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exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Reincarnation On Trial

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Ulysses is Dante's posterboy for "I don't have enough"

In the Divine Comedy, Dante meets Ulysses in the dark netherworld.

Editor’s note: Ulysses is the Romanized version of Odysseus. From the Iliad, but especially the Odyssey, we find the famous warrior of the Trojan war to be a noble figure. However, to serve Dante’s thematic intent, Ulysses is now recast as reprobate. There is no ancient source corroborating Dante’s view. The blacklisting of the notable Greek was simply made up as literary device.

Ulysses’ return to Ithaca is recounted. He’d been gone for 20 years, and very nearly didn’t make it back. Upon arrival, however, the beautiful Penelope is not enough for him; the loyal son who grew up in his absence is not enough for him; the pleasures of peace, well-being, home, and hearth are not enough for him.

Instead, we find Ulysses gathering his men together as he tries to convince them to set off with him, one more time, out into the world on some quixotic campaign. He just hadn’t done enough yet, gone to enough places, seen enough – nothing in his bedraggled life was nearly enough to satisfy him.

the underlying spiritual cancer

Dante employs Ulysses to explain the moral geography of "the Inferno." This becomes an attempt to categorize sin with a major listing for intemperance, a lack of self-restraint, led by an underlying spiritual condition of never being able to find contentment.

Nevertheless, whatever else Ulysses might have meant to Dante’s world-paradigm, the inventor of the Trojan Horse stratagem becomes, for us, in these discussions on reincarnational theory, a useful metaphor of one who sold himself to the cravings of “infinite doing.”

In this mind-frame of psychological poverty, of inner neediness, of “I do not have enough” because “I am not enough,” nothing, no matter how much one has, is ever enough.

In the “500 testimonies from the other side” article, we learned of an entire, vast in number, class of people in the next world who are thus afflicted. They live their eternal lives directed by the dysfunctional ego, quite out of touch with their true selves.

Eckhart is right

This kind of undue emphasis on "doing" and experience becomes pathological, in that none of it issues as a sincere quest for knowledge or an expression of the joy of living; but, instead, it's just a mean and narrow craving of "The Fearful Little Me," seeing itself as so inadequate, so desperately wanting to be "more."

Eckhart Tolle says that this pathology occurs when a “consciousness, mesmerized by experiences, and conditioned to identify exclusively with form, finds it almost impossible to become aware of inner space."

That’s it, exactly. The sense of self that is unaware of the sacred “inner space” will go looking for love in all the wrong places; an infinite number, but none of it will be enough to fill the hole in the beleaguered spirit.

Would it even be possible to do everything?

In the “Evolution” writing you'll find a few sub-articles dealing with the mathematical impossibility of Darwinian randomness as the primary driver of genetic variation.

For example, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake points out that proteins enfold themselves in very particular ways. It has to be done just right and just so. But the number of possible arrangements of the enfolding is so large, with the protein structure so complex, that even a duration equal to that of many universes would not be enough time for a protein to have come up with just the right enfoldment by accident.

not enough time in many universes

Now, consider this very carefully.

The theory of “infinite doing” is not supported by the math. Not even close. Not even a little. This means that “infinite doing” is a bankrupt and superstitious idea, a product of “New Age” fuzzy thinking. It’s a fairy tale.

Also consider this.

Enfolding proteins, in just the right way, is a complex affair. And, as noted, randomness could not accomplish this even with a duration of time equal to that of many universes.

But the enfolding of proteins is child’s play compared to the orchestrating of each person to experience “everything.” The gargantuan probabilistic monstrosity of engineering all of the experiences required to satisfy “infinite doing” would take much more than a duration of time equal to many universes.

If each of the atomic and sub-atomic particles in the cosmos represented one life-span of the universe, even all this – possibly, a number close to 15 billion times a googol -- would not be enough time to satisfy the “infinite doing” theory.

But would we even want this?

“Infinite doing” is built upon the false premise of experience as the primary catalyst of human spiritual evolution. It is not. Only an upward shift of consciousness can accomplish this; or, as Eckhart put it, an awareness of "inner space."

But would we want it if we could get it? I mean, if the math allowed, and we could have all experience, would it be a good thing?

I think it's like this.

We are headed for Summerland; for expanded powers of body and mind. We're going to live and learn and love and do and experience - for a very long time to come. And we're going to take to ourselves all manner of mental growth due to travel, human interaction, studies, mystical vision, on and on.

But, again, let me say, none of this coming "experience on steroids," of and by itself, will evolve us. Yes, we'll always want the new travel experience, or the new research findings, or the new music skill, or new artwork gathered, but we'll want these as part of the joy of living, and not because a "Needy Little Me" craves more and more in order to feel good about itself.

Nevertheless, in all of our adventures, we surely will be growing in experience. But the spiritually healthy person will not count all of this as the number one thing in life.

Then what? Let me approach this from a new angle.

The person who has found the "true self" will be taking a journey into the "inner cosmos" of the soul.

And though it may take some time, part of that inner journey will yield for us a perception of the greatest thing in the world, and also the worst thing in the world.

And if you actually could accomplish "infinite doing," all of these experiences would fall into a middle ground between the two extremes of the best and the worst.

What do I mean by this? I must speak briefly as entire books could be written in service of an answer here - and I may have already written these books. However, essentially, it's of this order.

In "Prometheus" and elsewhere, I have spoken of "the madness maddened." It's one's personal descent into "hell," so to speak, with Dante's services merely optional; it's an up-close sordid view of the "evil within." Nothing could be more horrific than this encounter. As we've discussed, this will become the basis of our spirituality, and it will cure us, once and for all, of totalitarian leanings, of "I thank thee Lord that I am not like other men."

"the translucence," the shining through, "of the eternal splendor of the One," and of the Truth

On the other end of the spectrum is the "ultimate reality" of joy. This explosive delight will be delivered by one's eternal romantic Twin Soul.

Editor's note: People might ask, should this latter not eventually be a vision of the beauty of God's face, as the "Beatific Vision" doctrine of Dante suggested? And I will say, yes, of course; it's just that, there is no anthropomorphic "God in the sky" to whom we might make pilgrimage for this benefit. Instead, God has assigned the duty of revealing "the hidden face of Divinity" to the Twin Soul romantic mate, the one "made in the image." And it is by the agency of the Sacred Beloved, representing the Divine Parent(s), that, eventually, we will experience the apex of joy. It is the Twin Soul who will offer to us "the translucence," the shining through, "of the eternal splendor of the One," and of the Truth.

Once we are in receipt of these two primary inner-visions, we will finally feel contented. Yes, there's a big universe out there for us to explore, and we'll always want to learn more and see more and do more -- but, now, not in a craving-desperate way. We'll already have all that we really need to survive the "terror of eternal life."