The Lies Humanity Tells Itself 3/4
Our souls are immortal – poor souls!
The other day, I heard an immortal soul complaining: “there are not enough bodies for all of us to incarnate ourselves in and thus appreciate the true pleasures of life. Because of that, the war is raging among all the souls, but it is really a futile and useless war since none of us ever dies!”
Beyond believing that souls exist on their own (without a body) and that they live forever somewhere out there, some people genuinely believe that their immortality is a good thing. Maybe it is for the believer, but I really doubt it is for the soul itself. In our normal life, after 50 or 70 or 90 years, depending on the life we led, we get tired from most of what we hear and see around us and death starts to feel like a real relief, so much so that the most famous epitaph is “R.I.P.”, which means rest in peace. I don’t think the RIP is for the body, since this latter will disintegrate and disappear in nature; it is definitely meant for the dead soul. The only way for an intelligent soul, watching the entire universe go round with all its pleasures and atrocities, to rest in peace is by being dead. So, what makes us so adamant to have immortal souls? The answer is quite obvious, we want to preserve the existence of the ultimate soul, the soul of all souls, God! We want God to be immortal and keep listening to us and working for our happiness on earth and our salvation afterwards, in case there is one.
Immortality is the worst curse that could ever be placed on anyone. Immortal regrets for all the things we didn’t do while we were in mortal bodies, immortal remorse for all the things we did and shouldn’t have, immortal contempt to human kind, the worst kind of living beings, immortal memories of days past that will never come back, immortal frustration of not being able to become mortal and find some peace in death and oblivion. And to crown it all, immortal sufferings we have to undergo, and the immortal fear that ensue.
We all go to heaven or to hell – for now we are in hell!
If, later, some of us decide to go somewhere else better, then we will surely follow them!
This notion of hell and heaven and the pearly gates is a big fallacy. I should say a swindle. Nobody knows for sure what is going to happen when we die, yet a lot of people shape their lives in the promise to go to heaven and avoid hell. It is like not knowing whether you will get paid at the end of the month, yet you work very hard hoping it will happen. Worse, if the boss deems that you are not working as hard as they would like you to, then, not only they don’t pay you, but they also take money from you. Meaning if you don’t work hard to qualify for heaven, you immediately go to hell, instead of remaining in some neutral place where life continues to be as good or bad as before, without all the heavenly bliss, but also without the hellish suffering. This is a genius stroke from the church to control, effortlessly, the lives of its followers. God almighty, the eternal has all their time to judge us and reward us (heaven/freedom) or punish us (hell/prison). 632 years later, Muhammad adopted this brilliant idea of heaven, and added some major enhancements, the major new feature being the 72 virgins waiting for men of valor and dedication to Islam. He made thus the contrast with hell even starker, and therefore he made heaven even more appealing!
God is love – or love is god (one of them at least)!
God’s love is so intense that they cannot share their object of love with anyone else. Whomever they love the most, they keep very close or bring them back quickly: the children dying from hunger across the world, the ones drowned by tsunamis, the ones crushed by earthquakes, or the ones killed by hurricanes… This confirms the famous Arabic saying: “love can kill you!” Honestly, God is love is not such a big lie! Everyone equates love with kindness, affection, and tenderness, basically the opposite of anything harmful, in that sense “God is love” is a lie. But if you take the full spectrum of love effects on humans, from extreme happiness and ecstasy to extreme sadness and despair, then “God is love” is a pretty damn accurate statement! I wish God (if they existed and really had any bearing on our lives) were kindness and justice and the hell with love!
God is everywhere – except where we really need them!
Some people believe without seeing and in their blindness, lies their happiness. For those people, not only God is everywhere, but also kindness, justice, and brotherhood. They are an endangered species. God’s willing, they will be extinct before humanity can prove or disprove the omnipresence, or just the mere presence of God. Here again, it is a matter of semantic. If God is or is behind all things, good or bad, that are happening in the world, then by this definition, God is absolutely everywhere. But considering how bad it is out there and almost everywhere, we all then wish that God wouldn’t be anywhere! Because wherever they seem to be, the miseries are much bigger and more pervasive than the happiness or the wealth! Who attracts whom? Does God attract misery or does misery attract God? Does it really matter? I personally believe that they are mutually attracting each other; hence if you eliminate one, the other goes with it. I started by eliminating God, waiting for misery to follow. Hopefully it is not too late and it won’t take a long time!
God is inside each of us – hiding very deep!
The only way to find if something is inside of us would be to perform an autopsy on our body! It would be a bit late for us to enjoy the pleasure of the discovery, but it will be helpful for the generations to come. In that scenario, we are faced with a real challenge: to find God, you need to be able to recognize them when you see them, and since no one ever saw them before, it will be anybody’s guess. Unless you apply a proven method used by scientists and doctors to find something they haven’t seen before, they proceed by elimination. After eliminating all the things they know inside of our body, whatever is left would be God! Since all our body parts are known and identified, they will be left with NOTHING!
For a more theological analysis I encourage you to read again “God is love” and “God is everywhere”, including inside each of us.
To Be Continued ...