LIFE IS A MYSTERY

Ian Stevenson (Wikipedia) who studied reincarnation

Life is a mystery.

"Several years ago, when my daughter was just over three years old, my husband and I were watching a TV show about 9/11...

"My daughter, who was coloring nearby, looked up when the screen showed a plane hitting one of the World Trade Center buildings.

"She said to us, 'I died there.'

"Then she just went back to coloring like she hadn't said a word.

"We had never talked to her about the concept of death, and had never discussed 9/11 with her.

"Since then she has not said anything else about it, but now if something comes on TV about 9/11, she says, 'I don't want to watch this.'" (I Died on 9/11)



Is it possible to explain the existence of evil?

In Taoism, the idea is that if an object has a 'front' it must also have a 'back'.

In a created world there are opposites, yin and yang, which are actually part of a whole.

Waves cannot exist without troughs.

In order for 'compassion' to exist, there must be 'suffering'.

In Taoism, yin and yang (+1 -1) arise together from an initial peacefulness or emptiness (0), and continue in existence until peacefulness is reached again.

Imagine a stone thrown onto peaceful water, creating temporary waves and troughs.

Buddhists believe that you cannot have 'nirvana' without its opposite 'samsara'.

'Samasara' is the cycle of birth, death and rebirth.

'Nirvana' is a blissful state where one has ceased to exist as an individual, and where one is free from delusion and suffering.

Budhists do not believe in the 'old man in the sky' type of God.

Buddhists believe that we are responsible for what happens, be it 'good' or 'evil'.

Buddhists concentrate on learning ways to end suffering, escape from samsara and enter nirvana.

For some Hindus, human souls have always existed and were thus not created by God at some time in history.

Human souls are responsible for their 'level of enlightenment'.

The past and future may be happening now; every possible 'Now'.

Reportedly, humans are descended from reptiles or something about as primitive.

We spent the longest period of our air breathing time as something reptilian-like.

But, don't worry. Time may not work in a straight line.

Maybe we can skip about from one bit of time to another, if we are sufficiently enlightened.

Einstein, Schrödinger and others have taught us that Time is not what Newton imagined.

For some cultures, time is a circle.

"The Hindu concept of reincarnation is perhaps the most familiar example, but the Hopi in the American Southwest and the Inuit in the Arctic also look at the world as a series of repeating cycles with no beginning or end; so, traditionally, did the Chinese and Japanese cultures." - The Riddle of Time - TIME

Some people suggest that events tend to repeat themselves in cycles but the events never play out in exactly the same way.

Barbour

Some people suggest that the past, the present and the future may all be happening at the same time.

Prof Carlo Rovelli, of the University of Marseille, reports in Physical Review D that he has formulated a theory in which Time is simply a distance between events.

Julian Barbour in his The End of Time argues that quantum equations of the universe take their true form when expressed in the timeless configuration spacerealm containing every possible "Now" or momentary configuration of the universe, which he terms 'platonia'.[33]

Imagine parallel universes, and every possible 'now'.

"Every 'moment' we experience is real, he says, but these moments exist only for that brief instant, during which time literally stands still.

"The passage of time is as illusory as the sense of movement created by the succession of still frames in a motion picture." - No Time Like The Present - TIME

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