- Posts: 192
- Joined: 11 May 2012
Arguably, you could have some concept of karma without rebirth. Partly "karma" refers to purely mechanical effects in a physical world; partly the term is used figuratively to describe purely social effects that are good for governing behaviour in small communities ... but do not apply to life in large, anonymous cities as we live in today.
With regards to your questions of rebirth ... it depends who you believe. Personally, I cannot remember if I existed before I was born.
Some people and religions claim one does. Some people claim their remember choosing their parents and why (as in before they entered the foetus), and thinking in the womb. A friend of my family, when she was a young child, turned around to her mother and said, "it's very nice here but I want to go home now ..." and for days spoke about another life and places she lived in before. They were not Indians nor Hindus, the family had no ideas about reincarnation and were scared or confused by such talk. Weird things happen.
At one point in my life I did go to see psychics/regression therapist ... but, in my experience, they all told me something different, and those different lives would have conflicted if they were real, i.e. I would have had to have been in two different countries at the same time, so I have had to accept that all talk of past life readings and regression are unreliable.
Fun, moving and perhaps therapeutic and inspirational ... as in you get told what you want or need to hear ... but not necessarily real.
I think the whole use and application of karma philosophies are worth discussion. I am trying to do so with BKs right now and it is pretty clear they don't understand it and the so-called "Spiritual University" has never studied all the various karma philosophies (there is more than one).
At a simplistic level, it is just taught at a "bogey man" level to frighten individuals into conforming to group norms, or doing nothing ultimately.
The BK use the idea karma to fulfil their primary interest (giving money to us in the present will make you a multi-millionaire in the future) and they certainly use it as a controlling mechanism ... but they don't know how it works, what its limits might be, cannot prove it etc. It is just something they have picked up and borrowed from Hinduism and teach at a very basic level.
Then they add their own little twist of action in the Golden and Silver Age have no reactions.
The here and now and practical matters which can be easily proven are far more important. Building a religion and making a career out of stuff that is not provable is morally dubious.