On Karma, Maya, Purpose and Meaning (souls, Buddha, prophets, after-life)

[soclosetoinfinite]

I still have some unresolved question(s) related to the concepts
of "Karma, Maya, Purpose and Meaning" that I'm trying to explore at depth.
[Not specific to a religion as such, but, from some prevailing spiritual
thought literatures etc].

First, stating the associated beliefs, assumptions and historical reasons here,
to bring the readers to the same level of understanding w.r.t. these concepts:

1. When something cannot be easily explained by merely analyzing this life's
cause-and-effect items for a person, they say it is due to inter-life connectedness
of the karma concept. Simply stated, the individual may be suffering/enjoying not
solely due to his present life's actions alone, but, due to the baggage carried
from previous lives' actions and its remnant aftereffects. Belief-1... okay, good so far.

2. They say all this Universe is simply created by God as His playground, in one sense.
Its His grand-experiment only, so don't take it too seriously, if you encounter an extreme
situation, good or bad. Its only His Maya, an illusion, nothing else! Okay.. we'll take
it as Belief-2.

3. Some state the only real purpose of human life is to serve God and strive hard,
meditate, experience the inner-joy/peace etc. ultimately to unite with the Infinite,
into His omniscient, omnipresent Nothingness! Let's say this is Belief-3.

4. Some try to associate real Meaning to life only when its spent in the Service
of God .. in various forms; that also means, serving other humans, who are created
in His image of Perfection. We'll say this is Belief-4.

Now, in each of the above four "Beliefs", you'll recognize some inter-mixed, hybrid concepts
put forth by some ancient as well as some contemporary spiritual, religious, thought and
philosophical leaders with whom we are so familiar with. Some of these could be famous
souls like Buddha, Jesus Christ, Krishna, Mahavir, Wayne Dyer, Shankara, Vivekananda,
Mohandas Gandhi, Billy Graham, Lao-TZU, Deepak Chopra, Mother Teresa, Paramahansa
Yogananda, Sri Yukteswar Giri, Lahiri Mahasaya, Mahavatar Babaji, Rick Warren etc.

Now, imagine these starting conditions of the Universe, at time t=0 (say, just right after
the big-bang): God sprang into action and created several perfect souls in His image,
who would later and eventually be born on Earth as Humans. Since they are in His image,
they have perfect-Karma to start with. So, ideally, nothing should have gone wrong
and this whole World should have continued to stay as one happy, perfect, blissful place
where every entity is just angelic and enjoying. But we know its state is far-away from that.
So, they then resort to explaining it away with #2. But, if you go with that, then
you are at the mercy of randomness, isn't it? It's as if, in the game of pool, God purposely
created one black and one white ball. The virtuous-soul landed up continuously accumulating
good-karmas and hence ascending, while the poor-black-ball, of no fault of its own, started
decelerating, accumulating bad-karmas, life-after-life and thus deteriorating. Now, you can't
praise or blame any of them, as they were simply thrust on to the scene by the Creator as per #2.
#1 can be explained later, only after #2 has started showing its effect, not at the very beginning.
If I separate two entities from my body, just so that their eventual goal should be to get
re-united with me again, then why so much drama, and hence, how to explain #3 then? Some say
it's because of #2, but then we are back to the randomness and then #4 starts to lose its shine,
and in the limit, as some philosophers have questioned before, is it all for vain ultimately?

Can some enlightened souls shed more light on the above scenarios?... so as to help me
hasten my acceleration towards reaching out and merging with the Totally Loving,
Blissful, Infinite -- the singular goal of the Nirvikalpa! If you know any living
Guru, like Paramahansa Yogananda used to be, from whom I need to be blessed first,
to establish the clear-path towards Enlightenment, please let me know.
I would like to avoid any more reincarnations of my soul again on this Earth at
all cost! In other words, I want to completely purge out my ego, such that all this
I/my gets merged with the Almighty forever, in the everlasting peace and joy with the Father!

[imcurious]

Good luck!

[looking4answers12]

Karma - I believe in it for a long time. I believed Karma to mean "What goes around comes around" basically. Then I stopped believing in Karma for a while. I saw too many unkind people who seemed to be successful in life, and I saw them getting away with being basically rotten, but still thriving.

Now, i'm kind of starting to believe in it, to some degree. I am starting to think that what some of us perceive as success and good fortune, are very materialistic and shallow. A person could have a lot of wealth, and on the surface seem to be successful and it might seem that they have everything they need. But if they don't have genuine love in their lives, they might be pretty miserable. That might be Karma biting them in the backside.

I don't know what Maya is.

Purpose and Meaning...I am sometimes trying to figure that out. I think for some, they have a clear purpose in life. For others the purpose may be more simple and unclear.

My sis has quoted someone who said "for some, their sole purpose simply be to be kind to others". I have no idea where the quote came from, but it seems reasonable to me. Everyone has different abilities. It's up to us to figure out what our gifts are and put them to the best use possible.

[pamelaBeurman]

I agree with belief #1

You have to expect some overlap in beliefs. Over time, people move, civilizations are conquered/merged and religious beliefs are combined.

Good luck with your quest!

[NobelLaureate]

This got to be one of the best threads that I found here. Thanks soclosetoinfinite for taking the time in analyzing these concepts in great detail and describing them so beautifully here. You have raised some profound points indeed and I'm planning to embark on these and related issues' research next, in my journey (having conquered another field completely by now ). Can't promise anything just yet, but, I'm extremely optimistic to make some contributions to this field as well (before next reincarnation that is, if that is in the cards ).

[soclosetoinfinite]

Originally Posted by NobelLaureate

This got to be one of the best threads that I found here. Thanks soclosetoinfinite for taking the time in analyzing these concepts in great detail and describing them so beautifully here. You have raised some profound points indeed and I'm planning to embark on these and related issues' research next, in my journey (having conquered another field completely by now ). Can't promise anything just yet, but, I'm extremely optimistic to make some contributions to this field as well (before next reincarnation that is, if that is in the cards ).

Thank you NobelLaureate for your kind comments. Glad to read that you are interested in this field.

[ocpaul20]

Let me start and see how we go....

Karma is nothing more than the result of the universal law which says something like "every action you make has a consequence in energy". That energy is your energy field which is you (your real multi-dimensional self) and so exists outside of time and space - hence this is why it appears to follow you across lifetimes. Each action or thought you make either adds to or subtracts from the amount of energy you have as a being. This is why people say you have to be "good" because it puts pennies into your energy piggy-bank.

If we assume that the universal energy focuses on a point and births a smaller quantum of itself, then this downsteps through the various "dimensions" splitting itself up until evenually it gets to an endpoint which in our case is us here on Earth. Any highly evolved being who wants to manifest themselves here has to split themselves over a number of humans due to each human "battery" only being able to hold a certain amount of energy while here on earth. Otherwise they would either spontaneously combust or abort as a foetus, depending how they came in.

Our ultimate job is to collect all the other parts of ourself (the original point of focus created by the universal energy, divided and split up as it came in) and merge them all back into the original focus-point. This ensures that all of the original energy, experiences and consciousness is brought back ready for rebirthing again as another focus-point by the universal energy pool.

The universal energy does not care whether you are "good" or "bad" because all parts of itself return home either as expanded consciousness ("good") merging with the infinite energy being itself or as individuated particles of space dust ("bad") which cannot hold much consciousness themselves but are nevertheless, all still part of the universal energy and still return to the huge bucket of conscious universal energy.

The problem which is disease and the problem with us not being perfect replicas of the downstepped energy is because we have to move through various distortions to "get" here via our downstepping of the original focus-point of universal energy. This is rather like a hypodermic needle piercing an onion(all of the "dimensions" we have to downstep through), we have to take on the distorted onion layers("dimensions") as we move through them towards the centre(Earth) from the outside of the onion (greater consciousness). The way to get back to merge with the universal energy (outermost onion skin) is that we have to heal oursleves of these distortions in order to successfully return up the path the hypodermic needle came in on. This analagy is not quite right but the best I could come up with at the time.

Each "Onion layer" is itself part of a downstepped different focus-point and this is where it starts to boggle my mind and I cannot go further.

The "prophets" of various religions are merely people who have accumulated more quanta of energy and are expanded in consciousness more than the rest of us. They can see a bigger picture of human existence due to them standing on a higher mountain and being aware of more "dimensions" due to their greater energy.

This kind of answers and explains a lot of the life questions I have. These are not my original thoughts by the way, but are taken from my interpretation of a belief system.

[Terryj]

As for karma, all creatures are at the mercy and consequences of thier actions, nothing escape this, it is called cause and effect. One has to ask themselves, if they hold to karma, as to why we humans choose to follow this idea of karma. We humans have only been here on the planet for a very small amount of time, yet we seem to have captured all knowledge of this life and past lives, this doesn't make any sense at all. Other creatures have been here for 100's of millions of years and have gone by the wayside, what was their karma? In about 5 billion years our planet will most likely be destroyed by our own sun, what about those who karma demands them to return to this planet when it no longer exist. It's ideas like this that makes "karma" sound more like arrogance and any thing else, be it good or bad karma. One has to beg the question, "Why us and not them".

[ocpaul20]

In about 5 billion years our planet will most likely be destroyed by our own sun, what about those who karma demands them to return to this planet when it no longer exist.

So maybe there is no such thing as karma?

Karma is possibly only man trying to give purpose and meaning to his lifetime - viewed from this lifetime itself. If you are aware of many different lifetimes, then karma can be viewed as a whole and seen as a just and fair system of spiritual growth.

If we are more than physical humans, then we can choose to go play on another planet when this one dies. We will not escape from the energetic consequences of our actions though, just because we have moved to another place.

[hljc]

Originally Posted by soclosetoinfinite

I still have some unresolved question(s) related to the concepts
of "Karma, Maya, Purpose and Meaning" that I'm trying to explore at depth.
I/my gets merged with the Almighty forever, in the everlasting peace and joy with the Father!

Son Of God Lord Jesus Christ said from the Bible in John 14: 6 ....``I Am the Way , the Truth, and the Life, No One comes to the Father But By Me``...... So did all these other men say this about Father God , So don`t waste your time on all these other worthless ideas of Men , Go find the living Father God through Jesus and His spirit which Jesus gives to men who repent of sin and turn to Him and love Him...