Is Death a Creativity-Off Concept?

Some people think it’s crazy to believe in anything but death after life. Other people think it’s crazy to believe that death ends life. They think that death is a real creativity-off concept.

The artist in me thinks that life is a lot more intriguing when it’s eternal than when it’s confined to one physical lifespan. Eternal life is creativity-on, and the version of eternal life that I like the best is reincarnation.

I first heard about reincarnation back in the early 70s when Richard Nixon was still President. The Vietnam War was still raging. As a college student at San Francisco State University, I thought that the idea of “just one life” sucked. It just didn’t seem fair that you had to take whatever poker hand you drew at birth and play out your destiny that way forever.

I figured that the God who created all the wonders of the universe would not be so lame as to only let a few scripture-quoting followers of Jesus join him in heaven. Billions of people don’t believe in Jesus, primarily because they were born in places where Jesus doesn’t rock as resolutely as the competition.

So I was delighted when I heard rumors that in reincarnation, we get to live different lives and experience different genders, races, religions, social classes, and so on. The most creativity-on aspect is that the soul gets to decide what life scenario to pick for each life.

The part I like best is that if you have a big problem with the other gender or another race or another religion, you may very well choose as a soul to come back embodied in whatever you despise. So if you’re highly prejudiced against some group, you just may wind up next life as a card-carrying member of that group. Watch out if you’re a chauvinist pig or a ball-biting femme.

Cool, huh?

At first, reincarnation actually sounded too cool to be true. So many cool things turn out to be either illegal or unattainable. I loved the notion that I wasn’t stuck in the bell jar where Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew were the best guiding brains we could get. It was liberating to conceive of a Universe designed by a much higher intelligence than displayed in global politics.

Now in 2004, I have several friends who’ve seen the afterlife with their own eyes. They died, clinically speaking, and discovered that life does indeed go on. Their classic near-death experiences gave them indisputable proof (to them) that the universe is a much more exciting place to live in than the dreary picture of it we get through the mainstream media.

These folks say it’s crazy to believe in the finality of death. To them death is a transition. It’s just like turning the page to a new life.