It is not uncommon in ones sorrow and frustration to turn ones anger towards God blaming him for ones plight.  Others accept it as ones deserving fate for ones wrong doings and those who believe in Karma, on past and present life doings with their positive and negative effects in the present life. In many faiths ones challenges in life  are explianed as tests by the divine to help in the evolution of your soul and therefore to be borne with courage and fortitude rather than believing that it is simply the punishment for ones sins.

There is yet another explanation for ones circumstances,fortunes and misfortunes  particularly with New Age theologists and thinkers and those who have sought to explore the phenomenon of Near Death Experiences (NDE) thereby claiming to have briefly visited the spirit world and learnt some of its secrets.

In this version God does not figure. It is claimed that the eternal soul is forever seeking to evolve to a higher spiritual level in its craving to gain proximity to the creater and eventually to merge with that Supersoul.

 

In the process it seeks to impose challenges and corrections from one lifetime to another. While guidance is available from great spirit souls and beings in the spirit world, the task of self analysis is left to the individual soul to devise obstacles in a future life, to acquire positive and negative circumstances and attributes, to choose its parents its progeny its circumstances of birth even handicaps and extraordinary skills and abilities – the combination of positive and negative at birth and in the life to unfold, in order that together they shall enable it to prove itself and evolve spiritually. Here there would be situations where the father is a tyrant or a mother dies prematurely or there is abundant love from sibling or else abuse from members of ones own family. All manner of combinations to produce the right type of challenges to test the soul’s mettle and help it move forward in evolution. In this version there is no God to blame, no fate to explain ones circumstances. There is also abundant provision for positive support to enable the soul to face the difficult challenges like being in love compassion of near and dear,riches and luxuries, great achievements and honour, brilliance and success in certain fields the happiness provided by good progeny etc. But lingering behind these happy situations are the never ceasing challenges in one form or the other chosen by the soul itself, much like a dilligent student who wishes to choose a difficult subject despite failure being quite common. In all this at moments of extreme misery and difficulty, spirits and guides aware of the souls plight will assist and support it so that it is able to endure the difficult plan it has adopted for evolution.

Providence and the spirit world never impose a difficult trial of life in the material world but leave it entirely to the responsible soul to choose the path for its correction and evolution. Therefore there is no question of blaming God, fate or previous sins for ones present plight.  This view may be difficult for some to accept as it does not hold ones sins or omissions responsible for ones situation and plight, nor does it allow you to pass the blame on  to earlier omissions in past lives or again Gods fury to teach you a lesson through punishment. The soul becomes the supreme arbiter of the choice of a life whether of a Helen Keller, a mother Teresa, a beggar , a king, a male or female, the nature of ones family, friends, career and time and manner of death. Nothing fateful, everything chosen and imposed by your great soul.

But that is the New Age view based on its vision of the spiritual world and the souls freedom of choice. The Hindu view still relies on evolution of the human individual where the eternal soul is trapped. All the entrapped soul yearns for is freedom from its human entrapment and rejoining the Supersoul – Paramatma – i.e. God, of which it is an integral part – ansha – and from which it has got seperated at creation of the material world.

final liberation of the soul from rebirth in a human shell.

The soul being a part of Godhead is already perfect and needs no evolution. furthermore according to the Gita it is not the agent of action or the actor on the human plane accumulating Karmik debt. As it does not act it is beyond the law of karma. But the cage in which it is trapped is indeed subject to karma. The human being acts  driven by its insatiable ego and Karmik forces then determine the consequences of those actions in this life and the next. It also determines the circumstances of rebirth and the trials the human shell will have to undergo for the shells evolution. The soul plays no part in the karmik consequences of the gross and subtle body of the material entity. All it hopes is that the shell will evolve to the point of perfection when its rebirth will cease and with that evolution the soul will finally get released from bondage in a human body. Meanwhile though not responsible for any acts of the body it plays the role of councellor guiding the ego driven body on a path which will not attract karmik consequence of a negative sort, retarding its evolution and thereby enforcing rebirth for yet another trial in another lifetime.

The islamic view requires great reverence for god – Allah- who is the all merciful and compassionate. No question of any blame or aspersion being tolerated. All that he deals out to humans is trials and tests -Ajmaish- for their evolution which have to be borne with humility and dedicated effort to overcome weakness and faults or punishments for wrong doing to have the subject reap what he has sown. There are no Karmik laws and no rebirth. the soul or Rooh which in this case has been the actor and agent of action takes responsibility for all acts of commission and omission and faces the consequences in afterlife after judgement has been pronounced at the throne of the Almighty.

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