Heaven or Hell – really?
Pretty much all religions all over the World accept the form of life after death. Some, however do not believe in the concept of reincarnation. However, they all do believe in a life after death and that’s why we can see the excessive selling on the words Heaven and Hell. Hindus have a ceremony when they take the people to the door of heaven; Christians believe in the Judgement Day and the ancient Greece even goes on to save a penny for the Charon (The ferryman of Hades) to carry the new souls to the Under World.
According to these beliefs and customs, the sorting hat or the measuring scale puts you to heaven or hell just by the law of karma. As you sow, so you reap. Do good deeds and you will end up living a life with amazing people in the beautiful gardens of Eden. However, if you do bad deeds, you will end up living a life that is full of torture and sadness that is enough for you to repay your debts. (eg., We do go to the extent of burning the person in an oil filled wok, whipping them, making them live a low life that is ridiculed by everyone, left to torture in hell for eternity etc.,)
This extreme dramatization leaves us to the open questions:
1. Going by the popular reincarnation theory, if the above is true, why do we all suffer now? Ideally, we shouldn’t right.. as we should have balanced out all our sins in the past by either getting into the gardens of Eden or by getting boiled in a oily wok? Shouldn’t we all be ideally starting at ground zero? Nevertheless, Why is that with all of the pain already undertaken, why do we all still blame it on the karma. Any hiccup in life, why do we go around saying, “I’m not sure on what I did in the past, to face this problem now?”
2. None of us have heard a single case of the human body screaming in pain when cremated or even fed to the vultures, if that’s the case, who feels the pain? Is it the living body or the airy soul? If that’s the soul, how do you really put a fragment of air in an oily wok?
3. Why do we still go to each and every Astrologist on this planet and try to balance out our account books by offering huge amounts to the Brahmins (while performing death ceremony) as a mode of him taking away our sins? So, who exactly is collecting our sins? How is that, you can live a life of sin and still give away your sins to a poor (or rich?) Brahmin? Isn’t that the weirdest form of bribe and loophole in the system? Is the Almighty God that stupid to design a system that way?
This leaves me puzzled everytime. How are we still conditioned to believe all of these things even when the very thing that the Capitalistic religions does is rule us by our fears???
Religion101.. Read great philosopher/mystics for Bette understand 🙂
Thanks. Pls do suggest the authors if you have gotten clarity! 🙂
First things first…
1. As you sow, so you reap. This means that we get for what we have done.
E.g. You save today, you earn interest tomorrow and money doubles with compounded interest, but if you don’t save, then vice versa.
Now given the time to realize the result, a person may exist or not exist. If they exist, good, else, if the person does not exist, then the benefit of the savings or no savings will be passed on to the dependents.
Now for good or bad, as you may see it, the similar applies to our life. You do good, you get back, and you do bad, you get back. It is only the time which a difference and the weaving factor that ensures you realize the results either in this birth or later, but there is no escape and the scales have to be balanced out.
2. I have read somewhere and believe that Heaven and Hell exist on earth itself. The heaven and hell are 2 virtual worlds created by philosophers to make us understand of the 2 states.
E.g – On earth itself, you see people who are the lucky ones with everything in the world such as money, fame, and all the good stuff, while on the same earth you see the unlucky ones who are not fortunate enough to live and enjoy the uber life. They don’t even get a square meal to eat, for some reason end up in prisons being beaten, tortured, and even hanged in the worst cases.
We ourselves give expressions such as “wow, it feels heaven”, and ‘yuck it feels hell”. It’s nothing but we are just realizing the results of our actions.
Everyone of us have some time in our life, and we have a choice to do good or bad, and the fact is that we have to face the music of our own choices and no one else.
3. The rebirth or reincarnation I believe is the next state of evolution as a human.
By the way, thanks for these articles, these are helping to get my younger days and spirits back in action. 🙂
Thanks Hemanth for the comments. Glad you liked it! 🙂