the kid eternally for the kids transgressions, which is why so many people are turned off by Christianity.  Karma and reincarnation on the other hand, are widely perceived as a impartial, or rule based system, where there is no all powerful mom looking to wreak vengeance on her children.  As a side note, I would argue that the justice system in Christianity is much more law / consequence based, with a loving mother who forgives freely and provides an easy way out for the child if the child is willing to ask for forgiveness and honestly try to change their ways.
 
  I have three objections to things you have said:
  You ask why people aren't more perfected, and why we don't see more ascended masters on earth.  I think the same question could be asked of Christians, and in fact one of the strongest arguments against Christianity is the failings and evil of Christians.  There is a recent New York Times bestseller book called God is Not Great that was an example of this line of thought.  The short answer is that people are not more perfected because they choose to live more selfish lives then they could, either through Christianity or Eastern religions.
  Secondly if you read what the bible has to say about the connection between John the Baptist and Elijah, and prophecies about them, it seems to allude to the fact that John the Baptist is the reincarnation of Elijah.  If that is so then even the bible supports limited reincarnation.
  Lastly I would say that starting off a thread by calling a major world view "idiotic nonsense" may not be the most effective way to influence people.

I also have things that concern me about karma/reincarnation, and want to address them here as I have somewhat different points:
1.  Karma encourages non compassion in a way.  The reason is that if you see someone suffering, and you alleviate that suffering, then you are just postponing their eventual negative karma that must be experienced.  So it is almost more compassionate to let people suffer in this world view.
2.  If we are to learn lessons, it seems strange to me that we never seem (or at least most seem) to not remember our past lives.  Its like telling someone who has amnesia that they will have a test every day, but they can't remember how they did on the last test or what the questions were about - it's a pop quiz every time and chances are they could fail it every time.
3.  I believe that when spirits attach to a person that these dead people bring memories with them.  These are the memories that people could be accessing in hypnosis or trance states.  Or maybe these people really have reincarnated.  I just think that reincarnation would be much more rare than portrayed by eastern religions.
4.  Lastly, there is no real forgiveness of sins in this world view, just a balance sheet where good and evil actions / thoughts / intentions are tallied up.  I have a hard time believing any normal human can live a life without committing terrible sins against others, and a theology that includes forgiveness appeals to me much more than a balance sheet of justice.  In this light Christianity is more forgiving and less judgmental than eastern religions.

HI Alan-
Respectfully, Sir, you are in error about karma, perhaps the source of the confusion.

Karma means action, and specifically implies cause and effect, like physics.

If you fail to put gas in your car, that creates a samskara, a karmic tendency. As the car runs, the samskara ripens. Eventually it manifests by the car running out of gas, which is the karmic result of your inaction. The "cure" for this karma is to put gas in the car.

That's all it means. Cause and effect. All the rest is our emotional reaction.

Reincarnation tells us that the essence of the person is not destroyed when the body falls off. The Buddhist anatta doctrine adds that what is left over is not a "thing", not an obdurate, quasi material, eternal and unchanging lump of ectoplasm etc. Madhyamika prasangika tradition suggests that the stuff that's left over is processual in nature (rajo guna), existing as the dynamic of aggregate formation and dissolution. (See Nargajuna, for example.) Hindus simply see it as "a dream flitting through the mind of Brahman" and identified with Brahman.

So given these ideas, that the ultimate self is God in dynamic form, reincarnation simply says that all of God exists, and not any is lost or discarded.

Works for me.

dave

Alan,

In modern New Age doctrine, belief in reincarnation is often divorced from karma.  Some New Agers advocate a nonkarmic doctrine of parallel simultaneous incarnations from the same Soul Disk.  Also, there are many different perspectives on karma within Hinduism and further differences between Hinduism and various forms of Buddhism.  Still, great harm has been done by the belief of many Hindus that the impoverished lower caste should not be helped because they owe their sad plight to karmic law.  Despite these qualifications, you present some compelling objections to common understandings of reincarnation.  Here are 4 other objections that inform my own repudiation of reincarnation. 

(1) To date, Emanuel Swedenborg's {=ES] verifications of his astral insights are far superior to that of modern astral explorers.  At first, ES experiences intriguing past life astral memories.  But as he learns to ascend to higher heavens, he discovers that reincarnation is not the right explanation for these apparent memories.  Rather, memories from discarnate spirits uinwittingly in contact with the projector merge with the astral explorer, so that he confuses the earth memories of those spirits with his own.  Discarnate humans from the higher planes offer to descend to lower reincarnational planes to demonstrate this error to their denizens and to ES.  But the spirits of those reincarnational planes are predictably too close-minded to attend such a decisive refutation of their belief system.  Thus, ES concludes that reincarnation is a false doctrine.  Modern New Agers often freeze like Bambi in the headlights in the face of ES's refutation. 

(2) Dr. Ian Stevenson's reincarnational research on the past life memories of small children is revered by many New Agers.   However, in at least two of his cases, the discarnate human who is alleged to reincarnate in the child was later found to still be alive on earth well past the time of the child's birth.  This suggests that some kind of possession or telepathic merger is the proper explanation rather than reincarnation.   

(3) Research on group past ilfe regression has shown that more than one reincarnation of Napoleon or some other famous figure can often occur in large group regressions.  Often the hypnotized subjects claim to have known a famous historical figure or to have been present at famous past events.  Admittedly, the regression groups of some researchers like Helen Wambach have not been embarrassed by such absurdities.  But these delusions are just some of the reasons why hypnotic past life regression is not respected in mainstream hypnotist circles. 

(4) One study of past life readers, researchers inquired into the identity of their immediate past life and received totally different lives from each past life reader.  In my view, this finding discredits this practice. 

Don

I have no problems understanding Karma or accepting it - it simply is.  For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Or, what comes around goes around.  We know, with even the slightest personal introspection that this is true - we can trace back cause and effect in our lives, relationships, and throughout history and see Karma in action.  It is not fair/it is not unfair, it simply is.  The more aware we are of Karma, the more naturally it is for us to move toward love of God and love of other human beings.  Otherwise, we are on a give-take rollercoaster, like the "pushme-pullyou" creature from Dr. Doolittle.

Reincarnation is a whole other kettle of fish.  There is much that I'm not sure if I accept about people having "voluntary memory loss," here incarnate so that they may learn their lessons, and "get it right" this time around.  This notion of gettng it right drives me bonkers.  As if, with all our complexities, all of our complex interactions and relationships with friends and famiy, we can be defined by one single action or occurence that we either pass or fail.  Ridiculous.  Yet that is what many who believe in reincarnation would have you buy into.  I have heard in conversations:  "he was a slave owner in a former life, so now he must serve others here in this current one to balance out his karma."  Oh pulllleaasse!  Our consciousness is not such a simplistic-minded childhood game (tit for tat).  True, karma does come around, but in different and subtle ways.

I do not discount the notion of reincarnation entirely, but I am a big believer in free will here and after death (as above, so below).  So I'm not sure its as omnipresent as some would have you believe.  The desire to return, be born again, and give up memories temporarily may be quite powerful for those who are ego driven or pure sensualists.  I'm not certain. 

In any case, I think we can acknowledge Karma being a real principle, but hold doubts as to the nature and frequency of reincarnation.


Doc

Excellent post, Justin.

Matt

The idea of reincarnation back into what we were doing last time around makes a little more sense if we put it on a day to day basis. I do tomorrow activities based on what I do today because I am caught up in those values, goals and cravings, attachments that bind me to the topic. As soon as I release those clingings, and especially strong negative emotions, then I can release the rest of the activities as well.

This works on a day to day basis, on a year to year basis, and also between lifetimes. Suicide cuts off a situation without closure, so most often the suicide still attaches to elements of the past. This is not negative nor guilty or punity etc, so much as just keeping on with the only lifestyle that they know and understand. They might also add guilt or whatever, but that's a personal issue, like all the BSTs of stuck souls in the intermediate levels.

I occasionally get someone with a lifestyle problem who needs redirection. I usually use some theatrics, like "Go to the place of all nowledge, and change the script in your Book of LIfe".  But the essence is, "Look at things more reasonably. See other options. Pick a better one." The therapy session provides an excuse for change, the suggestions inspire fresh ideas, and generally people go away in a different direction that works better. No big deal.

dave

well we are just talking here, no need to throw a tantrum, just tossing around different beliefs.
one thing about beliefs they always change as time goes on and more knowledge is available by such talk as here. I even found a group once (didn't stay, lol) whose only premise was "change is constant"  if u think about we are always learning stuff, and that is what it means in retrievals when a person is stuck..they are focused inside a belief system. PUL opens perception to move away from being stuck in one direction of movement..u can't even call it movement when you see this happening.

well with that I've been reading Weiss and some others. I know you don't regress now Dave, u just maybe provide the trigger to their own regression.
however Weiss does call it regression, but in a non leading fashion he explains. in thousands of clients he explains people come to him to get at the root of a problem, it can be lonliness, depression, a strange ache or something occurring on their physical body which medical cannot cure.

upon the regression which can take any number of sessions as first he gets them talking about this one life, to see whats there. if the situation calls for it he aids in their going in between or to another life scene where the affected part of the body received an injury, and there are often birthmarks in that spot, which is interesting also.
once they are viewing their other life where this injury occurred when they come back to C1, and they are always conscious throughout the process, their problem begins to heal very quickly and no further visits to him are required.
what is interesting is the number of clients helped this way; he's not the only guy that does this in the world.
the number is huge, the case loads are plenty documenting instant cures after recognition of what had occurred. it appears the body carries memories patterns that need to be recognized, and thats the end of it.
so I'd say thats a process what is going on here, to waking up to we are much more than we think we are and the body responds to such therapy outside of this time period.