Archives for posts with tag: reincarnation

Whoever said opening the third eye was enough to reach enlightenment was surely wrong. 

When our one human race bloomed at last, sprouting ascendant chakras like leaves unfurled toward the sun, we reentered the golden yuga. And like magic, the great things of yore slowly returned to the people. We had made it through our times of tribulations as a collective. And those that hadnt, well we would patiently wait upon their reincarnates to attain that same Buddhahood before all moving on as one.

It was readily apparent then that the wheel’s great turning was indeed just as the puranas of old had intimated. 

But as our consciousnesses expanded, so too did our abilities to see beyond this one plane. And with that we came to revisit the old words and their meanings. We saw that the cosmic order that held our universe together was only our own. Floating in the boundless causal Ocean, that frothing primordial abyss, were more bubbles, more universes like our own, all winking into existence then blinking out in accordance with their own circumstances, and each operating according to its own dharma.

That our cosmic order, our dharma, wasnt so absolute was a contentious revelation and a large contingent were left broken in spirit. But it livened my spirit, I must selfishly admit. To know there was a larger order to seek, a dharma of dharmas so to speak, meant there was more to ascend toward. More for us to learn and experience. More to be. 

Did the Boddhisatvas of old know of this? I imagined meeting one in another life and them smiling back at me in amazed wonder, or them simply nodding their aware affirmation: both possibilities excited me greatly and near-equally.

Worlds upon worlds. Planes upon planes. Bubbles upon bubbles. And at the spiralling lotus-centre of each bubble sat its own maha-deity responsible, we thought, for observing his or her own children and rearing them to maturation. A universe bringing itself to crescendo before blinking out in that ocean of chaos.

My third eye sees deeper now. In the abyss between worlds, before and after worlds, stirs Tiamat, the original chaos-construct, the alpha-omega maha-dragon that begat all, will beget all, will destroy all. It is fair in its creation and destruction. It plays no favourites.

Well the maha-deities would expand their domains infinitely were it up to them, such is their love for their own. But such actions would encroach upon other universes, would spill into and cannibalise its neighbours: so pure a love would consume all else.

Tiamat, detached and unthinking. Unfeeling and unbeing. It besets each deity against the others as ultimate deterrent. Only an all-consuming love can push back against another all-consuming love. Only love can assure a destruction so mutual as to ensure an enforceable security.

I see again the bubbles in the causal Ocean with even greater clarity. I note again their winking into existence, their blinking out at random and realise they extinguish at twice the rate they form. Far too many to attribute to the greater dharmic order that is natural chaos, or to Tiamat. No, these failures lay on the lotus-sitters. Maha-dieties either lacking in sufficient love to expand beyond their cosmic remit and thereby be pushed back by another in deadlock. Or, those with exceeding empathy towards neighbours with the sufficient will to love.

‘So what do you think comes next?’ I ask, ‘After all this?’

I pretend not to hear the nervousness in my own voice. My words jittery and spoken too fast, the pitch too high. Admitting I’m nervous would only make me more nervous. 

No, no I was only cold – and it really was cold. But there’s nothing to do about that but wait and play with the child. I move my little pawn across the checkered board. The game will distract me from the cold. And the child’s quiet stare.

‘Your turn.’ I say, just so he’s clear – and not for any other reason.

I look away while he contemplates his turn, but still I feel his eyes bore holes into me. 

The game wasn’t chess – I dont know how to play chess – or checkers, or anything I’ve played before. Yet somehow I knew how to play it, and so did he. Not to say I was any good at it, mind you. We must have played a thousand times already and I’d won no more than a handful. But what else is there to do in this plane of existence?

The boy moves his red butcher piece and immediately I realise my mistake. A glaring hole I’d created between my coal and vizier leaves my emperor piece in jeopardy. The result is a foregone conclusion and playing through only a matter of formality, but one the boy always insists on. Not in words of course, but it’s clear as day in his eyes. He never speaks. Cant speak? Has yet to. 

What if we stop playing? A cold chill runs down my back. ‘Another game?’ I say instead. Maybe I am nervous after all. Not of the boy, mind you – not that that was unreasonable – but of this inescapable place. This cold, un-remembering dark space, sat on this stone seat at this stone table, playing this game that my fingers know better than I know my own name or face.

One by one the boy picks all his reds up off the board and likewise I set all my ebony pieces aside.

I only recall returning to this table whichever way I run. I dont recall anything before these thousand games of ours. No memory of a life or loved ones. Only logic and feelings tell me there had been anything prior – that I hadnt just spawned in this darkness, born on my feet, cognisant.

‘Between every game, the pieces go back in the box’. The boy says, and at once I understand.

Reincarnation, an oil painting by Christopher Lane

ghosts and spirits felt but unseen
the dredged lifespent who shuffle in place
and linger in the in-between, unable to pass that final veil

pagan witches of old
daughters of the father of lies
those animist heathens, wanton succubi who lay with serpent

winged fire in the flesh
dark demons brim to burst at the gates, waiting
consumed with malevolence at the children of adam

the stuck, the treacherous and the hateful:
a most unholy inversion
a trinity most foul

the hateful command a thinning of heaven’s congregation
the treacherous conspire how to corrupt the untarnished
the stuck, ever envious of those who may yet cross over, oblige

how to halt man’s ascension?

stuck spirits concoct a perversion of nature 
apparent only to their own class: reincarnation
the twisted belief in endless circling to nowhere

treacherous witches infect the societies of man in secret
poison scriptures with sweet words
to calcify into rotten dogma

hateful demons warp minds and form
where the godsmatter holds weak
weak vessels of import to accept such blasphemy

earthbound souls tethered to dirt like dog on leash
stuck sinners circle drain for millennia
with each death scythe skims off top
shorten lives like ageing telomeres
how many cycles left to you?
what hope have you to transcend to next ring
hope – pandora’s poison
when stripped down to mere battery
fuel for sinister machinations of They
non-physical entities of old
be They angel or demon – or something more?

what is difference between a rock and automaton?
both golem