From reader Yer Gon: “I am one of your avid followers and readers in the Inquirer. I have some questions about predestination. I am curious to know if people are destined to die in a certain way, either from sickness, calamity, accident or crime. I am eager to know if you think people can choose how they will die, or is it predestined? ”
I myself have struggled with this question for a long time.
Suppose I tell you that there is no such thing as predestination, meaning there are no events over which you have no control, and that everything that happens to you is a result of your own free choice? I am sure you will not believe me.
But to my mind, there is no predestination, except what we have chosen it to be, perhaps not in this lifetime but in previous lives. You see, everything that happens to us is a result of karma, a word which is often misunderstood and used wrongly in this country.
According to the American psychic and prophet, Edgar Cayce (who died in 1945), karma is simply “meeting in this lifetime the consequences of our choices and actions in previous lives.”
You do not have to accept this. But I believe we always have free choice in everything. We choose our parents, the country we will be born in, the important people we meet in a given lifetime, etc., in order to work out our karma with them.
I know it is difficult for most people to accept this, but that is their problem, not mine. I explain this more fully in my bestselling book, “Soulmates, Karma and Reincarnation,” which is available at National Book Store.
Free will
Yer Gon’s followup question: “I believe in reincarnation and karma, too. However, our memories are limited only to our present lifetime and we do not know who we were in the past.
“How about those who commit suicide? Is that their karma, too? And also, if a person dies in a vehicular accident, you mean he chose that kind of death? Also for victims of brutal crimes, did they choose that kind of death? So if it is not predestined, and we can choose how we will die, then all people will choose to die in their sleep without any feeling of pain or violence.”
It is very difficult to explain this, given our mindset and religious beliefs. But it is my opinion, based on logic and past life memories of people who underwent past-life regression, that there is no predestination.
Dr. Helen Wambach, an American psychologist, regressed over 1,000 individuals to remember their past lives, and while in a trance-like state, she asked them specific questions that could be verified historically. Almost all of her subjects reported that they had free choice of their parents, the country they will be born in and their gender (i.e. whether to be born male or female).
If there is predestination, what happens to man’s free will? Without free will, there will be no moral responsibility for our actions, choices and decisions. I can kill a person without reason and say it is not morally wrong because I was predestined to kill him. And that person I killed was predestined to be killed by me. Does that make sense to you?
No! I believe that man’s will is absolutely free, that even God cannot interfere with it, because to do so would contradict Himself. He gave us free will. He cannot take it back.
And it is not true we don’t remember our past lives. We do, but not on a conscious level. Our subconscious mind knows everything that happens to us in each lifetime. One of our tasks while on Earth is to remember our past lives in order to work out our karma. Karma can only be extinguished by understanding why it is there.
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