Contrasting Visions of the Afterlife

Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

(Matthew 19:26)

Some days ago, I attended a talk by a man who, many years earlier, had joined a cult-like group and had risen to become one of its important figures. He spoke eloquently and had some rather interesting things to say, but one point of his that I just couldn’t get myself to accept had to do a crucial teaching of his cult that is related to the afterlife.

According to the teachings of this cult, there is no Creator God, and nor is there anything like a soul that comes from such a God. I may err in the matter of some details but perhaps the cult teaches that although we may think of ourselves as separate persons, we are not truly so. Rather, what we regard as our own unique self is actually a bundle of thoughts. The contents of this thought-bundle are constantly changing depending on the actions—mental, verbal and physical—that we do, each of which leaves a certain impression (which can be wholesome, unwholesome or neutral) on our thought-bundle. When death occurs, the particular thought-bundle that each person mistakenly identifies with as their self leaves its old physical body and enters into another one. The new physical body need not necessarily be that of a human being; it could just as easily be that of an animal, a bird or even a plant. The sort of new body that a thought-bundle assumes on death depends on the nature of the impressions that it contains at the moment of death. A preponderance of unwholesome impressions in the thought-bundle might cause it to assume the form of an ugly and thorny tree in a desert, for instance, or a fierce animal, like a tiger or serpent, or as a human born in harsh circumstances, such as extreme poverty, or with grave physical defects. Conversely, preponderance of wholesome impressions in a thought-bundle at the moment of death might result in it being born as a human being in a rich family in a prosperous part of the world and gifted with physical beauty and other such assets.

According to this cult, each thought-bundle undergoes a continuous process of birth (assuming a new physical body) and then death (departing from an old physical body) and birth again and so on and on and on until, finally, it is completely purified of its stock of unwholesome impressions through virtuous actions that leave only wholesome impressions on the thought-bundle and that cancel out the existing balance of unwholesome impressions. Arriving at this point, the thought-bundle is extinguished forever, no longer to take birth and never again to die. This, according to the cult, is the final liberation. The process to reach here can take millions or billions or even more lifetimes and is entirely a result of one’s own effort. There is no God or other such external entity who can expedite or lighten the process.

Now, to me all this makes it seem that escaping the quagmire of repeated birth and death and of undergoing the misery of all that lies in between the two would be almost (or even completely) impossible, for the simple reason that it is almost (or even completely) impossible for us mere humans to ever rid ourselves fully of our past record of unwholesome impressions, believed to be carried over from innumerable past lives, through our own efforts. No matter how hard we may try, to me it seems exceedingly unlikely that even the most virtuous of us humans can spend a single day without thinking a single unwholesome thought. How much more unlikely, then, it must surely be for any of us to be able to spend a single lifetime in this manner, leave alone for the numerous lifetimes of fully wholesome living supposedly required for us to completely rid our thought-bundle of its heavy load of unwholesome impressions carried over from uncountable previous lives and thereby attain final liberation! On this score, then, the vision of the afterlife that this cult upholds does not seem good news to me at all. It offers me no hope of a quick release from the cycle of birth and death. Rather, it seems to tell me, “You might have to undergo birth and death repeatedly, over many more lives—perhaps for aeons—and undergo the misery that this entails before you can afford to hope to attain final liberation. But even then there’s no guarantee that this will indeed happen, because there is no guarantee that you will indeed be able to extinguish the stock of unwholesome impressions in your thought-bundle through your own efforts even after undergoing millions, or even billions, of more lives.”

How much more appealing is the assurance of a loving God who is willing to forgive us our sins in this very lifetime itself—in fact, at once, immediately, in the blink of an eye as it were—not on account of any effort or supposed merit on our part but simply by His grace, if we simply sincerely repent of them! And, here there is need to wait for aeons upon aoens to hope that we might finally be able to be liberated from our accumulated stock of unwholesomeness by our own efforts, for this God also holds out the promise of a blissful life with Him after death for eternity if we have an intimate loving relationship with Him and know that He has taken our unwholesomeness on Himself, in a sense. And what truly good news this is!