Why do people believe in Heaven? Why do they believe in Hell? Why do some people believe God created every living thing and others believe in evolution?
Sometimes, people believe things because it's to their advantage to believe them: As Upton Sinclair said, "It is hard to bring a man to understanding if his income depends on his not understanding." (Or words to that effect.)
So the Reynolds tobacco executive who testifies before a Congressional committee he believes cigarettes are harmless is easy to figure out.
But consider afterlife: Apart from some the preacher whose livelihood depends on convincing people he knows the mind of God and the rules God has laid down, for most people there is no advantage to simply believing in an afterlife, other than the comfort factor: I will see my mother again in Heaven. She is not permanently lost to me.
The Phantom reflects on his own belief about what happens to us after we die, and he cannot quite figure out where it comes from, but maybe that's why is seems so persuasive.
When the Phantom was about eight years old, he overheard a discussion between is older brother and his father. His brother said that everything in the universe was cycles. The earth revolves around the sun; the seasons cycle; every organism has a life cycle. His father looked at his older son with an expression neither of his sons had often seen--one of genuine interest in something one of his sons had said. The father said, "That is a real insight you have there."
Sometime after this, the Phantom was awakened from a deep sleep--sat bolt upright in bed, from a nightmare. In the dream, the Phantom had gone to bed and died. But the dream did not end there. The Phantom died, but almost instantly was reborn in his brother's room, as a new child. He was a baby, screaming his lungs out, frustrated that he'd have to start all over again, to learn to speak, to walk, back to square one.
And ever since, the Phantom, in his heart of hearts has believed that's what happens to us. We do not go to heaven. Our souls are simply recycled. Everything else on this planet seems to be recycled, one way or the other--the preservation of energy and mass. What was profoundly sad for the Phantom was in his new incarnation, he had no memory of his old family, of the world he had left. He was simply returned to earth, to start anew, with no memory, no past, no connection to those he had loved before. It was just ruthless.
There is no way to test this theory, as far as the Phantom knows. It just is. Just a thought. A belief.
Another experience, a mind game, from a dream, this one a recurrent dream. The Phantom had recurrent dreams he could fly. He would simply flap his arms and rise up into the air and hover above the trees and look down on people below, who never noticed him, never looked up, but the Phantom was very worried someone would and he would have a lot of explaining to do, so he swooped back down to earth. But it was excruciating, to have to land, although the landing was always soft. It was excruciating because it was such a thrill flying.
Now, the aging Phantom walks along the shore at North Beach, Hampton, and he sees men doing what he had done in his dreams: They go out on surf boards with sails attached to a harness and the wind catches the sails, and they lift off above the waves and are gone. They rise into the air and become little more than a speck in minutes, sailing aloft, out to sea and then they turn and return to shore.
The Phantom, of course, knows some day he must try to learn this.
But the Phantom is not keen to die quite yet.
Thought provoking as always, Phantom. The existence of a heaven where one is deliriously and eternally happy, floating among all those you've ever loved seems,well, unlikely. But then again, so does the idea that there is nothing after death, that it's just final and empty as if we are little more than roadkill. It seems it would be a mistake to discount the fact that throughout history we've believed there was something after death-maybe this persistent belief, the feeling that there is something more, is not just around as a comfort to soften the blow of death, but is also an acknowledgement of something we can sense exists. We believe there is a sun because there is one. Maybe we believe there is an afterlife because there is one. Like you said-we just know it to be true. I am, after a traumatic family event, a firm believer in an energy or force that connects all of us. If it's present in life, it's not that much of a leap to envision it present after death. I'm curious though, when you say our soul leaves our body and enters another do you mean you believe it enters whole and in it's entirety-reincarnation style-or is it co-mingled with other souls in the universe and then transferred to another body via the ultimate energy grid? Your brother described the universe as a series of cycles, perhaps we are all part of the energy that powers the cycles. After death we may, as ourselves, be gone forever, but in a different state we go on forever.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading about your flying dreams. Lucky. I had recurrent dreams as a child to, but mine, unfortunately, were the more common and terrifying dreams of falling. Yours sound so much better. Anyway I'm happy to hear you're not ready to fly off anytime soon. Me neither....
Maud
P.S. Before I left, you mentioned the need for me to be taken down for my illicit egg activities. I'll have you know Phantom my secret lair is so far away (much further than Arizona) it will never be found-and if by chance it ever is, they'll never take me alive. I'd never part with a single one of my darling eggs-I couldn't love them more had I laid them myself.....M.
Maud,
DeleteGlad you pointed me toward this post.
Rather bad at keeping track of back issues.
When you do lay an egg, I want to be the first to know.
As for the cosmos. I am with Jefferson on all this: I hope for something after this life, but hope is not faith.
And if my childhood dream is any guide--and I have no clue where it came from, especially since I was likely no older than 11 at the time--then when I die, I'll pop up in someone else's baby body as the new me, with no memory of who I was, where I came from or any of the people I left behind or who left me behind. Completely ruthless, just like life and death on the Serengeti plain.
Which would mean we ought to enjoy who we have now, because the great eraser will not allow for connections after this life.
This begins to sound like Marvell's "To A Coy Mistress" but I don't mean it to be.
In a grim sense, it would also mean that Adolf Hitler might have popped up as a Jewish Ethiopian baby, skin black as night.
I have thought about getting to the Pearly Gates and walking through, shaking hands along the receiving line and seeing, further down along the line, Hitler and Goering and Stalin, all smiling and waiting to greet the new arrivals and me asking how this could be Heaven if these horrible nasties were here, and being told, "Oh, they sent so many souls to Heaven, and early on."
My brain is too small to contemplate life force or cosmic energy or even the solar system. Have you ever been out on a boat, far enough off shore to see the night sky on a clear night without any light pollution from shore? You look up there and realize each of us, Hitler, Roosevelt, Attilla the Hun, my mother, your mother, we are all just dust in the wind.
Phantom