I can't remember everything every time but I should have remembered the "many mansions" hereafter in SM Stirling's Emberverse which I compared to CS Lewis' vision of Heaven here.
If a trans-cosmic Mind does organize a hereafter for us, then I would expect it to be like this, with diverse realms and opportunities for moral growth, e.g., a dead tyrant builds a wall for others while God's Mother brings his lunch.
If I find myself in a Buddhist "bardo plane," then I will probably be weighed down by guilt instead of drawn towards the Clear Light of the Void. Maybe I should take the advice of the voluntary worker in Alan Moore's hereafter? See here.
I expect to experience after death what I experienced before birth: nothing.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
While some early Buddhists, after Buddha's death, came to believe in the "bardo plane," an intermediate state of existence between two lives, other early Buddhists schools, such as the Theravada, rejected it. The latter strain of Buddhist thought seems to have been more consistently adhering what Buddha himself thought.
Needless to say, I lean far more to the kind of Purgatorial existence Norman Arminger was leading after his death! A temporary state of purification preparing a soul to enter the presence of God.
And I don't believe nothingness is your ultimate fate!
Sean
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