Who and Where Am I, and What Will Happen to Me When I Die?

Who and Where Am I, and What Will Happen to Me When I Die?

Very few men have many original ideas, ideas that they come up largely by themselves and from which they view themselves and the world. Most of us, if we are lucky, have one or two. And we work on them constantly, repeating and refining them. That makes cowards cum hypocrites who don't have a single idea of their own tartly and pointedly complain that we sound like a broken record. They think that by making fun of us, they get a satisfaction that they show their displeasure and contempt. Little do they know that they sow their own self-destruction. Humans have long memories for hurtful feelings and very limited capacity for forgiveness. They instinctively thirst for vengeance, for exacting justice, for punishing those who dared to be insolent to them. That's why wise men throughout the ages have counseled us to be circumspect with our words for they can cause mayhem and bloodshed. But fools like me, because of inflated ego, don't give a damn about the advice and thus manage to irritate and infuriate almost everybody. Take the case of the existence of God as a personhood, most humans subscribe to this notion. I wonder if they embrace the notion out of personal contemplation and conviction or simply out of mindless acceptance of socialization and indoctrination. 

Jews were credited with inventing monotheism. But I suppose other peoples in the world are also capable of conceiving a single God, the top dog, the Supreme Being who rules the universe. Such a notion is not hard to come up with although polytheism was more common with humans in ancient times. But seriously folks, do you really believe that Moses found The Ten Commandments from God in Mt Sinai, that Jesus was Son of God, that Muhammad was the last prophet on earth, and that Buddha was right when he talked about eternal reoccurrence and reincarnation? I have not met personally Moses, Jesus, Muhammad  and Siddhartha so I only go by what others have said about them. The only thing I found credible and common about these gentlemen was that they all stressed love and charity, although Jesus and Muhammad were also quoted of speaking passionately about vengeance and punishment. I regarded these founders of religion as mere men and had no divine connection none whatsoever simply because to my way of thinking there is no divinity to begin with. What we have are manifestations of energy and a vast ignorance of why the Big Bang occurred. Any talk about God as a personhood to whom humans can pray to and ask for help smacks of human sophistry and self-deception. True humans always go for honesty and dignity. There is no need to rely on a fiction in order to gain strength. 

But enough bellyaching about metaphysics or mention of scumbags and sordid beings. I write in order to get off steam, and not to look for admirers with whom I can snicker at the world, neither do I write in order to search for a pocket mirror and studio audience. What I search for when I write is myself because sometimes in the process of stringing words together I recognize that I am not the only thing of beauty in this world and that there is burnished teak as well as alabaster, rippling mahogany as well as smooth, soothing silk. I write because I like to hack through a thorn forest. I want to emerge from it bloodied but defiant and unbowed. And when I do, I would give off a blood-curdling scream to startle the sleeping simians and docile sheep in the valley down below. I might come across as jagged and spiteful, not mellow and sympathetic, but my obligation is to what is true, not what sounds sweet but false.

As to where I will go after I die, I am the child of the universe, an embodiment of some energy. When the life-force that holds my being together weakens, and it cannot fend off the forces of atrophy and disintegration, the compound being that is me will be broken to simpler elements in order to be recombined into other forms and embodiments of energy. I never once in my life, after I turned 11 years of age, entertain a notion, a fairly tale belief that I will go to "Heaven" or will be reincarnated as another human being (as the Tibetan Buddhists are fond of believing) or as another organism after I die. Surely the chemical elements that used to make up an entity called Wissai are now recycled into forming other embodiments  of energy, but the consciousness-- the soul, if you will- that used to be mine is gone once my body breaks down into simpler elements. Any talk which says that if I behave in this current life, I will be rewarded by coming back on this planet earth as a (better) human being and if I don't behave, I will be punished  to reincarnate as lower forms of life, is a crude scheme of reward and punishment to ensure moral behavior is practiced. It is no different from the visions of physical heaven and hell in Christian and Islamic faiths. I am too sophisticated a thinker and too informed a reader to believe in such nonsense.