Destiny or Purpose

Destiny or purpose?

Does it matter if we are good or bad?

A preordained destiny is like being on a train journey; you cannot change the destination once you have boarded the train. It does not matter how you behave, you will reach that preset destination.

Can life really be like this? Is there no purpose to our journey? Is it true that it does not matter how morally bad we behave towards our environment and towards other people, we still get to that destination? Can we really behave selfishly and irresponsibility without retribution?

If there is a spiritual life after the physical death, then the behaviour during that train journey must control the conditions of life that the spirit has later, when independent of the physical body. Maybe the physical existence has a preset destiny, but how we behave during that journey affects the spirit after physical death. Although there are many opinions about Karma, most seem to think any karma effect is felt in the next reincarnation, the next earth life as a human. What if the karma is spiritual? How you have lived your physical life will determine how your spirit is treated when it separates from the physical body.

The problem with such speculation is that we have no scientific, verifiable evidence that the spirit does continue. We have millions of people who believe that it does and probably tens of thousands who claim to have experiences which confirm that it does. While we cannot reproduce experimental data to confirm these experiences, it is equally true that science cannot prove that the spirit does not exist.

Most religious beliefs include a spiritual state that lives on when the body dies. Such an awareness seems to have been part of humanity since we became human. How did this come about? Why is it such a widely held belief when there is not scientific proof? The established churches, religions, demand obedience to the human leadership. These humans often claim they represent “God” on earth and so they must be obeyed. There is no evidence of any truth in any of these claims. The fact that these people may be knowledgable about their own religion and may have the political support of others in that religion does not make them representatives of God. It makes them political leaders of that religion, but they are not divine or even selected for office by a divinity.

The present teachings of all the older religions have been changed from the original ones. Some of these changes are due to changes in language and the educational levels of the people, but much has been changed because some human decided they knew what a text was meant to mean and so they claim the right to dictate to all others what they should understand from the teachings. This is a very slippery downhill path, since every layer of human “interpretation” moves the teaching another step away from the original. Surely if the original teaching was sent from God, then by definition it was perfect and so interpretation and even the slightest alteration is taking it away from the word of God. The Christian bible is one example, not the only example, but one of them; The scriptures included in the bible were chosen by a meeting of powerful humans, powerful in one sect of the Christian religion. They chose which teachings to include and which to exclude. The motives and methods of decision making have to be speculation after such a length of time, but they were certainly not the result of any divine revelation. Many of the discoveries, since that meeting, suggest they may have chosen later interpretations and not records of the original teachings of Jesus. Since that meeting decided what should be in the bible, there have been many translations and modernisations. How much of the actual words spoken by Jesus are left? How many of the actual words were ever written down at the time they were spoken? Do any of these records still exist?

The Christian bible is not the only religious book to undergo change. The same process has changed nearly all religious teachings, the present earthly leaders demanding adherence to rules and understandings that are changed from the originators teachings.

All things go through a cycle of inception, growth, maturity, reproduction, stagnation, decay, and return to the particles that it was formed from. This applies to humans, animals, plants, trees, mountains, and even planets and suns; so it naturally follows that this cycle also applies to belief systems. It also applies to ideas, knowledge and understanding. This is the train journey we are on, this is the journey religious belief is on, is it the destiny of all religions to arrive at the same destinations and what matters, in the ethereal, is the actions of the adherence to each religious ideal during that journey? If people came to believe this, they may commit less bloodshed in the name of religion.