I'd like to write a Medium essay on this topic, of Heaven versus Reincarnation as two belief systems that philosophers sometimes just assume are opposed, even though both feature an After Life in some sense. The devil is in the details right?
However, I'm in a hellish state of needing to connect to a virtual classroom on Monday, for hours at a time, and I've been depending on my Android doing Bluetooth for that purpose. However, the Android appears to have gone crazy. Not the first time. Fighting to save the Android's sanity is taking a lot of my time.
That's the thing about Heaven: it comes with a flip side or Hell. If you wake up in some After Life, you're going to wonder what the Judgement was. Yes, I know, we're not all on the same page as to the timeline. The orthodox Christian belief is we need to stay dead until the end of time, at which point, we experience the Resurrection.
What may confuse people is that's apparently not how it worked with Jesus. He could be resurrected as a fully formed adult, just days after he was entombed. Did he look the same though? Some accounts say only his closest disciples were able to authenticate that this was the same guy.
I diverge though. Or maybe not, as I'm wanting to highlight that the legends or myths are already murky. Judgement Day has to wait for a Second Coming. Is there a Heaven without that Judgement Day coming first?
In the archetypal realm, this is already the After Life. We've died and been reborn many times, and each time we're born, we get a lot of what we prayed for. The living standards humans enjoy now are pretty good for some, totally miserable for others. We regard Creation as both Heavenly and Hellish, but ultimately neither because not Eternal.
What would Heaven be like then? You have a body? What if you think others are better looking? Are you condemned to jealousy, envy and so on? That would be Hell right? You keep suffering from the same sins you did before, except eternally. There's Karma in this picture, it seems like. Here's an After Life, which you expected to be Heavenly, but once you get there, what do you get to do? Do you have a job? Is your life meaningful?
Getting to a world that still made sense, had a history, a narrative, or set of narratives, would seem a Heavenly Outcome to many, especially if said world were relatively free from want and diseases, compared with some Hellish world one had just been in. A believer in reincarnation prays for a better After Life. How is that so different from a believer in and/or hoper for Heaven?
In sum, I do not buy the idea that we have any strictly necessary division in namespaces, between those dreaming of Heaven, and those praying for an After Life on Planet Earth or some other planet. What both believers have in common, in addition to aspirations for a brighter, happier future, is a sense of continuity. How will we know "this is me"? Is one cogito as good as any? That goes against our sense of having a self to preserve.
Now we're getting into another sticky area in philosophy: continuity of self. Those into reincarnation sometimes claim to have memories from past lives. However, beliefs do not always bend in response to such claims, as those not believing in reincarnation may nevertheless believe in dreams, fantasies, thoughts contrary to fact. "Sure you claim to believe in past lives, but that doesn't mean I have to believe you had any" is how the reasoning goes in that case. And so for many claims people make.
My claim is simpler: belief in an After Life includes belief in Heaven/Hell and belief in some future lifespan in any context, comes under the same umbrella. Those positing a strict separation between these two belief systems are being unnecessarily strict in my view.
In contrast, some believe in No Before Life, and No After Life. The cogito does a "heads up" in a single lifespan, experiences the mystery of Being, and then reverts to Non-Being, which is not, after all, a state of Being. Saying someone "is" dead or "is" not yet born, is to posit a "someone" and that's where the oxymorons get started.
Even here, I'd say there might not be as strict a dichotomy as we might think at first. To have another life while forgetting your previous life completely, suggests some underlying continuity that's deeper than one's memories and thoughts. That a specific ego might dissipate, never to reconstellate (reconstitute), is possible even in the course of an ordinary lifetime. A person you once felt and considered yourself to be, is now dead to you. There's no going back.
This issue of Continuity (an important word in film) likewise arises for those who believe in Heaven. We expect to be reunited with our loved ones, in many stories. However that implies we recognize them, and they us. Did all the people we don't want to remember go to Hell? Does that mean we can't remember them in Heaven? Does their suffering not detract from our eternal satisfaction? Do we exult in it then?
However, I'm in a hellish state of needing to connect to a virtual classroom on Monday, for hours at a time, and I've been depending on my Android doing Bluetooth for that purpose. However, the Android appears to have gone crazy. Not the first time. Fighting to save the Android's sanity is taking a lot of my time.
That's the thing about Heaven: it comes with a flip side or Hell. If you wake up in some After Life, you're going to wonder what the Judgement was. Yes, I know, we're not all on the same page as to the timeline. The orthodox Christian belief is we need to stay dead until the end of time, at which point, we experience the Resurrection.
What may confuse people is that's apparently not how it worked with Jesus. He could be resurrected as a fully formed adult, just days after he was entombed. Did he look the same though? Some accounts say only his closest disciples were able to authenticate that this was the same guy.
I diverge though. Or maybe not, as I'm wanting to highlight that the legends or myths are already murky. Judgement Day has to wait for a Second Coming. Is there a Heaven without that Judgement Day coming first?
In the archetypal realm, this is already the After Life. We've died and been reborn many times, and each time we're born, we get a lot of what we prayed for. The living standards humans enjoy now are pretty good for some, totally miserable for others. We regard Creation as both Heavenly and Hellish, but ultimately neither because not Eternal.
What would Heaven be like then? You have a body? What if you think others are better looking? Are you condemned to jealousy, envy and so on? That would be Hell right? You keep suffering from the same sins you did before, except eternally. There's Karma in this picture, it seems like. Here's an After Life, which you expected to be Heavenly, but once you get there, what do you get to do? Do you have a job? Is your life meaningful?
Getting to a world that still made sense, had a history, a narrative, or set of narratives, would seem a Heavenly Outcome to many, especially if said world were relatively free from want and diseases, compared with some Hellish world one had just been in. A believer in reincarnation prays for a better After Life. How is that so different from a believer in and/or hoper for Heaven?
In sum, I do not buy the idea that we have any strictly necessary division in namespaces, between those dreaming of Heaven, and those praying for an After Life on Planet Earth or some other planet. What both believers have in common, in addition to aspirations for a brighter, happier future, is a sense of continuity. How will we know "this is me"? Is one cogito as good as any? That goes against our sense of having a self to preserve.
Now we're getting into another sticky area in philosophy: continuity of self. Those into reincarnation sometimes claim to have memories from past lives. However, beliefs do not always bend in response to such claims, as those not believing in reincarnation may nevertheless believe in dreams, fantasies, thoughts contrary to fact. "Sure you claim to believe in past lives, but that doesn't mean I have to believe you had any" is how the reasoning goes in that case. And so for many claims people make.
My claim is simpler: belief in an After Life includes belief in Heaven/Hell and belief in some future lifespan in any context, comes under the same umbrella. Those positing a strict separation between these two belief systems are being unnecessarily strict in my view.
In contrast, some believe in No Before Life, and No After Life. The cogito does a "heads up" in a single lifespan, experiences the mystery of Being, and then reverts to Non-Being, which is not, after all, a state of Being. Saying someone "is" dead or "is" not yet born, is to posit a "someone" and that's where the oxymorons get started.
Even here, I'd say there might not be as strict a dichotomy as we might think at first. To have another life while forgetting your previous life completely, suggests some underlying continuity that's deeper than one's memories and thoughts. That a specific ego might dissipate, never to reconstellate (reconstitute), is possible even in the course of an ordinary lifetime. A person you once felt and considered yourself to be, is now dead to you. There's no going back.
This issue of Continuity (an important word in film) likewise arises for those who believe in Heaven. We expect to be reunited with our loved ones, in many stories. However that implies we recognize them, and they us. Did all the people we don't want to remember go to Hell? Does that mean we can't remember them in Heaven? Does their suffering not detract from our eternal satisfaction? Do we exult in it then?
