Reincarnation is the Universe's Logic

Reincarnation + free will = the universe's logic.

What are your life lessons? What are your patterns to overcome?

As is probably abundantly clear by now, this isn’t a scientific blog 😝 I’m not here to prove my beliefs or point to studies or theorems on why my beliefs are true. They might not be true! To my credit, it’s not like science has any answers for these topics, either.

The way I arrive at my beliefs is through common sense more than anything else: from first principles, if we remove our cultural conditioning and Age-of-Enlightenment-derived constraints, what makes sense? 

Reincarnation is necessary for literally everything else in the universe to make sense. 

I believe preserving free will is the universe’s primary inviolable law. When combined with reincarnation, our purpose and circumstances begin to have explanations, we derive more meaning from our personal situations, and our profound despair at the state of the world abates.  

Despite my extreme comfort with heresy, this particular belief aligns with Judaism. Most Jews believe in reincarnation. We don’t believe in heaven, and our version of Hell resembles a benevolent version of Catholicism’s purgatory: a place where you go to learn your soul’s lessons intensively. 

I’m not going to lean on Judaism to argue my point, so let’s remove Judaism from the equation. 

My starting premise is that the universe has an intelligent design. There is a reason and a purpose for everything we go through. It’s not chaos, or at least it’s not only chaos. Once we accept this premise, the real questions emerge: what is the design? Which design makes the most sense and is the most optimal for sentient growth and development? 

Heaven as an afterlife solution doesn’t make sense. First of all, oh my, does it sound boring. I grew up Christian, and whenever someone would describe heaven to me, they’d say, “It’s a place where we get to be with our loved ones, we don’t have to eat or have any physical needs, and we praise God all day!” 

Um... What are my other options? 

Spending time with my loved ones? Absolutely, sign me up. But not getting to eat food? Food is AMAZING! Not having dogs or other animals and wildlife, not designing a living space for my family, not swimming in the ocean or watching the stars? No thanks. 

Don’t get me started on the “praise God all day” thing. How useless and boring. Not to mention, what kind of God requires His people to praise Him all day every day for all eternity?

Ultimately, this concept of heaven is wasteful. You have all these people who only lived once and only had 80 years to be good enough to merit heaven. They die, and now they’re all stuck in heaven? What do you do with them? 

Multiplied by however many sentient races exist in our universe, and you have a serious overcrowding problem. Not to mention, with how challenging life is, it definitely takes longer than 80 years to learn all our lessons. 

If the universe has a governing order and purpose, then its primary goal must be for everyone to elevate themselves. After all, that’s the definition of purpose. 

If purpose is the most important thing for our human existence, why would we assume it’d be any different for God or every other citizen of the universe? 

God doesn’t want people to waste away their eternities doing nothing, and neither do we! We want to learn and grow, experience new things, meet new people, and have adventures.

Heaven is less a static God-worshiping party and more a command center where spiritual beings coordinate to help people in the physical world. If the goal is for everyone to achieve their highest potential, then heaven is not the most significant place in the universe. Earth is, and all the other planets like it. 

This is where the magic happens. This is how people become better. 

Enter reincarnation and free will. 

Let’s say I die. Whomp-whomp. 

I wake up post-death, and someone tells me, “OK, you’re dead. Welcome to the afterlife. You did a pretty good job! We have a few options for you to choose from. Our committee of therapists looked over your life and identified a few remaining areas of opportunity to heal in your psyche. 

The only way to resolve these outstanding chinks in your soul armor is to go down to a planet for another round of life. Because Earth is still in its first phase of evolution, you must reincarnate on Earth. Once Earth eventually grows past Stage 1 in the planetary evolution cycle, you’ll be able to select from multiple options of other planets. You can find their descriptions in your folder. 

We understand this is very traumatic, so please only start once you’re truly ready. Once you decide to take on this challenge, we offer an intensive therapy program to help you better understand your psyche and prepare you for reincarnation. We also pair you with a mentor who will design your life challenges. You have the power to veto any of these challenges, and you will have final approval. 

However, this is all for a later time. We don’t recommend you reincarnate within the next 10 years. Please relax! Have some fun. We have a water park where the water is always clean.” 

This makes sense, does it not? If it were up to a human to design the afterlife in the best possible way, our logic would guide us somewhere around here. 

Now, I want to address the painful part. 

Our challenges on Earth are so enormous. They’re shocking in their breadth, depth, and cruelty. Why does our planet and our society have to live through such a barbaric period? 

A lot of atheists use the following counterargument against God’s existence: “If your God exists and is so powerful, why doesn’t He intervene?” 

If God were to intervene, where would it stop? Are we willing to give up our free will in favor of God’s action? 

God didn’t force our society to be this way; humans did. God influenced it, sure, but the decisions and actions were entirely our own. 

If God intervened in every conflict, how would we learn? It’s the same as a parent who rescues their kid every time they stumble. Sometimes, they get a scraped knee. It’s okay - they learn.

More importantly, in making mistakes, they learn to control their own lives and bodies.

We’ve seen the results of God’s interventions. I don’t think we’d approve of the outcome. Ultimately, we can do a better job.

Let’s take the example of a parent whose child dies from a disease, one of the worst things a human being can experience. 

We can say, “How could God let this happen?” but let’s look closer. Our widespread environmental destruction likely caused the disease: the things we put in our food and habitat, and how we dispose of our chemical waste, all of which resulted from humanity’s free will. Should God intervene to stop our choices on our planet? 

The child is also now on their path. They will eventually return to physical life in a manner of their choosing. 

From a societal perspective, free will explains many reasons why bad things happen. Reincarnation explains why things happen to us. 

Without getting too personal, I have experienced an immense amount of trauma in my life. As hard as it was and as angry as it made me for a while, I now see I would never be the person I am today if I hadn’t gone through it. I’d never be strong enough to withstand the pressures of our society if I hadn’t endured what I did. 

I reflect on the trauma in my life, and I’m astounded by how perfectly and precisely my life delivered the exact lessons I needed.

I still endured pain. It’s important to mourn, grieve, and be angry. They are essential parts of the process, and they make us human! We must cling to our emotions because our emotions hold the key to truth. 

Once the grief passes, we can eventually look to growth. During the worst of my trauma, I used to ask myself this question multiple times a day: Why would I have chosen this? What could I possibly learn from this? It kept me sane and unlocked profound realizations. 

And this is why, for me, reincarnation is an essential ingredient in the universe’s logic. What I've learned and will continue to learn throughout this lifetime will put me on a path to becoming a better being. And if at my death I still need to learn more, that means I will lead another life, and maybe another one, and one more, to finally be the very best version of myself.