On God: An Uncommon Conversation Read Online Free PDF Page A

saying that a soul doesn’t necessarily go to Heaven or to Hell—it just ceases to exist.
    Yes. It’s gone. It’s in a true cemetery.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    Are new souls being created?
    I don’t talk much to people who believe in reincarnation because I don’t like the jargon. But, yes, people who believe in reincarnation do speak of new souls or “young souls”—and, yes, I would expect God creates new spiritual lives. God may say, “I’ve been reconsidering the terrible propensities of the Devil. Let us see if we can conceive of a soul who will be able to war with the Devil a little more effectively, a new soul who will have many of the qualities of the Devil but can transmute them, transform them, elevate our sense of spirit even in the dirtiest, ugliest, foulest places. We can call on Dostoyevsky at this point. God may have decided that an iota of goodness in an evil soul can be immensely important.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    You hardly speak of the casualties in this war between God and the Devil.
    While the soul is presumably a separate being from the body, I would suppose that the soul also has its period of existence. A particular soul might expire after a single earthly existence, another could be reincarnated a number of times, but doubtless there’s a limit. Yes, souls do expire, I must suppose. Just as God may finally expire, or the Devil, indeed. There are forces out there who wouldn’t mind seeing the collapse of one, the other, or both. We may be speaking of a force that consists of the drive to nothingness. Nothingness may be a huge power out in the great cosmic universe. It may desire the extinction of the universe. To repeat: We have yet to explain black holes in space. What in the nature of things accounts for that exceptional megaconcentration of gravitational forces that pulls all nearby matter into it?
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    You’ve always said you are on the side of being.
    Yes, but it’s like saying, “I’m a Yale man,” or “Loyal to Harvard.” The built-in pitfall of these conversations is how to keep from sounding sententious at one end and hollow at the other. Theological remarks tend to be pious and/or presumptuous. Nevertheless, I take this route because I am weary of the philosophical paradoxes and evasions that good Christians tie themselves up in, those mutually exclusive conundrums. “God’s ways are mysterious” can be a cop-out. Resolutely, they evade any reply that can explore down to the root. The set of beliefs offered here makes sense at least to me. And I would add: Having a view of the universe that makes sense to oneself is, I think, Jung’s finest prescription for mental health. One of his conclusions was that nobody could be cured of their neurosis until they found their own vision of God. That may be a profound, even a fabulous idea. I believed it before I could articulate it, so I was naturally excited when I came across that set of remarks in his work.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    Many people who believe in reincarnation would say they have retained some sense of their previous life. You’ve always said that you don’t remember.
    My feeling is there’s a very good reason why not—I believe there’s a psychic wall within us that shuts off recollections of any previous existence. Think what your life would be if you knew about three or four previous spent and misspent lives. My memory is already failing for the one life I’m aware of. How could I handle the confusion of other existences that were also mine? I do think, however, that we retain deep instincts about previous incarnations. Sometimes we have reactions to events that are inexplicable. Something inside says, “Don’t take another step in this direction.” Or “I will pursue this course even if it makes no sense to me whatsoever.”