ONE LIFE-SPAN IS JUST A FLASH IN A REACTIONARY SHOW

Socrates jail cell in Athens

Socrates was “canceled” during the Athenian Cancel Culture.

Socrates believed that because of the immortality of the soul, death could not be evil, because to free the soul by guiding it to the eternal truths was the entire point of life.

When pressed by his friends as to why he believed that our souls were immortal, Socrates stated: the soul must be immortal because life always emerges after physical death, as we see in nature, as life springs up from decaying organic matter. Just as nature makes a way for new life coming out of decay, so too must the soul survive physical death. Death, Socrates believed, must be like waking up from a sleep.

He also believed that how humans tend to remember things that they have had no experience of in their lifetimes — referred to as the principle of recollection — proves this hypothesis.

He stated that nobody “needs to be taught what a circle or a triangle is.” People know these concepts naturally, which suggests that they must have learned things like these in a former life.

Socrates then argued that the soul was immortal because of something he called “affinity.” His reasoning was thus: immortal beings, such as gods, are normally invisible by their very nature. Despite his belief in Zeus or Apollo or other gods, they were not ordinarily seen taking strolls along the streets of Athens, he noted. However, the human soul knows that they exist; how could the soul do so without having at least a bit of the divine in itself?

Socrates went on to describe the soul by saying that it is like a cloak made by a weaver; just as the cloak continues to exist after the weaver dies, so too must the human soul live after the body dies.

It was widely believed then — and still is today — that it was Socrates’ frequent ridicule of democracy that was really on trial, however.

The articulate stone cutter had long insisted that democracy was a morally corrupt voting system in which greedy demagogues hoodwinked the ignorant mob. His words when sentenced to death paraphrased:

Death is either a migration of the soul to see all my old friends once more.

Or, it is like a midsummer night’s sleep. So peaceful never to be disturbed by a dream. How many of us have had such wonderful nights?Go ahead, do your best.

Kapila Muni explains the transmigration of the soul:

In this way the living entity gets a suitable body with a material mind and senses, according to his fruitive activities. When the reaction of his particular activity comes to an end, that end is called death, and when a particular type of reaction begins, that beginning is called birth.

From time immemorial, the living entity travels in the different species of life and the different planets, almost perpetually. This process is explained in Bhagavad-gītā. Bhrāmayan sarva-bhūtāni yantrārūḍhāni māyayā: [Bg. 18.61] under the spell of māyā, everyone is wandering throughout the universe on the carriage of the body offered by the material energy. Materialistic life involves a series of actions and reactions. It is a long film spool of actions and reactions, and one life-span is just a flash in such a reactionary show. When a child is born, it is to be understood that his particular type of body is the beginning of another set of activities, and when an old man dies, it is to be understood that one set of reactionary activities is finished.

We can see that because of different reactionary activities, one man is born in a rich family, and another is born in a poor family, although both of them are born in the same place, at the same moment and in the same atmosphere. One who is carrying pious activity with him is given a chance to take his birth in a rich or pious family, and one who is carrying impious activity is given a chance to take birth in a lower, poor family. The change of body means a change to a different field of activities. Similarly, when the body of the boy changes into that of a youth, the boyish activities change into youthful activities.

It is clear that a particular body is given to the living entity for a particular type of activity. This process is going on from a time which is impossible to trace out. Vaiṣṇava poets say, therefore, anādi karama-phale, which means that these actions and reactions of one’s activity cannot be traced, for they may even continue from the last millennium of Brahmā’s birth to the next millennium. We have seen the example in the life of Nārada Muni. In one millennium he was the son of a maidservant, and in the next millennium he became a great sage. (S.B.3.31.44)