Label: death

Recycle yourself?

Recycle yourself?

Reincarnation... Twenty, twenty-five percent of people in our more or less secularized, de-Christianized West, are not averse to the fact that we might come back. Says the researchers. So not just become energy, Nirvana, or live on in some kind of diffuse heaven, but actually continue in a new body much like the one you have now.

How is it that? Perhaps a growing individualism has influenced in that direction, made the idea feel reasonable and appealing? That is to be able to continue with one's projects, interests, realizations, possibly after a little "holiday".

Know that CS Lewis, the author and theologian, said that such notions come as if automatically when people have no shepherd, i.e. the church, or a wise, well-educated priest, who keeps order.

Or, it is that reincarnation is simply a fact. The tilted theology of the Church has loosened its grip and what is fundamentally true is allowed to rise out of consciousness as a hunch, a certainty.

But I'm sitting in the subway and wondering if the whole recycling philosophy hasn't done its job? In the past, people threw their rubbish where they stood and walked, in the ditch, out the window, or just in the lake. Miraculously gone. That's not the case in our part of the world anymore. The circular mindset is always present. Everything comes back. We are constantly fed it. Maybe done something with our self-image, our expectations, that too?

Live life

Live life

"The acceptance or interest in things like reincarnation, premonitions, telepathy, communication with deceased relatives, etc., is great. While several of the beliefs and phenomena addressed in these investigations overlap with what is usually called superstition and should have been able to coexist with the long-dominant religion, reincarnation, for example, is a comparatively exotic notion in a Christian cultural circle. In the surveys mentioned above, the idea that the individual should be reborn in a new physical body is supported by about one in four respondents. Hammer (2004) writes that '[i]n just forty years, reincarnation has gone from being an idea spread among members of some theosophical and occultist circles to becoming one of the most widely held religious beliefs of our time'.”

This is something I've wondered about for quite some time. Within new age/new spirituality, this being reborn into a new body is seen as a matter of course. So, it is not that the notion is so strong in these circles, which I think is remarkable, because there it is needed, so that the system of thought is connected. But with people in general?

Tried to catch it in the intro to my thesis (above). With the quote by Olav Hammer. Now about twenty more years have passed (guessing if you count the hippie culture, the turn of the decade 60s-70s, as a starting point). It's been a while since I looked at surveys, but it's hard to imagine the numbers going backwards... About 25% of people in the West, slightly higher among younger people, usually state that they believe or at least don't want to rule out that you are reborn, in a new body , in the physical ordinary world. Reincarnation, that is. (Here are some statistics that have 10-15 years behind them.)

Or has it become a straw man for me, a windmill, or whatever they say, while the world around has moved on? This means that the numbers have actually gone back. That people in general to a greater degree now in 2022 believe in an extinguishing, finito, death, then? (For the belief in the Kingdom of Heaven, i.e. somewhere where you come and stay forever, I have a hard time believing?)... Or has it become more Buddhist, i.e. Nirvanic, you think? That you just die and "evolve" into something bigger?

Try googling the topic. In the US, there is PEW Research, which does such great attitude surveys, among other things, of what people believe. This is from 2021. Then whether this can be transferred to Sweden is perhaps unclear. Data on more traditional religiosity, belief in Heaven, God, how many identify themselves as religious, etc., it is probably very different between our two countries. But maybe a concept like reincarnation doesn't make that much of a difference between Americans and Swedes anyway?

How is this supposed to be understood? That reincarnation is a fact, and when the usual Christian theology has begun to loosen its grip, the secularization, then this "comes to one" as a hunch that something you feel deep down is/can be true? Or is it an effect of increased individualization, the personal project, that it would be so unthinkable, like a mockery, if everything just ended? Or a mix? Or something else?

(Then there is the possible clinical implication, of course. But that is a completely different track... Within certain alternative psychological theories & therapies, one likes to think that symptoms and problems actually have their basis in trauma from such previous existences, which must be sorted out out.)

Reflection on All Saints' Day

Reflection on All Saints' Day

"The candles burning in the cemeteries this weekend show the best in people," writes Björn Wiman in DN today. "And that she can rise even from the most hopeless grief."

"Perhaps it is this ancient power that you see in the long lines of living people that this dark weekend drags across the cemeteries," he concludes his column. "The lit candles show that we can survive even the unimaginable and unbearable - and that together we can be better than we ourselves understand. In any case, I think this is how you should imagine humanity at its best: individuals together, pedaling away towards the edge of vision where everything disappears. Onward together.”

Maturity failure

Maturity failure

I wanted to write about something that, for lack of better words, can be called "maturity failure". Will try to develop what is meant. As you get older, you change, at best develop, mature. It is the natural gait. A model for this has been presented by e.g. Erik H Erikson, a stage theory. Some, Jean Piaget for example, have focused on the small child, while others have tried to cover the entire life span. Erikson is an example of the latter. But this is probably perceived by the vast majority as common sense. You change and mature, through different life experiences. The crowning glory, the target image, is perhaps the wise old woman or old man.
With a newage/new-spiritual outlook on life, the picture becomes more complex, as one often expects two additional developmental processes:
1) Through one's own efforts, certain exercises, studies, insights, one has a chance to develop into something higher or greater than what is common in this life. This also crept into, for example, the psychologist Abraham Maslow, with thoughts about the "self-realized" person. In various spiritual systems, this higher stage is called various things: "enlightened", "cosmically aware", "clear". We humans come a long way in this regard. If you play your cards right, do the right things, you have a great chance of getting extra far.
2) With the idea of ​​reincarnation, there is a "coming of age" that is not limited to this life alone. The person comes back, in a new body, and then builds on what he or she achieved during the previous life. Past experience. So, a young person can in this life be more "mature" than a much older person, if the younger person in the larger course of development has progressed further in their development, is an "older soul".
Back to the "maturity fallacy". In conversations with people who have a new age/new spiritual outlook on life, and who may have reached middle age, I feel that it can be difficult to navigate. They can tell you that they have become calmer, more open-minded, not as convulsively ambitious, etc. And often this is taken as income because the particular teaching one has been a follower of, the particular method of spiritual development that one has practiced, etc., has been an active substance. When you might just, simply, have become old, ? In other words, it is something that most others also get to experience.
(This has some relation to the phenomenon of the "pre/trans fallacy", i.e. when an immature stage of development is mistaken for a spiritual one, which the author Ken Wilber wrote about, but is still not the same thing.)
A special case is the people that the signature Muertos (2012, January 28) writes about in a blog post, people who had a very idealized, even elitist, image of what they represent or will achieve:

I suspect that what's going on is that the New Age, now entering its third generation, has developed a theodicy. Now, this is a theological term, but it essentially means an explanation of the existence of evil – why bad things happen to good people. For some of those in the New Age milieu – Foster Gamble, David Icke, Whitley Strieber, Duncan Rhodes and others, all incidentally in middle age and with a long term involvement in the New Age milieu – an explanation is needed as to why, if we've entered the Age of Aquarius, is the world less peaceful, equal and progressive than ever? Conspiracy theories offer such a theodicy – ​​the New Age hasn't happened because evil people prevented it from happening (Muertos, 2012, January 28).

Paul Vitz (1977) has similar thoughts based on the promises that came with the so-called humanistic psychology:

Second, as people aged, they realized that many of the things thought necessary for self-actualization would not be attainable in their lives. Besides interpersonal disasters, there were career failures, serious health problems, and many other disappointments. The discrepancy between the promised "high" of the Maslovian self-actualization or Jungian individuation and the reality of their lives created a vast disappointment and "credibility gap." The belief that psychology could make you happy, that it was the answer, began to fade (Vitz, 1977, Kindle location 2231).

Muertos and Vitz both write about forms of disappointment. In the first case this is projected to a greater degree, in the second case it is more of a disillusionment, at best reconciliation.

Overview Current texts

Death awareness

Death awareness

An argument for an increased "awareness of death" would perhaps be that the realization that we ourselves and everyone else will die is structuring in some sense. It provides frameworks for life and everyone is included in it; we are all faced with the same conditions. Even if death didn't exist, it might be a good idea to invent it. One can recall the famous passage by Tertullian, writing about a Roman emperor:

Even when, amid the honors of a triumph, he sits on that lofty chariot, he is reminded that he is only human. A voice at his back keeps whispering in his ear, “Look behind thee; remember thou art but a man” (Tertullian.org, 2015, April 5).