It took me awhile to get my bearings in life. After a spiritual experience in my Junior year at university I was left with no answers but a quest: to find out the Truth of things. My initial sense, when I summarized my feelings for myself back at home, before setting out on my quest, was this:
Either there is a God or there is not. If there is not, then nothing really matters anyway, and one might just as well live strictly for oneself, independent of the effect of that pursuit on others, as not; for the end of the closed system of life can, then, as easily be seen as that as anything else, a presumed evolutionary advantage in some degree of cooperation with others, or whatever. If there is a God, however, then certain things follow.
It follows, for one thing, that there is Plan in and Purpose to Life; that life has meaning, beyond just in and for itself only. And it would behoove us to find out what that Plan and Purpose was. As some sort of meaningful exercise.(1)
Here it is, some sixty-four years later for me. And though I have done a considerable amount of searching in the interim - looking high and low - I am no closer to the final answers than I was back then, at my ‘coming of age,’ at the ripe old age of twenty-one. Oh, there have been a lot of close aha! moments. But nothing that I could finger on decisively. Oh, wait. There was one thing.
Reincarnation.
Back then, reincarnation was not in my lexicon. I was born and bred in a Christian milieu - in the Mormon Church - and that feature, that idea had no bearing in that environment. A man named Jesus back some two thousand years ago had ‘died for our sins,’ and that was that. Although I never really bought the idea,(2) I had nothing else to go by, at that time. Thus, my journey began, to see what other ideas there were ‘out there’ in the wider world.
My Quest thus had begun. In earnest. For, we should be finding out these things, no? Otherwise, how to live one’s life, to the ‘best’?? So, diving into all the religions I went.(3) And even into such as the poets’ take on the matter. (I particularly liked the idea about one’s reach exceeding one’s grasp, “else what’s a heaven for?”) But to clarify, regarding the religions of the world: I started with ‘my own,’ wanting to find copies of the original books of the New Testament, and learning how to read them in their original language. Which I presumed was Aramaic. Only to find out that the closest to the originals still extant were in Greek, the lingua franca of the educated of the time. And though I could not find any copies of those in the stacks of the NY Public Library, I found enough there to satisfy me that there was something seriously ‘wrong’ with the Christian religion; at least as presented to us.
That take on the matter came from reading the (translated) works of some German researchers in particular who found evidences from the historical record that ‘Jesus’ was a composite of many ‘god-men’ of the times, or to say, of their legends. That every aspect of the Jesus story came from earlier times, via a plethora of such exalted figures, in the various cultures of the area even back in history to thousands of years BC in Egypt; in the form mainly of what were called ‘vegetation gods’ - gods associated with the return of life in the Spring. And associations with the Sun. And so forth.
What. A. Mess.
So I set the matter of ‘Christianity’ on the shelf for the time being, and continued my search. Into Judaism itself (what a vengeful god; no thanks), and Hinduism (what a menagerie), and Buddhism (now there was a life and idea that made some sense), and even a little bit from the far East, in Jainism and so forth. But nothing spoke directly to my heart. However, the concept of reincarnation, of the Hindus and Buddhists, spoke sense to me. But at that time - this was circa the midi-’50s - there was no actual proof of the concept, at least as I had been able to discover.
So, my search continued, over the years; always keeping an eye out for anything that looked like a plausible lead.
I will note that at one point I ‘read’ my way back into the Mormon religion - my birth religion - when I came across the intriguing story of a large carved stone found down in Central America - by a team of archeologists from the National Geographic magazine, I believe it was; in around 1941 - that gave some credence to a story in the Book of Mormon(.(4) But by then, I had read so much especially about the phenomenon of reincarnation that didn’t jibe with the basic Christian story, that I kept on my journey.
And then clear confirmation of sorts started coming forth, from such as NDEs - Near Death Experiences - and other reports of people, particularly children, who had clear and provable memories of a/their previous life, that the concept of reincarnation could not, really, be ignored any longer, by any ‘decent’ thinking person.
That we have all lived before. That we experience the consequences of our actions that way, in this realm - matrix; classroom - of DualityPolarity; to work out our karma. And thereby, progress up the stairway to the heavens. Of which there are quite a number of levels, depending on which source you draw on.
Me, I don’t get involved with that small contretemps.
The concept is good enough for me. To feel that
I have arrived. At the end of my quest. On this level.
And now, it is a matter of putting all that seeking into practice. In turning this realm into a higher ‘degree’ of it. As we rid ourselves of the money system that has kept us trapped in a false reality for long enough. And move closer to
our Source. From whence cometh
our help.
As fractals thereof.
It has been a long slog, in the relative darkness. But at last, we are
here.
Ready. Or not. For yourself.
Your choice.
—
footnotes:
(1) And therefore, why a dystopian New World Order will never work. For giving people no real reason for serving it - and/or for life itself. And thus, the master class needing to use Force to make it work. And thus setting up an internal reaction to the system. Which will need to play out .
In eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of Man.
(2) That seemed to me to be a bit of a copout. Surely it was more logical that we were responsible for our own actions??
(3) First to ’the largest public library in the Western world,’ which I considered must be in New York City. So, off I went, all the way across the continent, from my home in Southern California; spending a year ‘haunting the stacks’ of said Library, until the government caught up with me, in the form of The Draft, and I spent two years in South Korea, as a c.o. - conscientious objector - before returning to Southern California and picking up my journey from there.
(4) Called the Lehi Stone, it depicted a dream recorded in the Book of Mormon that a figure from that story had had. A figure from the Middle Eest, among a ‘tribe’ of people who had been brought out of that milieu over to the so-called New World, ‘for a marvelous work and a wonder,’ in confirming their God, and the future Christian story.
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