Historical February–March 2002 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
I believe in Karma. That is, I think that our future lives are determined by how we behave in this one. And yes, who and what we are now was determined by who and what we were before.
Now don’t roll your eyes. I’m no Shirley McClaine but it’s true. What we do here comes back to haunt us – or grace us – in future lives. I’m sure of it.
I don’t know the details.
I don’t know how many lives we’ll have or how it’s actually determined where and when and what we wind up with during our next trip here.
But I envision God, sitting there in a white robe, surrounded by clouds, melodies from Fleetwood Mac playing gently in the background, looking down on our tiny rotating rock.
A lightning bolt cracks and she focuses her eyesight. “Him,” She says, as much to herself as the phalanx of angels standing by Her side, looking below, “I want him, but for where and when?” she muses.
In this case, the him is a young man who’s just perished in an auto accident, a crash with a tractor-trailer.
The ambulance is still on its way but life has already left his body. Flipping quickly through her Palm Pilot; God reviews the man’s life, both his achievements and misdeeds.
With the tiny stylus She scrolls through his history. “Carl Tolan,” she mutters to herself as she finds his name (her mutterings causing clouds to burst over Toronto and a hailstorm in Mozambique). “He was a good man, took care of his mother and father in their old age, raised three children, two of them in good shape, I don’t know what to make of the third one, the bellydancer, did his best at his job, and tried very hard to be a good person.
He gave lots of his time and energy at the neighborhood youth center.” God pauses and looks at the angels around Her.
As if by command, they all genuflect and nod together, looking a bit like synchronized swimmers practicing outside the pool.
She continues, “I . think, I think, I think…” and arches Her eyebrows. At this, the angel on Her left pokes his neighbor who hadn’t been paying attention.
The distracted angel straightens his halo, pops to attention, and hops in front of God. At this, She says “I think…” once more, clearly looking for direction. “Seven-oh-snyl9-H, your Holiness,” the angel says, fiddling with his halo. “Wonderful,” she replies and smiles.
The thunder stops in Phoenix. “Now help me,” She says, looking at the angel, “it’s been a long eternity and I have a lot of things on my mind.” “Oh yes, your Most Wonderfulness,” he continues, “Seven refers to the fact that Carl will be dormant for seven generations and the oh-snyl9 means that he’ll come back in location ohsnyl9.
The H means he’ll improve his lot in life by ninefold; he was a P in the life he just left.” At this God nods then turns her attention elsewhere, looking at a huge gas storm on Neptune while also reading the latest issue of People Magazine. Carl, by now, had been hauled away and was on his way to the morgue.
He family hadn’t heard the news yet, but they would soon be sad. And why not?
They were losing a loved one with no notice. They’d never see him again; for them Carl was over.
But thanks to Karma, Carl wasn’t over at all. Oh, Carl Tolan — Carl the father of three, Carl the electrician who worked in Seattle, Carl whose parents were still alive, Carl who never saw the truck that hit him — that Carl was over.
But the internal Carl, the soul of Carl, wasn’t really over at all.
He was simply changing form.
In this case, Seven-ohsyn19-K meant that Carl would be reborn again in 140 or so years.
He wouldn’t return in Seattle but would rejoin the flesh and blood in Milan, Italy.
The K, a reward for Carl’s being a good and caring person in this cycle, meant that Carl would come back in a much higher social standing. Carl, of course, wouldn’t remember his life in Seattle any more than he could recall his previous lives in Auckland, Beijing, Singapore, Iron Mountain, Burlington, San Francisco, Canterbury, Athens, Cardiff, Rimouski, an oasis near the Sahara, or a village in Egypt. Oh, occasionally people do have flashbacks or recollections, sometimes caused by hypnosis or a traumatic accident.
But that isn’t the norm.
The norm is that the previous existence, all of the earlier existences, simply fade to oblivion, forever locked in forgotten memories. Carl will return in Milan and while we don’t know much about his future, we do know that he will be given the opportunity to work at a much higher social standing. What he does with that opportunity, whether he squanders or capitalizes upon it, is up to him. More important, neither Carl’s personality nor morality are programmed. It’s up to him (really it’s up to his caregivers and him) what sort of an individual he’ll become. Who he is and what he does during this next cycle will determine how he will come back still later. Had we been in the clouds a bit earlier, we’d have witnessed God doing her magic on someone not as good as Carl. Indeed, Rafola perished not too much earlier, in Madrid.
It was a far easier death, by the way. Rafola simply died of old age; his body gave out and he was surrounded by crying family members.
But Rafola, despite the wailing at his departure, had not led a good life.
He lied, cheated, consistently wore plaids with stripes and checks, and stole from his friends.
In any case, the formula from the Palm for Rafola’sreturn was quite different. Twenty-three- tee-bral3-U meant that Rafola would have to wait 23 generations before getting another chance, nearly 500 years. Rafola would return in a rural area in northern China in a position much lower than that he occupied when he left.
The life awaiting Rafola was going to be hard and tedious, a repayment for his most recent life of duplicity. Even if Rafola rallied during his next time here, he would only be able to earn a few higher levels for his following cycle. God isn’t unforgiving by a long shot, but She does have a long amortization schedule for repaying evil. Actually, the whole system is much more complicated than I’ve described. I’ve only dealt with time in limbo, general location, and the standing with which we’re return. That’s just the tip of the cloudburst, as it were. You see, you can come back as something other than a human being. That’s right, all living things – mammals, anyway — fit into the Karma equation.
If you do a dastardly enough deed, you not only have to wait for years and years and years to hop on the carousal again, you might come back as a lower form.
If you thought being a worker in rural China was tough, think what it must be like to be a gazelle in lion country, or a cat in an urban neighborhood. Yes, gazelles and cats can earn their way out, too, but generally these roles are simply another form of penance.
This was very clear with Coco and Boomer, two family pets that I knew quite well.
The saying “It’s a dog’s life” was made for them.
They had a loving owners, a comfortable home, ample meals (much of it people-food), relaxed and listened to KWMU during the day, and slept in the masters’ bed at night. Think about it: no worries or cares, surrounded by those who love you, your role is to be a dilettante.
I don’t know for sure, but I have no doubt that if we could peek into their doggiesouls, we’d find their previous cycles being served as Civil War nurses, tending to the sick, or maybe as people who worked in orphanages in Dickensian England, taking care of the children. Whatever they did then, being a dog in my household is the best payment they could imagine, I’m sure. Once you’re aware of the Karma, it changes things. I’m just here for a while, I know, enjoying myself on a relatively few revolutions of this rock we call Earth around a flaming gas ball. I’ll be back, but I don’t know how, where, or as what. I’d like to think that even without the motivation of who I am now helping to determine what I will become then, I’d still be good and caring today.
I smile often now, seemingly at nothing in particular but in reality wondering what this person did two or five centuries ago, wondering how today’s conditions are a payment for a previous incarnation or two. And where will I be on the next iteration? Will I come back higher or lower? And is my existence today a reward or penalty for the last time here? It’s all quite confusing, that’s for sure.
But it’s comforting too, knowing that what goes around does come around.
As for me, if I’m good and lucky — and I’d rather be good than lucky — I figure that maybe next time I can come back as Coco the standard poodle.
Now that would be the life. And just because good and lucky may not be enough, I’m working on a computer program that will give me electronic access to others’ Palm Pilots. See you in the future.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, February–March 2002.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: Imagined reincarnation codes change from H to K and vary in letter sequence in printed column; original fictional codes retained, not regularized.
Original source: SD_Times2002_02.pdf, printed page(s) 8; PDF page(s) 8.
