My Religious Beliefs

Disclaimer: Please do not read further if you tend to feel insulted by unorthodox religious beliefs.

Personally my belief is somewhat close to Buddhism.

I think somewhere in the universe, probably in another dimension, there is a clearinghouse where souls wait to be assigned to different lifeforms. Each time we descend to enter a body, all memories of the past are locked so that we cannot access them, thus when we are born our mind is a blank slate. However when we return to the clearinghouse we can access all the memories of all our lives.

So coming to this world is really like starting a new game, one that restarts each time we are born. What would be the purpose of this then? At first glance it seems rather meaningless. But I think each time we come down we receive different experiences; we explore different facets of life. For instance, in past lives I could have been a pregnant mother, a king, a beggar, a great warrior, a victim of war, a scientist or a man of religion. When I go back to that clearinghouse all the memories mold together so that I can understand the universe and the true nature of life better.

The more diverse these experiences are, the faster we get to understand truth. If I had been an ordinary worker in every life, this would not help me attain wisdom very quickly as all my memories would be mundane ones, the most vivid might be banging a different girl in each life, but after a few lives that would feel the same as well. What would help would be something like being a conqueror that slays millions in one life, then a man whose family is killed in war in another.

As for karma, does it exist? I am inclined to doubt it. For compared to our true form as souls, life as flesh is truly insignificant. For us to hold on to grudges from these lives would be as foolish as two people fighting because one fellow killed the other in a computer game (not that I have not seen this happen before). So why should deeds from one "game" affect the starting conditions in the next round?

I think that the conditions which we are born under, whether rich or poor, healthy or sick, beautiful or ugly, smart or dumb do not reflect our deeds in the past, but instead represent different starting conditions in which we begin each round of gaming, and these variations paired with our actions bring us different life experiences. Just the same as you would play a hand of poker differently depending on whether the two cards that were dealt initially were a pair of aces or a three and an eight.

Then we may ask: is doing good of no consequence? Should we commit evil since this life is unimportant anyway? This is the question my philosophy cannot answer. My personal feeling is that although the actual impact of our actions are of no consequence on the cosmic scale, if we keep harboring negative intentions in every life it may impede our understanding of the universe, thus slowing down our ascension to divinity.

So when we finally understand everything and do not need to go into the cycle of life again, we merge with all the other souls that achieve enlightenment. This entity is the most powerful being in the universe. It would also be very very bored as there are no challenges, so its pasttime would be to contemplate within itself. Fortunately its members bring in a lot of experiences and perspectives. So for their sake, we must all strive to attain nirvana so we can join them and add our experiences into the pool.