There are a lot of things - inexplicable things - that escape all forms of logic and rationality. And that's when you start to wonder.
So, I don’t
believe in religion. I don’t think I believe in God. I sure as hell don’t
believe in heaven and hell, swarg and narak, jannat and jahannum.
People often
ask – so what do I believe in, if anything?
I believe in
humanity. I believe in compassion, kindness, empathy; I believe in the gut
feeling inside me that tells me what’s right and what’s wrong.
But that’s
not what this blog is about.
There’s a
reason (one of many) why I don’t believe in God. In the words of Landon Carter,
“there’s just too much bad shit in this world,” and if there is a God, I can’t
understand how he would let this happen. People say what goes around comes
around. You reap what you sow. But then how does that explain the fate of a
small child who dies from maltnutrition a few months after being born – what exactly
did the little guy do to deserve a miserable and short life?
Karma, they
say. But Karma doesn’t explain the fate of that child – not unless you want to
get into the possibility of multiple lives and reincarnation. Surprisingly
enough, I don’t believe in either of those. I believe in what I know, what my
senses tell me, of what I’m sure. But nothing in my life has ever suggested
that there is any reason to believe in past lives or reincarnation.
Nothing,
except for a book I just read.
It’s called “Many
Lives, Many Masters,” and is written by a well-established psychotherapist in
USA, Dr. Brian Weiss. In this book, he recounts the case of a patient who he
treated using hypnosis (a common technique), but who ended up regressing into
several past lives, and slowly, through this regression, healed.
This guy,
Dr. Weiss, is a man of science. Like me, he never believed in past lives or
supernatural elements. He believed in what he saw or heard. And he saw and
heard some rather unnerving things through the case of this patient, and later
on, several others. Past lives. The process of death. The masters. Like I said, unnerving things.
When I
picked up this book to read, I knew what it was about. I knew I was going to
read about something that goes completely against my own perception. Still, I
was curious. So I read it. And
throughout the whole process, I could feel something changing. No, I didn't suddenly started believing in reincarnation and past lives, but I did start to open up my mind a little.
There are a lot of things - inexplicable things - that escape all forms of logic and rationality. And that's when you start to wonder.
What if there really is something out there, that’s beyond
this level of consciousness and understanding? There are certain wavelengths that
we can’t see or hear – what is there’s a lot more that we can’t sense? How do
we explain all those inexplicable moments of déjà vu when certain events feel
like they have happened before? How do I explain my own inexplicable health
that was my bane for four years in Canada but improved the day I landed in
India?
I can't - not in any way that I am familiar with.
This book didn’t change my perception by 180 degrees, but it did manage to do something else:
For just a moment
– a flicker of a moment – it made me wonder about what’s out there.
