Sunday, April 30, 2023

Heaven, Hell or No-thing?

What is our soul's destiny? What is the goal of the spiritual life? 

Is it to find happiness?

Is it to be good, and not bad or selfish?

Is it to earn the reward of an eternal after-death paradise?

Is it to avoid eternal punishment?

Is it to love God (whom you probably haven’t ever met)?

Is it to be virtuous in order to be prosperous?

Is it because you will feel better rather than worse?

 

 A Christian who accepts Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and is baptized in the church can go to heaven if their sins are not overly egregious. After death, the Christian might suffer in Purgatory in order to purify the soul of the burden of their venial sins before at last entering through the pearly gate where St. Peter welcomes them into heaven (assuming their name appears in the good book). In heaven, some say they sing praises to the Lord, perhaps strumming a harp. Maybe they visit with family and friends. No one is really sure but forever is a very long time. Maybe there’s no sense of time in heaven? The explanation isn’t very complete. I suppose a good Moslem has a similar experience though I’ve heard that his rewards are more heavenly sensual in nature. But for all that, the idea is similar. There’s even the idea that at some future Day of Judgement one’s former physical body is resurrected and returned to your soul. I suppose for many people these rewards are enough for them to try to be good, but not too good.

Judaism is less interested, I’m told, in dogma and more interested in behavior (a very practical, and as it turns out, modern concept). But there is some talk of an afterlife. Details are sketchy, however.

Buddhism started as a sect of Hinduism much as the first Christians were Jews. As the centuries went along and as Buddhism more or less vanished from India much as Christianity left Palestine for Europe, it has taken on, in some of its sects or branches, a more nihilistic tone—even for some to claim they are atheists, though Buddha never said that. Buddhism is not straight-forward on the question of heaven because reincarnation remained in the canon from its original Hindu roots. In general, the idea seems to be that nirvana is achieved when the self is dissolved but as there is no concept of soul and only emptiness, Sunyata, beyond form, there is, appropriately, not much to say about it (ha, ha). No wonder they are more inclined to think about improving their next life. Who would wish to become nothing? It seems a bit like committing spiritual hari kari. No wonder the Bodhisattvas choose to return to help others! While this assessment is not entirely fair and in principle is not unlike the concept of dissolving the ego, Buddhism does not admit of God and does not discuss the transcendent state of freedom from samsara (the cycle of birth, life, death and reincarnation).

Hinduism affirms reincarnation and the states between reincarnation, the afterlife, as various forms of heaven and hell, though such states are temporary rather than everlasting. The end game of this otherwise endless cycle of birth, life, death, afterlife, rebirth moves toward enlightenment and then culminates in soul liberation. Enlightenment is the kind of awakening to the soul-Self (Atman) that, when it reaches its full realization, frees one from the delusion of separateness but not necessarily from the karma of past actions and identifications. Freeing one's soul identification from the past then becomes the next goal of the otherwise free soul called a jivan mukta. Once all past karma is dissolved by releasing one’s memory and identification with past actions, then one merges into God and achieves the final state of samadhi (there are different levels of samadhi). This merging into and union with God is often described with the metaphor of a drop of water, or a river, dissolving into the ocean. The drop of water or the water of the river still exist but have been merged into the ocean. Nonetheless, Hinduism is so old and there are so many branches of it and teachers in Hinduism that there’s no point even attempting to state what “Hinduism” teaches no matter how insistently any one branch or teacher proclaims their definition of liberation, known as moksha.

Paramhansa Yogananda (1893-1952), author of the now classic story, “Autobiography of a Yogi,” offered a nuanced description of moksha: the soul’s liberation in God. Freedom from all karma, he taught, allows the Atman, the soul, to achieve identification with what it has always been: the Infinite Spirit. Yet, from the dawn of time, so to speak, each Atman, each soul, carries a unique stamp of individuality. As all created things, mental, emotional or physical, are manifestations of the One, nothing is ever apart from Spirit no matter how dark it becomes. A rock is as much God as a saint, but the rock is simply unaware of “who am I” while the perfect being (saint) is “One with the Father” even if embodied in form.

The Self-realized saint then enjoys a two-fold beatitude: the bliss of God while in incarnate and in activity and yet with access to the vibrationless Bliss of God beyond creation.

There are many stages described in the Hindu scriptures of the soul’s long journey through time and space and its concomitant levels of awakening. But in this article, we are focusing on the final stage: union with God. God realization is not barred by the fact of being incarnate in form, whether that form be the physical, astral; or causal. While it may be gainsaid that this final step is natural to the causal state of the soul, there are those who maintain that it is the desireless desire of God that the soul achieves its liberation while in the outer form of the creation as a kind of victory dance proving, like the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the supremacy of Spirit over matter.

Once merged into the Infinite, the memory of the soul’s many incarnations remain. While enjoying the bliss of union with God, the Infinite Spirit might send the soul back into the creation to fulfill the divine mission of redeeming other souls. Returning to form, such a soul is called, in India, an avatar: a descent of Spirit into form. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14)

It is also possible that the deep devotion of an incarnate devotee might be strong enough to call back into vision or even fleshly form, a liberated soul who is in fact the savior for that soul. St. Francis, for example, walked with Jesus. Paramhansa Yogananda was visited by the flesh and blood form of his guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar months of his guru's burial.

In God nothing is lost and all is achieved; all is possible.

Meditate, then, on the indwelling, omnipresent, immanent Spirit in your Self and in every atom of creation. "Hear O Israel, the Lord, the Lord is ONE!" The Infinite Spirit sends into creation in every age a divine "son" to call the children back into the blissful Fold. The "son" says to us "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except by following Me." Krishna, Buddha, Jesus Christ, Paramhansa Yogananda and countless other "sons" (and daughters) of God have been sent. Do you hear their voice?

Blessings, friends,

Swami Hrimananda

 

 

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

So good (god) to hear, read absolute healing truth, Ross Lineham

Anonymous said...

Hi again Swami,

I wanted to send you a personal message this time, but I don't see a contact form, so I’m just using the comment feature again. Feel free to respond at samuel *(dot)* thomsen *(“at” symbol)* protonmail *(dot)* com. No need to publish my comment, though you are welcome to.

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my thoughts. I read some of Autobiography of a Yogi, and some of The New Path, and I watched the YouTube video you recommended about the theory that Jesus spent some time in India. I think I am starting to get a better idea what you believe, though I still find it puzzling how Catholicism and Yoga are exactly supposed to fit together.

Until the age of 10, I was raised within the “Mormon” Church (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). Then my parents left that church to pursue New Age philosophies, including reincarnation, eastern mysticism, and many of the ideas you talk about here. At first my family explored a combination of Christianity and New Age, but as time went on the Christian aspects faded from view. My parents went through phase after phase, first exploring Buddhism, now Taoism, then reading Conversations with God, now Velvet Elvis, etc. That has lasted until the present day, more less. The same with my brother and sister. They bounce from feelings of bliss to feelings of confusion and darkness. Since leaving Mormonism, none of them have felt comfortable with the idea of absolute Truth or organized religion, and generally defend a kind of relativism, or at least a belief that every religion gives you a path to­ God that is valid. (cont'd...)

Anonymous said...

(cont'd - Sam Thomsen)
I’ve been the black sheep of these black sheep, ever since the age of 15 when I decided that there must be some Reality, some Truth out there that is not just whatever-you-want-it-be or choose-your-own-truth. Too many failed prophecies and predictions, too much mental and spiritual chaos for me. I got sick of Ouiji boards and channelings and endless hypnotic regressions into yet another past life. So I went completely atheist for about seven years. I got a degree in Physics. Then I had an encounter with Eternity, a mystical experience that so deeply imprinted me with the existence of God that since then I have never doubted it. But it has taken almost another two decades before I felt that I had any idea who God is and what He is asking of us. I spent most of that time as a Platonist and a bit of a Buddhist, believing in a God who is theoretically personal but so mysterious as to be practically distant and even deistic. I studied (Western, Modern) Philosophy for many of those years, earning a couple of degrees in it. Nietzsche and Lao Tzu were my favorites after Plato. But after all those years studying science and philosophy, and doing Buddhist meditation, I found myself in a spiritual swamp. I was on anti-depressants, seeing counselors, and living a life of sin and dissipation—not at all the virtuous life that true philosophers of ancient times were supposed to have lived. I turned to my parents and siblings, still spinning in the New Age milieu, but most of them were on psychological medication too, and struggling with depression and deep anxiety. They were in broken relationships and seeking after fame and career. All the past life regressions, all the philosophical and spiritual reading, all the meditation and spiritual retreats, none of it seemed to be helping them progress in virtue. In my case, I was facing a life as an academic philosopher among “philosophers” who had no intention of pursuing the virtuous life as the ancients had.

So, long story short, I quit.
(cont'd...)

Anonymous said...

(cont'd - Sam Thomsen)
It was while unemployed in Santa Cruz in a tiny one-room apartment, living on beans and rice and reading the Koran, that I finally knelt to pray. It wasn’t bliss I was looking for, only Truth. It was an act of humility. And God rewarded it. Within a few months I had met my future wife, was off all medications, and my nightmares and anxiety attacks stopped. I read the Gospels and felt that here, in Jesus Christ, was a perfect man. Fast-forward another 11 years, after having four children, reading a great deal of history and lives of Saints, and reasoning my way into a more traditional and conservative outlook on life, that I converted to Catholicism. Here, at last, I have found Truth. This is how God intends us to come back to him. “Narrow is the path to heaven. Broad is the way that leads to destruction.” My mind has been opened. It was before I discovered dogma that I was truly narrow-minded, stuck with an inability to accept anything out there as really true.

So I’ve gone back to my parents and told them outright—I’ve found it! You are still truth-seekers, are you not? Well here it is. And it can be proven. “No!” they protested, “God would never send anyone to hell!” Let’s reason it out, I said. Is God just or not? Is it possible to give any criminal an infinite number of tries without doing away with the law completely?

St. Teresa of Avila said, “Remember that you have only one soul; that you have only one death to die; that you have only one life. . . . If you do this, there will be many things about which you care nothing.”

Was she enlightened or no? My Dad told me, “Sure, son, you can go to your Catholic heaven if that is what you believe, but that’s not really for me, I’m going to be reborn as a 7th dimensional being in the star system of Arcturus [or something like that], and I’m going to live with so-and-so in my many lives to come, and do such-and-such.” But I don’t see how an endless recurrence of this physical life and its mundane cares could be seen as preferable to an eternity of infinite bliss.
(cont'd...)

Anonymous said...

(cont'd)
Interestingly, the more I’ve pushed back on my family-members’ relativism, the more positive results I’ve seen in their paths. They’ve told me that they pray more, and I’ve heard more talk of Christ and less about this or that expensive retreat or medication. I pray for them, and I think that does more than anything.

Speaking of infinite bliss, I am still puzzled by your description in this post of Catholic heaven. You mention playing a harp and singing a song forever, as if that were all there were to it? That is hardly fair. What of the Beatific Vision? “[E]ye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor 2:9). God knows the innermost desires of our hearts, and anything good there will be satisfied. Heaven will not be boring, but endlessly new, because God is unlimited. St. Teresa of Avila speaks of infinite worlds. I recommend reading The End of the Present World, by Fr. Charles Arminjon, or Four Last Things, by Fr. Martin Von Cochem. They have very detailed descriptions of Heaven (and hell) based on the Bible and on the visions of the Saints. Reading The Life and Revelations of Anne Catherine Emmerich also opened my eyes about the true nature of the afterlife. Her extensive visions went beyond what you can imagine or describe, but even what little she was able to put in words opens your eyes about how narrow our imaginations are in this limited body. I also recommend reading Flatland – this is a book I also read before my conversion that did a lot to open my mind to realities far beyond the three dimensions we can imagine. New Agers and Hindus talk a little about these sorts of things, but to be honest I’ve found Catholic writings to go deeper, higher, and with far more clarity. (Yes, as former Physics major I’ve read Stephen Hawking and a number of books on String Theory, etc., but none of that comes close to what even just St. Thomas Aquinas wrote on eternity, God’s nature, and the supernatural.)

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
Sam