Justice and Reincarnation

The conditions in which human consciousness develops stand revealed through our relationship to concepts. The concept of justice, for example, is one which winnows its way down through philosophical and religious thinking to the present day, when its relevance for humanity becomes critical.

We can ask, together with Socrates, whether a just person's actions will ever harm another human being. And straightaway the edifice of law rears its head. If a prisoner is placed in overcrowded, insanitary conditions with no hope of rehabilitation, is justice served? Not according to our definition of the just person never harming another human being. Because, although it is justifiable to prevent someone from being a danger to society - as well as bringing them face to face with the consequences of their actions - it cannot be right to make them into a worse human being. As a matter of fact the concept of justice surely exists as a remedy for what is wrong in human beings. And although this will often offend you as a victim who requires retribution, the sum of human happiness depends on people becoming better - i.e. freely choosing not to harm other people. Thus the concept of justice is circular - it always comes round to improving human nature.

I wondered to myself quietly if divine justice isn't the same. I don't need to state definitively if I believe in this or that theory. I just need to hold the best ideas in my head and think about them. We have nothing to fear from ideas. People are often scared, for example, of the idea of reincarnation and karma. The bible says nothing about it, they object. Hindu or Buddhist thinking does not always seem to keep pace with advanced Western, scientific doctrines. By default people feel that their own existence matters and that it evolves and changes. But our current default intellectual position denies continuity of consciousness beyond death. What is critical for humanity is to square these things up in both the forum of experience and that of concepts. So when we consider reincarnation and karma - just as an idea - a similar towering edifice of law immediately appears, although this time in relation to divine justice. If, for example, someone is seriously injured through accident or attack do we say that it is a consequence of something that person did in a previous life? Is karma then just a question of like for like - what you do in one life happens to you (although perhaps in a slightly different form) in the next? Would this not simply be a case of 'an eye for an eye'? (Or, when we say 'the sins of the fathers are visited on the children', do we really mean that your own actions in a previous life come back to haunt you in another?) Perhaps divine justice also finds it necessary to prevent someone from being a danger to society, or also likes to bring a person face to face with the consequences of their deeds? At any event, if we believe that justice is not synonymous with retribution, vengeance, or merely punishment, then how much more must divine justice be above these things? How do we square this up with all those situations where we find ourselves saying, almost involuntarily, 'Where was God?'. Even taking into account reincarnation and karma it's very hard to say that a gruesome accident is somehow just.

So by analogy with the very best of human justice can we say that divine justice serves to bring people to the point of freely choosing not to harm other human beings? Or that justice in itself - human or divine - is circular and comes round to improving human nature? It's just a fact, of course, that human nature is a rattlebag of rights and wrongs. I feel this in myself on a daily basis and feel that the human being who is only good must be a statue or something else which has never truly lived. The whole of art and drama is built up out of the dilemmas of right and wrong. The development of human consciousness means to evolve, and to take the whole realm of your experience and concepts with you as a flesh and blood human being. That includes reincarnation and karma, and justice, as ideas or as experiences.

When I think about these things - and the ground and the sky - I feel the earth whirling around me and arrive at the viewpoint that the world itself is the philosopher and we human beings are its premises and arguments until, in conclusion, it - the world - remains only as a spirit which shines above sky, below ground, and deep into eternal night.

Jay

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

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