'been a long time since my last post on anything under the sun. but today's post topic aint that new. even that is quite an old thought.
why do people believe in heaven or some place after death? what prompts people to put their faith in an unknown world which no one has provided them with proof for? what is heaven or afterlife?
i believe the answer is simple, human ego!
at some part of the evolutionary process of the sapiens, they evolved a self conscious. a consciousness of who he is. realized that he is not a part of the herd, but an individual with a self, an ego, some uniqueness just like everyone else :)
so the thought of where that self of his goes after death came alive. i cannot be dead and gone for ever. i'm a unique being, i have a self. it cannot just, poof, vanish into thin air. it has to go cling on to something else. i'm so important a being that death cannot just erase me away.
obviously the men of those age were ignoramuses compared to the wisdom that the modern day generations hold; they did not hold the power of science. so for them, heaven became a place where their selves go after they are dead.
the life of them were a constant struggle; against nature, wild animals, weather, other tribes, their wives and so on :). a lot many of them would have identified this struggles with the life on earth. even the organized religion together with the ruling classes would have knowingly or unknowingly formulated the theory of heaven to continue with their regime of oppression. the oppressed were constantly fed the idea of an afterlife where they will reap the benefits of their struggle in this life.
naturally the oppressed did not want the oppressors in their afterlife. after all they had suffered enough from the bad guys. but by then afterlife was so much imbibed in the minds of people so that they faced a dilemma now. where does the bad guys go? thus another version of the afterlife was invented where the bad guys go so as to suffer for their sins in this earthly life. how else one could serve justice to the oppressor. thus came hell where bad guys of earthly life would be meted out the right punishments for their sins of this life.
also to be read together is the invention of gods. perhaps the god delusion came first and then the house of gods was modified suitably to fit the description of heaven. hmm, as i came writing down to this point, i feel this is more probable. heaven was too high a philosophical destination for the early humans who invented their gods in seas, mountains, lightnings, rain and so on. they were unable to find the controlling power behind these natural calamities or the mighty beings so they might have believed gods lived in some unknown place. perhaps later on this unknown was substituted for heaven...
so this is a concise take on the origin of afterlife. perhaps this is all bullshit. maybe some sociologists have come up with a more accurate and fool proof definition for the same. so what? who told i cant hypothesize?
in fact free thought and hypothesis bought humanity to this juncture where all the open minded people could thwart all attempts to whitewash the miseries of this life. science to the rescue.
this life is the only one you have. when you are dead, the fundamental particles making you become part of the earth. when the earth dies, it becomes part of the solar dust. when the sun dies the atoms which once was part of some star, which became part of you, becomes part of star dust again. it probably gives birth to another star or nebula or some planet and some being, probably humanoid. who cares...
think free. live free.
peace :)
