Mahendra's Musings - Part 4

One of the things I find very difficult to accept about rebirth is the fact that hardly any one among billions can recall their "past lives". Such a significant happening must surely be remembered, even by a few. Just imagine for a moment that these instances are common and well accepted, and our lives and how we regard life, our aspirations our hopes and our fears would be totally revolutionised. 

There is a large school of thought who believe that the principle reason why Human beings behave in a moral way is because they believe in some sort of after life which in turn will be happy or unhappy depending on the sort of life you led. From a Theistic point of view, God will either reward you or punish you, from a reincarnation point of view the same will happen but without the influence of a God but as a result of a Natural law that operates in such a way that "good" behaviour begets good results and vice versa. Atheists (and agnostics) believe that this is not the case and that when we die, that is the end, period. Why be moral then? It is because our individual survival and happiness cannot occur in isolation as we are part of a community of human beings and this requires us to be moral and display such characteristics like honesty, respect, empathy and love.Some say that this has to be augmented by the "rule of law" and a judicial system. Yet others are of the opinion that even this is not sufficient and that Religion and God was necessary to introduce order to Society and hence a result of Human social evolution.

Which brings me the Big Question. What is the purpose of life? Why are we obsessed with the idea that there must be a purpose? What is the purpose of purpose? Is the period between birth and death merely a period that is occupied by a series of events some of which are pleasurable and others very uncomfortable, some events over which we have some control and others with no control at all and a whole spectrum in between? As death is inevitable, from the moment of birth, are we mostly expending energy to avoid things that will bring us unhappiness or are we spending our energy doing things that give us satisfaction, while we can as what matters most is the present and the future as the past is gone forever, irretrievable and final although we could gain some satisfaction by "living the past" in our memories (just as we can suffer the past with bad memories).

Why then should we care about others? Extending outwards from immediate family, extended family, community, Country and the World? Is it for the same reason as we do things for ourselves? Because doing good and taking care of others make you feel good and in a way, a selfish action or are we capable of getting away from "self" to be "selfless" because a selfless person cannot by definition be truly unhappy because there is no "self"  to be unhappy? But if we are "selfless" can we still experience happiness as who then is going to have this experience?

This leads me on to consciousness and "person". It is a fact that every single molecule in our bodies turns over such that as an adult, you don't have a single molecule that you were born with. So where is this self, in my case where and who is Mahendra? Is there such a person although in a physical sense there is somebody called "Mahendra", but as his whole physical body has undergone complete change and refurbishment, is Mahendra a self-construct of a continually changing body which gives that body a false sense of an underlying person? If so how much of this is dependent on our physical brain? We know that physical changes in the brain have profound effects on personality, behaviour and beliefs. What makes the Brain so vital? Are all that happens in the brain a result of neural signalling or does the behviour of individual parts produce a whole which is greater than the sum its parts? Is this what we call consciousness?  Is consciousness merely self-awareness?

For those whose answer is an acceptance of a God, a soul and an aim to end up in Heaven or something closely similar after death with the full acceptance that you will be reunited with your parents and other loved ones and the belief that as time passes by, your husband, your children and other close people, and with luck atheist friends who have been forgiven by God and given an entrance ticket!). A very comforting thought I must admit........ if you can believe it.