I wrote a post a few days ago about how the belief in the West of the finality and permanence of death is at the root of most psychological dysfunction and illness.
I was asked in a comment by a friend to elaborate how my personal views on the subject had changed over time. The comment was quite popular so I thought I would resurface it as its own post, as people found it valuable for me to combine a ‘societal objective’ perspective with a ‘personal subjective’ one.
Q: Max, what probability do you believe there is that you will have more than one life? And how have your views changed over time, and what were the reasons for the change?
I’ve travelled the gamut. I believed there was probably a 50% chance from ages 0-13. I felt there was something more and something unexplained, but I didn’t have the mental frameworks or culture to adopt a belief in reincarnation.
Ages 13-18 I rebelled against Judeo-Christian culture and read lots of books by the New Atheists: Sam Harris, Dawkins, Dennett etc. I made fun of the people who believed in God and had no evidence for their belief. The belief in more than one life dropped to 10-20%.
Ages 18-24 I experienced many non-ordinary states of consciousness thru a variety of methods. I struggled to integrate my experience. My psyche was at odds and my internal family systems were in conflict. I moved through great highs and lows. I studied philosophy and psychology intensively and gained the mental scaffolding to hold the complexity of many perspectives, and how to integrate rationalism and intellectualism with spirituality to move beyond dogmatic religion and unrigorous new age mumbo jumbo. I continued to struggle to integrate and stabilize my experience. Many discrepancies and life circumstances would cause doubt to rebirth and regrow. Probability — 30-75%
Ages 24-27 — I found my teachers, my lineages, my direct transmissions of guarded teachings, my community of people on the same path. The 4 quadrant structures (of consciousness, physical health, community and life support systems) slowly formed to enable my transformation.
Integration has still been a challenge. Reconditioning and reprogramming is hard. There are many vestiges of my old self that continue to need to be discovered and transformed. I’ve been thrown back into darkness a couple times to test my faith and to directly experience and live in illusions again so that they may be excavated and purified.
Probability 60%-90%; Last 3 months 90%-100%.
