A Short Story About Life, Death And The Universe. (Food for thought...)

[dynamo]

by Andy Weir; Gostica

You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.

“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”

“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.



“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”

“Yup,” I said.

“I… I died?”

“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Are you god?” You asked.

“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”

“My kids… my wife,” you said.

“What about them?”

“Will they be all right?”

“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”

“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”

“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”

“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”

You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”

“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”

“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”

“Where you come from?” You said.

“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”

“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”

“So what’s the point of it all?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.

I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”

“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”

“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”

You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”

“All you. Different incarnations of you.”

“Wait. I’m everyone!?”

“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.

“I’m every human being who ever lived?”

“Or who will ever live, yes.”

“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”

“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

You thought for a long time.

“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”

“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”

“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”

“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”

“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”

“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.

[Innocent Warrior]

I don't think anyone believes me but God spoke to me once and told me the same thing in different words; that Earth and all her inhabitants are me.

[Noelle]

I know. I know. This video has been posted in other threads before, but it's so cool.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=mMRrCYPxD0I

[Innocent Warrior]

Posted by LadyM (here)
I know. I know. This video has been posted in other threads before, but it's so cool.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=mMRrCYPxD0I

This never gets old, beautiful!

More from Mr Watts -

Attention is narrowed perception. It is a way of looking at life bit by bit, using memory to string the bits together — as when examining a dark room with a flashlight having a very narrow beam. Perception thus narrowed has the advantage of being sharp and bright, but it has to focus on one area of the world after another, and one feature after another. And where there are no features, only space or uniform surfaces, it somehow gets bored and searches about for more features. Attention is therefore something like a scanning mechanism in radar or television. . . . But a scanning process that observes the world bit by bit soon persuades its user that the world is a great collection of bits, and these he calls separate things or events. We often say that you can only think of one thing at a time. The truth is that in looking at the world bit by bit we convince ourselves that it consists of separate things, and so give ourselves the problem of how these things are connected and how they cause and effect each other. The problem would never have arisen if we had been aware that it was just our way of looking at the world which had chopped it up into separate bits, things, events, causes, and effects.

The self-conscious feedback mechanism of the cortex allows us the hallucination that we are two souls in one body — a rational soul and an animal soul, a rider and a horse, a good guy with better instincts and finer feelings and a rascal with rapacious lusts and unruly passions. Hence the marvelously involved hypocrisies of guilt and penitence, and the frightful cruelties of punishment, warfare, and even self-torment in the name of taking the side of the good soul against the evil. The more it sides with itself, the more the good soul reveals its inseparable shadow, and the more it disowns its shadow, the more it becomes it.

Thus for thousands of years human history has been a magnificently futile conflict, a wonderfully staged panorama of triumphs and tragedies based on the resolute taboo against admitting that black goes with white.

[greybeard]

Posted by Rachel (here)
I don't think anyone believes me but God spoke to me once and told me the same thing in different words; that Earth and all her inhabitants are me.

I believe you Rachel, because its the Truth.

Chris

Ps. On realization of the Self (Enlightenment) some exclaimed "I am the totality all of it" You would get locked up in a mental institution not that long ago in the Western World for such a statement.

Ch

[Ewan]

Posted by greybeard (here)

Posted by Rachel (here)
I don't think anyone believes me but God spoke to me once and told me the same thing in different words; that Earth and all her inhabitants are me.

I believe you Rachel, because its the Truth.

Chris

Ps. On realization of the Self (Enlightenment) some exclaimed "I am the totality all of it" You would get locked up in a mental institution not that long ago in the Western World for such a statement.

Ch

I believe her too, I even got the vaguest glimpse of it once for just a few minutes one day many years ago. Everyone I saw, complete strangers, were recognised as members of my family.

Well, so not quite me, but a step in the right direction and though such a fleeting experience it stays with me nevertheless.

[dynamo]

Posted by LadyM (here)
I know. I know. This video has been posted in other threads before, but it's so cool.

Yes, it is cool; he was (is) cool. An eye-opening, thought-provoking man. I have been reading/listening to his material since around 1977 or so and it never gets old. Thank you for the reminder, Lady M!

[Valerie Villars]

Rachel, I believe you because God told me basically the same thing, internally. While I did not mention that part of my experience, they still locked me up Chris. It's still America.

[Innocent Warrior]

I wrote -

I don't think anyone believes me

After I posted I thought I probably shouldn’t have written that bit because it’s likely just the way I feel and not actually true. I suppose it’s sensible to consider how believable an experience is when sharing but I wish I could move past fear of not being believed or coming off as a fantasist or delusional. I trust myself so I don’t even know why I care.

God spoke to me once

Also, the above happened long before I ever heard of Neale Donald Walsch and his books and yet his account of how it happened is exactly the same way it happened with me, so I completely believe him.

Posted by greybeard (here)
On realization of the Self (Enlightenment) some exclaimed "I am the totality all of it"
Ch

Posted by Ewan (here)
I even got the vaguest glimpse of it once for just a few minutes one day many years ago. Everyone I saw, complete strangers, were recognised as members of my family.

Well, so not quite me, but a step in the right direction and though such a fleeting experience it stays with me nevertheless.

What an awe-inspiring vision that must be, I’ve often wished to experience something like that and see it for myself, just knowing it has been transformative.

[Foxie Loxie]

That's why we have all been led to Avalon because it is a place where we CAN share.....and be believed!!

[chris_walker]

There's no way I want to be reincarnated as a Chinese or any peasant girl in 540AD. This is why I dread the concept of reincarnation - you can potentially and with great probability become someone in a more miserable condition than you are now. Darwinist annihilation is preferable to this.

[Valerie Villars]

It's okay Rachel. You are not trying to be a guru or tell anyone else what their truth is; only yours. We are so conditioned in America to apologize or feel crazy for having spiritual experiences. Like there is actually something WRONG with it. How crazy is that?

[dynamo]

Posted by chris_walker (here)
There's no way I want to be reincarnated as a Chinese or any peasant girl in 540AD. This is why I dread the concept of reincarnation - you can potentially and with great probability become someone in a more miserable condition than you are now. Darwinist annihilation is preferable to this.

Do you believe you have a choice? Just sayin...
Does the caterpillar have a choice on whether or not it becomes a butterfly? (a crude analogy but the only one I can think of off hand...gotta run)

[Rich]

Posted by chris_walker (here)
This is why I dread the concept of reincarnation - you can potentially and with great probability become someone in a more miserable condition than you are now.

Do you think what happens is a random occurrence? and would you say that who you take yourself to be now is also determined at random?

[Craig]

Yes, from my readings of the CwG material, we are all the individualisation of the creator experiencing ourselves in the art of creation and to extrapolate on that, if there is a god as in the meaning of what God would entail then yes, there can only be God and we are all apart of it, as there can be nothing outside of God that can exist? I still am trying to understand it all within my 3D mind.

Also there is no past, present or future but only a now and we are spread out amongst multiple lives, multiple universes all at once and strangest part to me is that we are living this current life multiple times making multiple decisions??? But for everything I read that confuses me I also read something that makes me go Ah, yes of course.

There are multiple truths out there and we all respond to whatever triggers our frequencies inside.

Happy New Year to all, apparently we have been here before, remember to see the perfection in everything even if it doesn't make sense to us now....

[Wind]

Posted by chris_walker (here)
There's no way I want to be reincarnated as a Chinese or any peasant girl in 540AD. This is why I dread the concept of reincarnation - you can potentially and with great probability become someone in a more miserable condition than you are now. Darwinist annihilation is preferable to this.

We don't reincarnate back in time (although time viewed from eternity is another thing), that's not the way it goes. Nor do we reincarnate as animals either, although what an "animal" is remains debatable. Dolphins and whales are mammals too and they might even be more intelligent than humans in some cases. Reincarnation has in fact everything to do with choices and thus with karma so everything happens for a reason. Every choice we make has some sort of in impact in our so called reality and everything in it serves the growth of the soul. There are only lessons to be learned in life, some are more harsh than others.

You don't of course have to believe me or any of the ancient wisdoms, you'll just have to see it for yourself.

[chris_walker]

Reincarnation is horrific per se. You can be reincarnated in a myriad of hellish scenarios and not necessarily in the past. And for what? To learn what?

If we are eternally reincarnating, then probability theory says we should know everything there is to know already.

Do I really need to experience being machine gunned to death in a tropical jungle to understand the brutality of the Vietnam War? Do I need to experience living in a 3rd world slum to understand their pain? I can perceive all these horrors without experiencing them.

I just hope that we are trapped here and feed parasitic entities with loosh as many, like Wes Penre and G H Rees (Kaboom The Moon) believe and that memories of past lives are actually us tuning into the Akashic Records.

[Innocent Warrior]

Posted by chris_walker (here)
There's no way I want to be reincarnated as a Chinese or any peasant girl in 540AD. This is why I dread the concept of reincarnation - you can potentially and with great probability become someone in a more miserable condition than you are now. Darwinist annihilation is preferable to this.

Me either! If that part is true the way I read it (God I hope not!) then it's too far outside my current scope of perception to completely comprehend, so I just noted it and set it aside. My understanding is that we have already been the Chinese peasant girl in 540AD, from this linear time perspective, that we are literally the one being and simultaneously living all the lives at once and a part of all that is experiencing it like this in linear time. So it's not like we all as individuals have to live all the other lives, we already are and have - as one, and collectively as individuals from the linear time perspective. Hope that makes sense, I'm not the best at translating spiritual concepts into words.

Posted by Villival (here)
It's okay Rachel. You are not trying to be a guru or tell anyone else what their truth is; only yours. We are so conditioned in America to apologize or feel crazy for having spiritual experiences. Like there is actually something WRONG with it. How crazy is that?

Thank you Villival.

I'd be the poorest guru in the world, it's lived, not taught, so what's there to say? Experience is knowledge, all else is just theory. Trust who you are, be you, go within, trust the process and above all else be kind and have fun. End of story from Rachel the guru. :D

[chris_walker]

Posted by Rachel (here)
Me either! If that part is true the way I read it (God I hope not!) then it's too far outside my current scope of perception to completely comprehend, so I just noted it and set it aside. My understanding is that we have already been the Chinese peasant girl in 540AD, from this linear time perspective, that we are literally the one being and simultaneously living all the lives at once and a part of all that is experiencing it like this in linear time.

Alright, we have been the Chinese peasant girl in 540AD, but does that preclude us from being the Chinese peasant girl in 2172AD? Again, something to not look forward to. Now the Chinese business person/billionaire/academic/philosopher/etc. in 2172 wouldn't be so bad, but who's to guarantee anything in the future?

Ninety five percent and may be more like 97-8% of the world's population today lives in poverty. Is reincarnation random and do I have a 98% chance of being born in hardship, something which I would have experienced in the past, I do I transmigrate to a lifer of even greater reward?

At any rate, what's the difference between this generally accepted model of reincarnation and Darwinist annihilation? We, or most of us, do not remember anything that is not of this life and as I wrote before, what if those who allegedly remember past lives are actually connecting to the Akashic Records?

And whose Akashic Records are they most likely to connect to? Why, Alexander, Cleopatra, Caesar, Napoleon, William the Conqueror, Elizabeth I, Henry VIII, Churchill and their ilk, of course! I just chose the people whose biography I recently viewed on the History Channel.

[Innocent Warrior]

Posted by chris_walker (here)
Alright, we have been the Chinese peasant girl in 540AD, but does that preclude us from being the Chinese peasant girl in 2172AD? Again, something to not look forward to. Now the Chinese business person/billionaire/academic/philosopher/etc. in 2172 wouldn't be so bad, but who's to guarantee anything in the future?

The way I see it - yes and no. Imagine the totality of it all as one energy being, with each incarnation as an individuated expression of that one energy being, like waves emerging from the ocean. It's the One that lives all the lives or that which all the waves emerge from, not Rachel or Chris, but at the same time you and I and everyone else are the One. So on this level as individuals, you are being Chris and I am being Rachel and the One is being both of us and everyone else. So it's the One that lives the life of the girl in the future, not Chris or Rachel. And then there seems to be lots of levels of individuations, so the being that I know to be my higher self might end up incarnating as the girl in the future, or it might be another HS that does, depends what each HS chooses to experience, but that's another whole rabbit hole that leads me in over my head pretty quickly.

Ninety five percent and may be more like 97-8% of the world's population today lives in poverty. Is reincarnation random and do I have a 98% chance of being born in hardship, something which I would have experienced in the past, I do I transmigrate to a lifer of even greater reward?

I don't think it's random, according to my experience, my understanding is that we choose our incarnations. I don't see it as a system of graduation in that respect, I think there's a whole lot more to the picture and story that lies beyond the physical and we choose our incarnation according to the greater picture/story/life, which has all sorts of twists and turns. The way I see it is if it served you to incarnate again but your soul (or spirit or HS, whatever the term) was tired of hardship or just wanted to take it easy, you could choose to incarnate into an easy, pleasant life and have a rest if you wanted to.

At any rate, what's the difference between this generally accepted model of reincarnation and Darwinist annihilation? We, or most of us, do not remember anything that is not of this life and as I wrote before, what if those who allegedly remember past lives are actually connecting to the Akashic Records?

I'm not familiar with the term Darwinist annihilation, will you explain it to me? Akashic records - that's possible I suppose, although from the perspective of the One, what's the difference, it's all you anyway?

And whose Akashic Records are they most likely to connect to? Why, Alexander, Cleopatra, Caesar, Napoleon, William the Conqueror, Elizabeth I, Henry VIII, Churchill and their ilk, of course! I just chose the people whose biography I recently viewed on the History Channel.

Haha. Well I recently had some regression work done, I was nobody famous as far as I could tell and got myself killed, perhaps I should file a complaint to the library of akashic records.