Experience.

Because... how can you explain someone you barely know you were judged and hanged, and then you had a brief memory of the life between lives where no one scolded you for what you did and never threatened you with a quick return to Earth to atone for your sins or pay your karmic debts? Well, just telling it, the way I did.

The conversation I was referring to in my previous entry ended up quite abruptly when this guy claimed he could not care less about others’ “experiences”. I just couldn’t believe my eyes, as I truly feel we only can base our knowledge —in the present day and considering where we are now— on experience. That’s all we need, that’s where the answers lie: we need data, to find out what we can believe and not, which theories are closer to the truth.

For me, experience is all that matters. I was bold enough to tell him I had been judged and executed, but after his attitude, who is going to bother and tell him more about it, my reasons for not believing in karma? This morning I was reading Song of Ice and Fire (fourth volume), and, as always, the word “hanged” sent me shivers all through my body. That made me reflect about how important it is to live it. Everything. No matter how hard or painful it is, that is the only way to understand. We just need it, I guess it’s human nature. And the more I think, the surer I am that is the only “secret” of reincarnation: to experience things. Because the words of other people are not enough to make us see why we must or must not behave in one way or the other. Punishments or rewards are not effective to make us better persons, at most it can make us fearful for a while and we will think twice before being evil, but it won’t teach us why we can’t inflict pain in others as long as we ourselves don’t feel that same pain.

There are other things that send shivers through my body: lynch mobs and people shouting at presumed criminals, claiming for justice (vengeance), calling someone “murderer”, when they haven’t even been condemned yet. This already used to happen to me when I had no memories. Of course, when I remembered, I understood why I used to feel like that. You might be a criminal, but no one deserves a painful death... or just... death. This is a question I’ve asked myself all my life: do we have the right to decide when someone must die? Recently I saw the faces of this group of Hindu men who were going to be hanged for rapists... and I only felt sadness and compassion for them. I don’t think they deserve that. And I’m saying this knowing perfectly what it is to be raped. Even if they had killed the girl (I don’t remember if they did), I don’t think they would deserve death. They don’t even deserve any kind of suffering. I don’t know what they need, but I’m sure an eye for an eye is not getting us anywhere. But it seems that notion is still ruling the world... and I don’t think that is going to change soon.

Not in vain, this quote by Gandalf was one of the first to catch my attention when I read The Lord of the Rings for the first time.

The thing is that people don’t seem to realize this kind of things. They think they’re right, and they will search for answers outside of them which will reaffirm what they believe. So, they say they believe in justice, and they want to believe the Universe has to be governed by a Law called Karma which will ensure that justice, forgetting the only Law that rules the Universe, if any, is Unconditional Love. And that implies Forgiveness. And if there are people like me who have remembered there is no punishment in the other side, just Forgiveness and Understanding, they will refuse to listen and will look other way, clinging to their desire of justice (vengeance) and the way they think is “right”.

H.A.N.G.E.D.

The chapter I was reading this morning finished with a woman who was going to be hanged. That sent me to a moment of strong past life mood for a few minutes, as each time I read the word “hanged” (quite frequent in Martin’s saga) reminds me of the two times I died that way. I wouldn’t know which is clearer. The circumstances, the feelings, the images... are quite different. I feel I wanted to die in the first occasion, I didn’t care too much the end was near. I think the second one was harder, as I didn’t expect things would turn that wrong... I’m not sure but I feel I had hopes until the very last minute a miracle would spare my life. I have no memories of the hanging itself, save some strange physical sensations in the second hanging, but darkness prevails in both cases. Emotions surrounding the execution linger though... contempt, sadness, rage, shame, fear, a bit of arrogance and disbelief in the second. A deep, deep sadness. Something is common in both: I was completely aware the result had been the consequence of my decisions. I could put the blame on anything I wanted, but the plain truth is it was all my doing. Some like to say this is karma. I don’t care what they call it, but I’m certain it’s not a law. And death is not the end, that is true, but when a life is over, it is over. Emotions linger, that is true, but if my end had been different, I wouldn’t have reached the other side carrying a note saying I have a karmic debt to pay. Because the only thing we encounter on the other side is Unconditional Forgiveness. And like one of Michael Newton’s patients said when he was asked whether he was going to be punished for committing suicide: “Punishment? Of course not, that is human”.

According to this, what is the point of choosing a life in a slum in India? Experiencing a cruel and slow death, as some like to suggest? This is nonsense for some people, in my opinion because they can’t get beyond their human eyes and the eternal suffering we all have to go through on Earth. What did I gain being hanged... twice? It’s not the execution itself, it’s all that surrounded those events. Dying is nothing unnatural, not even a cruel death. We all die. We all suffer through our lives, more or less. It’s the circumstances, the events leading to that death, the feelings before and after... that’s what matters, that’s what makes us understand poverty has to be eradicated from Earth, only if we live it we can truly understand. And becoming more compassionate, more sensitive to the needs of these people, is reason enough to incarnate in one of these places, so that in our next life we will want to work for a better world where people don’t have to live in these conditions. I think this makes a lot more sense than karma.

Of course, you may not believe my experiences, but please, don’t believe in unproven theories either. Just look inside you and see for yourself.

On karma, prisons and other stories.

It’s sad to say, but in the reincarnation world most times it’s better to shut up and let people talk nonsense, or you may end up in trouble, tired of talking to a wall and sometimes even accused of wanting to force your beliefs on someone. I just wonder, how can you force a non-belief on someone?

I’m not going to explain here (at least for the moment) why I don’t believe in karma, as it’s a subject that, honestly, only has made me waste my time since I started to hang around in reincarnation forums. But I’ll say... and it’s one of those things that need to be repeated again and again: one thing is speculating about reincarnation, and a different thing is experiencing reincarnation, that is, remembering past lives. Karma is one of those beliefs usually linked to reincarnation, and many people think that if you believe in reincarnation, you irremediably have to believe in karma as well. It seems there are also certain people who want to make a religion out of reincarnation, and they think they have the right to tell you what you must believe, claiming there are “Laws” in the Universe to which everyone is subject to. They are dazzled by all kind of gurus who write some words in a book and they accept what they have read without giving it a second thought. It is curious how human mind works...

Well, that’s what recently has happened to me. I love to be challenged, I love talking to people who make me think, I love to feel like they’re telling me something new that hadn’t occurred to me before... this is rarer and rarer these days, but still, once in a while, I give it a try. After all, if someone posts such wise words and is so convinced of the existence of karma, they must have good reasons, and if I’m wrong, I want to know. But when you inquire, you just find these people usually are only talking of beliefs... and I need facts. Or at least, beliefs based on facts, not in faith. The first mistake in these “wise” words was to claim there are a Law of Reincarnation and a Law of Karma, and the two have to go together. What, who says this? Who says it’s illogical to believe in reincarnation and not believe in karma at the same time? Who says all reincarnationists have to be identical copies? The most curious thing is this is what says someone who suspects to have a past life as a certain person because someone told him... no verifications, no meditation, self-regression or any other method to remember past lives (dreams, flashes...), no internal knowledge, no nothing. But of course he’s a firm believer in Buddhists and their teachings about karma.

I’ve learned to let it pass and ignore their accusations of wanting to force my beliefs, when it’s them who are trying to force me to believe in something I have neither proof nor circumstantial evidence nor any example they could give me... and yes, I asked for one. Just one valid example which could point to the existence of karma and the way it works. But all I got were silly responses, vague spiritual notions like the definition of karma as something governed by “the Universe”, the universal purpose of all creatures of finding happiness and achieve perfection, or the nonsense that karma is like Newton’s Law of Action and Reaction, a natural law which, as such, works in all the universe. And it doesn’t matter if you tell them that doesn’t match the experiences of people all over the world, not only remembering past lives, but also through NDE’s, OBE’s and other paranormal phenomena, they will keep trying to tell me karma is true, and even hinting I’m not intelligent enough to grasp the concept, and that maybe I’ll do in a few lifetimes. Seeing is believing... 

Well, maybe it was synchronicity, but the same night I was enjoying such discussion, someone in my own reincarnation forum posted something that helped me understand the attitude of this kind of persons. I thought they would appreciate it, as it’s a quote written by a spiritual leader called Jiddu Khrisnamurti and they seem to be fond of ancient/spiritual teachings, but the truth is they soon decided to quit, maybe because they couldn't find right arguments to convince me karma exists... or maybe because they are afraid what I say could make their beliefs totter, being this latter an attitude I’ve witnessed a lot of times in and out of the internet.

This is what the quote said:

"From the moment you are born and begin to receive impressions, your parents are telling you constantly what you must do and you must not do, what you must believe and what you must not believe; they tell you there is a God, or there is no God but a State and certain dictator is its prophet. Since childhood they pour these things inside of you, which means your minds —which are very young, impressible, inquisitive, with curiosity to know, desire to discover— become gradually boxed, conditioned, shaped so that you adjust to a particular society and not become revolutionaries. As thinking following a pattern has been already established on you, when some time you become "repulsed" you do it inside a pattern. Like the prisoners who rebel to get better food, more material comforts —but always inside the prison. When you seek God, or try to find out which government is the proper one, you always do it inside the society's pattern, which says: "This is true and this is false, this is good and that is bad, this is the just leader and these are the saints". Therefore, your rebellion —like the so called "revolution" carried out by very ambitious or very clever persons— is always limited by the past. That is not a rebellion, that is not a revolution; it is merely a more intense activity, a braver fight inside the pattern. The real rebellion, the real revolution, consists of breaking the pattern and investigate out of it. [...]

Society influences all of us, it shapes constantly our thinking, and this pressure society makes from the outside, gradually becomes our inner side, as long as we don't get through that conditioning. You have to know what you think, and if you are thinking as Hindus, muslims or Christians, that is, if you think on the terms of the religion you belong to, you must be conscious of what you believe or not. All this is the society's pattern, and unless you break up with it, you keep being prisoners even when you may think you are free".   

Reincarnation or not, I think this is the attitude which prevents us human beings to find our true spirituality and advance in our self-knowledge and development as a species. We’ve been controlled by religions for millennia, but we are to blame for keeping searching for a religion to answer our questions. We recite like parrots words we have heard somewhere, such as “Karma is like a boomerang, if you did right, you will receive good things; if you do evil, you will receive bad things", and at the same time we are not aware we are only creating new beliefs that make us comfortable, new walls that will imprison us just like old religions did, thinking we have found freedom, when the only thing we’ve done is changing our prison. We have to think by ourselves and find our own Truth, but never forgetting we as human beings will never be able to attain the complete Truth, and of course keeping in mind that we no longer need old dogmas and doctrines telling us how we have to behave. I think it’s time to base our knowledge on real facts and an interpretation of those facts as objective and rational as possible. When we die, we’ll reach that transcendence and we’ll know where we were wrong. Until then, let’s not speculate without direct experience, as that only leads to more confusion, fruitless conversations, and so called “new beliefs” which are just a mixture of ancient teachings and empty “new agey” stuff. In brief, just words, words, words.

Anyway, it’s hard to be clear in this type of situations, not in all places I feel the same confidence to talk about my past lives, that’s why sometimes I need to go on with my own musings and bitter watches here. Because... how can you explain someone you barely know you were judged and hanged, and then you had a brief memory of the life between lives where no one scolded you for what you did and never threatened you with a quick return to Earth to atone for your sins or pay your karmic debts? Well, just telling it, the way I did. But words like these never describe the whole situation, much more complicated. People tend to think it’s all black and white, but it never is, and in this particular life I’m talking about, I killed but I also suffered a great deal. So, who is the one keeping count of all your right and evil doings, do we have to expect a reward for all the right things we did and a punishment for all the evil things? The idea is just childish and senseless, but it’s amazing how many people really believe in this.

Sometimes I feel so frustrated I can’t change the world... but I know, patience might be another one of the “lessons” —if those exist at all— I’ve yet to learn.