One of my fellow author-friends on the Kindleboards suggested that I should try blogging about my everyday life, and about topics that interest me other than those actually mentioned in my books. Well, here's my first attempt. Animals, past lives, the unfathomable magnetic draw of Dr. Sheldon Cooper and his hilarious sayings, the sexiness of Johnny Depp, hurricane force winds, the value of trees...these are just some of topics occupying my thoughts these days, but right now I'm thinking about the meaning of life. Specifically, whether Karma exists. Heavy subject, that. Yet it's one I've been pondering pretty regularly since last year, when my poor little cat died from multiple issues (stroke, kidney stones, Pancreatitis). Why does all life on earth seem to be organized around the experience of suffering? What good is pain? What does it do for the soul? And why did my Persian cat, who couldn't possibly have wracked up any bad Karma, suffer through an agonizing last week of his life?
Lately I've been reading a lot about the Near Death Experience, and I've been watching television programs in which people describe their encounters with death. These folks talk about moving toward the light, going into a warm, comforting and brilliant presence that some attribute to God's love. There they are met by dead loved ones, and are often shown a playback of all the deeds they'd committed while alive -- a "life review" in which they not only feel their own emotions during the replay of every event, but also the emotions of those they'd interacted with. During this life review, some Near Death Experiencers are asked what good they'd done...and this is the part that troubles me.
You see, good is in the eye of the beholder. One person's good deed might be another person's worst nightmare, depending upon one's sanity, society, species, etc. I'm sure there have been plenty of murderers who thought they were doing victims a favor by killing them. And the concept of good for a typical 20th-century American is probably not going to match that of a native of a remote tribe in the Amazon. Also, what about animals? They don't make choices between good or evil. Some animals never even lay eyes upon another of their kind except for rare chance encounters for mating, so these animals don't even have the social interaction in which a good deed might occur.
Good is a human idea. Good is a device that keeps our human society functioning smoothly. Good did not exist in the time of the dinosaurs. And yet there seems plenty of evidence that, not only do animals have souls -- presumably dinosaurs did, too -- but they also go to the very same plane of existence as ourselves upon death. So what "life review" for them? Before human beings arrived on the scene, what did a Near Death Experience look like for a T-Rex, for example? Were dinosaurs shown their worldly deeds? Was a Tyrannosaurus made to feel the pain of the Brontosaurus he ate for lunch?
All I can surmise is that the question "What good have you done?" was asked of these Near Death Experiencers because it would somehow initiate a more productive life when they returned to our earthly plane. Perhaps that question -- and indeed the whole life review itself -- only occurs in the Near Death Experience, not the Death Experience.
Because I know my little cat had a soul. He had thoughts and feelings. He felt love and pain. But for him, there was no right or wrong. So how could the Near Death Experience apply to him? Whatever laws of Karma exist must do so outside of time and outside of human society. If Karma is real, it must be a natural phenomena, like gravity, that applies to all living things.
I guess it's something I'll still be pondering for years to come.
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