| | Ronald, you wrote, Bill, I don't claim to be fully Enlightened, so I can't claim with absolute certainty that one's soul (or composite of psychic tendencies) survives death. However, based on my meditation experiences and the testimony of great sages throughout history, I do tend to believe that reincarnation is a reality. But even if it is a reality, it offers little consolation because individuals don't remember their past lives anyway. Belief systems independent of direct personal experience mean little to me, so I don't waste my time dwelling on the possible reality or implications of transmigration. According to the great sages, once the descending spiritual current (the Holy Spirit in Christianity) cuts the heart knot ( a non-physical locus associated with the sinoatrial node), the association of awareness with the body is sundered, and the "I am the body " idea is permanently eradicated. Consequently, such Enlightened sages, naturally, effortlessly, and spontaneously rested in, and coincident with, the Transcendental Self (or Awareness), no longer fear physical death. Ronald, it is impossible for consciousness to exist independently of a living, functioning body and therefore, to survive death. The reason is very simple: One is conscious in a specific form and by a specific means, i.e., through organs of perception and cognition. Without a body, there would be no form of perception -- visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, etc. -- because there would be no organs of perception through which it could exist. Nor, without a brain to store and process information, would there be any memory or cognition. So, the idea that a consciousness could survive death makes no sense, regardless of the "testimony of the great sages throughout history." No process of meditation, no matter how deep or profound, can offer evidence to the contrary. How could it? How could meditation prove the existence of a disembodied consciousness, when the idea itself makes no logical sense?
- Bill
|
|
