Egg (alittle wordy)

[AntEmpire]

You were on your way home when you died.
It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.
“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”
“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.
“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”
“Yup,” I said.
“I… I died?”
“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”

“More or less,” I said.
“Are you god?” You asked.
“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”
“My kids… my wife,” you said.
“What about them?”
“Will they be all right?”

“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”
“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”
“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”
“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”
You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”
“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”
“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”
“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”
“Where you come from?” You said.

“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”

“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”

“So what’s the point of it all?”
“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.
I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”

“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”
“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”
You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”
“All you. Different incarnations of you.”

“Wait. I’m everyone!?”
“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.
“I’m every human being who ever lived?”
“Or who will ever live, yes.”
“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”
“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.
“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.
“And you’re the millions he killed.”
“I’m Jesus?”
“And you’re everyone who followed him.”
You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

You thought for a long time.
“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”
“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”

“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”

“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born"

 

[Valjean]

I've read that before. Good exposition of certain aspects of Hindu metaphysics.

 

[EtuMalku]

Where's the debate here? I don't get it?

 

[AntEmpire]

Sheet, i did post this in the debate section...

agree, disagree, hate it, love it? debate on! haha

 

[Valjean]

Like it, but I have to confess a certain confirmation bias.

Presents a different, more complex picture of re-incarnation/Vedanta/manyworlds theory than most Westerners are familiar with.

 

[Penumbra]

It's New-Agey. I'm quite familiar with such beliefs.

 

[Penumbra]

Since this is the debate section...

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”
“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”
“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”
You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”
“All you. Different incarnations of you.”

These two aspects don't seem congruent.

If he is all people, how can it be said that his net life will be a Chinese peasant girl? His next life is all lives. Who is the "he" that will be specifically "her"?

 

[Twilight Hue]

Its nice to read, yet I agree with Penumbra that it incorporates a New Age spin.

 

[Valjean]

I'm missing the incongruities, Penumbra.
There are different levels of reality. What's true in one might not fly in another. You have to tailor your language to the level you're discussing.

 

[ellenjanuary]

I liked it a coupla weeks ago, when it was posted elsewhere...

 

[Penumbra]

I'm missing the incongruities, Penumbra.
There are different levels of reality. What's true in one might not fly in another. You have to tailor your language to the level you're discussing.

It doesn't provide an explanation for what his "unit" is that is going to live as a Chinese peasant girl.

If he is everyone, why is god telling him that his particular next life will be a particular person?

 

[Boethiah]

It doesn't provide an explanation for what his "unit" is that is going to live as a Chinese peasant girl.

If he is everyone, why is god telling him that his particular next life will be a particular person?

God is being a tease in the story. Rather than lay down all of the info at once, God lets the person discover it on his own as God leads him through the discovery process.

 

[Valjean]

It is hard to understand how or why a timeless, omniscient Universe sheds these evanescent, benighted little particles, each focusing on and aware of only a tiny part of the whole.

The "unit" is a discrete consciousness, a subjective awareness, a little spark swirling off a bonfire.
S/he's the dreamer -- who's next dream will be the life of a peasant girl.

Neti, neti, neti....

 

[Penumbra]

Another thing worth questioning is the repetition of it all.

The god mentioned that the dead person was Hitler, along with every person killed by Hitler. So let's say you live in a concentration camp, and suffer torture and brutality and neglect and hunger until you die. But, that's not enough. You have to do the same thing millions more times. What could possibly be learned by living as the 1000th person indirectly killed by Hitler that was not already learned in the 999 previous times? And when it comes to the millionth time, what hasn't already been learned through the first 999,999 times? And there's still millions to go.

The same could be said about anything else, really. If tens or hundreds of billions of people have lived or will live (along with the potentially inconceivable number of other lifeforms), then that means at least tens or hundreds of millions of people have been murdered. Tens or hundreds of millions of people have been raped. Millions of people have been tortured. Millions of people have been sexually abused as children. Billions of people have died from starvation and disease.

What do you learn about being murdered the millionth time that wasn't learned the first 999,999 times? Or about the millionth rape, or the millionth torture experience, or the millionth time abused as a child, that was not learned the first 999,999 times of these experiences? What do you learn about starving to death or dying from a disease for the billionth time that was not learned the first 999,999,999 times?

He is every person Hitler, Stalin, and Mao killed. He is every Inquisition victim. He was everyone nuked in Japan. He was everyone who ever starved to death. He was every one of the hundred million victims of the Black Death to die slowly. He was every person ever murdered, raped, tortured, or abused. If that's not hell, I don't know what is.

The same could be said about the opposite experiences. What do you learn from being a wise old man the billionth time that was not learned the first 999,999,999 times? Or from being a happy random person for the billionth time?

It is hard to understand how or why a timeless, omniscient Universe sheds these evanescent, benighted little particles, each focusing on and aware of only a tiny part of the whole.

The "unit" is a discrete consciousness, a subjective awareness, a little spark swirling off a bonfire.
S/he's the dreamer -- who's next dream will be the life of a peasant girl.

Neti, neti, neti....

The story makes two claims (among others).

1. You are everyone.
2. Your next life will be a peasant girl.

If his personality and memories of his personal unit are erased, and he lives next as a peasant girl, then what is it that remains consistent between these two forms? One could say it is a discrete unit of consciousness, but isn't that implying that he is not really everyone?

If we separate the unit of consciousness from the dreamer, then the dreamer is everyone (and it's not experiencing them linearly, either).

 

[Valjean]

Awake, you are everyone. Dreaming, you're an individual.
You can run the "Peasant girl" DVD -- and get lost in it -- but you're still above it all, ultimately. It's just a DVD -- always existed, always will.

Reality is different at different levels of consciousness. Language reflects this. A reasonable statement at one level is an absurdity at another.

 

[PolyHedral]

It falls apart, as does the underlying metaphysics, because no useful concept of "I" is preserved across re-incarnations, as Penumbra points out. If the statement "I am everyone" is true, the definition of "I" being used is useless, and should be discarded.

 

[AntEmpire]

It doesn't provide an explanation for what his "unit" is that is going to live as a Chinese peasant girl.

If he is everyone, why is god telling him that his particular next life will be a particular person?

The unit lives them both one at a time and all at the same time.

 

[AntEmpire]

The god mentioned that the dead person was Hitler, along with every person killed by Hitler. So let's say you live in a concentration camp, and suffer torture and brutality and neglect and hunger until you die. But, that's not enough. You have to do the same thing millions more times. What could possibly be learned by living as the 1000th person indirectly killed by Hitler that was not already learned in the 999 previous times? And when it comes to the millionth time, what hasn't already been learned through the first 999,999 times? And there's still millions to go.

Are you under the impression that each individual who died in concentration camps didn't have their own life. That each person's view isn't different from the next? That each person is the same just because they went through the same thing? We (the unit) will be poor billions of more times then we will be rich. And by rich i mean a bank account with more than $100 dollars. Are all the poor people in sweat shops throughout history all the same person, do individuals not have their own perception thoughts hopes dreams fears desires flaws... ? I could go on for hours for why you are exactly wrong.

 

[AntEmpire]

It falls apart, as does the underlying metaphysics, because no useful concept of "I" is preserved across re-incarnations, as Penumbra points out. If the statement "I am everyone" is true, the definition of "I" being used is useless, and should be discarded.

The thing percieved as "I" is the things perceived as "everyone" and I would take it so far as to say the place/time/thing that is perceived as "everything"

 

[AntEmpire]

The story is just a step. If you take it to the next level; there is no little speech "after" a life. There is no "after" or "before" there is only one moment (now), and only one humanity (percieved as "us"), and only one energy (everything) and it is now, and it is us, and it is everything. And the thing each of us percieves as "I" is it.