Namaste,
OP has not been active for a long time and therefore, this thread was lying dormant so far. However, questions are good and therefore, I would give answers from my oint of view :
Originally Posted by
FollowerJunior
How can we justify that karma exists?
If there is no Karma, then :
a) All beings must be born with same advantages/disadvantages in life. This is not so. There are people who are born blind while many are with healthy eyes. There are people who are born to rich families where many take births in abject poverty. God, by definition, cannot be partial as He cannot have any incentive to be partial for his own created beings. Therefore, if someone is born with some disadvantage as compared to others, he alone must be responsible for the state he/she is in today.
b) You could do any mischief and get away with it as there is no record of your Karma and nothing happens to you as per your karma. That would mean that there is total lawlessness in this universe. This cannot be true as the whole world always works under strict rules.
How can we justify that reincarnation exists?
There are many reasons supporting incarnation :
a) Either there is reincarnation / rebirth of the same being or every being is born for the first time. If reincarnation is not there, Karma gets refuted and that would mean total lawlessness and arbitrariness in the scheme of the world.
b) If there is no reincarnation and people have to await the judgement day for getting justice then it would be actually the worst system of justice possible. Why ? Imagine the first human being who walked on this earth nearly 209000 years ago ( as scientists claim) must be awaiting for justice for more than 200,000 years. If we add the humans dying everyday in last 200,000 years then there would be a mindboggling figure for human beings awaiting the day of Judgement for getting justice ! Is this justice ? How can you make anyone wait for justice for just nearly 100 years of his actions ? Where would he be until the day of Judgement and what he will be doing and under which rule if not as per his own karma ?
c) There have been many cases where reincarnation of a person has been claimed and the mystery of such births could not be denied.
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How can we justify that karma is carried over from birth to birth?
If Karma is not carried over from one birth to the other then as already argued in the answer of first and second question, whatever happens to any human being /any being on this earth is totally arbitrary and unjustified to people who are born with varying disadvantages.
How do we know that the Atman in all beings is God? It could just be soul, why link it to God?
Scientifically and logically nothing can come out of nothing. We all can see that this universe is very intelligent and works strictly obeying the laws of the universe. That shows that there is Consciousness in all beings and also in non-living-things or there is some consciousness somewhere which ensures that every being and every thing in this universe acts as per the Laws of Nature. Hindu Dharma says that this is Cosmic Consciousness which is partless. Hindus say that this partless unified mass of Cosmic Consciousness is God. Let's assume that there is no Universal Consciousness but there is some entity which makes the things / beings obey the laws of nature. Abrahimic religions say that this entity is God. Now, let's assume that what Abrahimic religions say is correct. Then this would mean :
a) There cannot be anything and any being before "creation" except God. If anything of any being was there before Creation took place, that would mean that there was another entity which created those things beings and that would mean having multiple Gods and that would violate the very concept of God in Abrahimic religions. Now, as logically nothing can be created out of nothing, God must create the universe with Himself as the raw material. That means He would use Himself to Create things/beings of this universe and in that process He would keep depleting Himself and would become ever changing and diminishing Not-God. This is ridiculous. Therefore, Creation completely separate from God is an impossibility. Hindus say that it is God which appears as the universe. The universe is His creation of MAyA i.e. illusive in nature.
b) As argued above in a), all individual souls must come from God alone and that must be illusive i.e. work of MAyA or God would keep getting diminished on creation of each soul/object) in this universe and there might come a day when there won't be any God left at all due to un-ending creation taking place all the time !
c) As argued above, the time and distance must also be only illusory and not Real, if God has to remain changeless. So, all differences of different souls must be illusory. So, there cannot be so many souls in reality.
d) It is not just argument but the practising Rishis and all the Self-realised souls have "seen" that there is only One AtmAn and that is none but God Himself in reality. It doesn't stop here. It says that you too can realise this Truth if you follow the path diligently.
What do Hindus believe that God does/the nature of God? Why? Does he simply pervade all beings in the world, and in the end we will all merge into God and the world will be destroyed? What is the purpose of God?
Copying and pasting from another thread :
a) God is the origin and end of all beings in two states (Gross state where we are alive and subtle state when we are not-born or where we are after death) of relative existence.
b) God is the Controller of the above two states, i.e. nothing can happen in these two worlds what He doesn't want. In other words, He is Omnipotent.
c) God is Undifferentiated (Unified) mass of Consciousness. This means that God is not a separate entity from Its creation. God pervades the two states of existence in such a manner that Creation and the Creator can't be separated in reality. He is equally there in consciousness of all beings and everything.
d) God is desireless
e) God is omniscient
f) God is full of bliss. It experiences bliss with mouth of Consciousness.
Everything come from God and merges back into God but nothing gets destroyed because nothing is created which could get destroyed. The essence of all beings and all things is God which is indestructible. There is no purpose. It is the Nature of God which keep working as per the Its own Laws.
If it is bad karma to kill human beings, then why do murderers exist in the first place? Are we Hindus saying that the Karma of his past life caused him to be reborn as a murderer? And this is what I find the most strange: what if there was someone and their karma was to be murdered, isn't the killer technically "good" for carrying out the karma?
It is not that simple. Though it is true that largely what is offered to anyone in this life is based on his past Karmas but it doesn't mean that his present Karma don't count while deciding what would actually happen and in what form. Karma means both past Karma and new present Karma. So, even though a person is born with evil tendencies as that of murderer due to his past Karma, he can change these evil tendencies by practice and through contemplation on what he should actually do.
What happens in Self-realisation?
On Self-realisation as the term suggests, the spell of MAyA is broken and you can "see" what the reality is. The Self-Realised Souls have seen that they are non-different from God " they feel oneness with the Cosmic Consciousness as a pot of water is mixed into water of an infinite water-body. All the Karmas are wiped out. There is Infinite unending bliss.
OM
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