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.For when we leave this earthly existence, we will standbefore our Maker, and he will judge us.A great scorecard will be pulled out andthe number of good things we did and the number of sins we committed will betallied.But it only takes one sin to condemn us to eternal suffering.This meansthat we could live an exemplary life right up to the time we die, and then if wecommit even one sin wam! eternal damnation.We are sent to Hell, thoughthe Catholics give us a way out.They divide sin into mortal and venal.If we onlycommit the latter, we will be sent to Purgatory for a while before we are eventu-ally sent onto Heaven.Other religions claim that all we have to do is ask forgive-ness before we die and we can then go straight to Heaven that is if we don t diesuddenly in a car crash or get shot.Some of the eastern religions claim that you must be good, for you will bereturned to this world through the process of reincarnation.They speak ofkarma, which is also a scorecard of a sort.Everything you do will be recorded andafter you die, you will be judged on how well you did.If you did well, you will bereincarnated into an elevated state, but if you did poorly, you could return as aworm or slug.But one must ask what is a good life? For the eastern religions,the good life is DENIAL! You must abandon all desires, needs, wants, pleasures,236 LIFE AFTER DEATH 237hope, and everything that make life enjoyable.As Charlie Brown in the Peanutscomic strip would say, Ugg! Who wants to live like that?In all these religions, they accept the fact that life is hard, but they welcome itand encourage you to surrender to the suffering and pain, and then offer youhope that if you do, you will enjoy everlasting joy and happiness in the afterlife.The Muslims even claim that if you commit suicide in the fight for Islam, youwill live in paradise in the next life, with ninety-two (not ninety-one or ninety-three) virgins for you to deflower at your leisure.They never explain what thewomen who die in the name of Islam will receive.Hey! People actually believethis.But their lives are so miserable that they will believe anything if they are toldthey will enjoy paradise for eternity in the afterlife.It offers them a small ray ofhope in their otherwise miserable existence. THE INDIVIDUAL ANDCOLLECTIVE SOULOur idea of the soul has been shaped by Christianity.We have come to believethat we have a spiritual entity living within the physical body, which is a non-tan-gible copy of the physical body that will separate from if after death, and floataway.But the actual concept of the soul that our pagan ancestors conceived andunderstood was more complicated then this simple expression of the afterlife.Wehave to understand first that the soul is made up of many parts and that it is notseparate from, but a part of a greater collective, racial soul.Let us take a look at and describe the many parts that make up your individualsoul.In the very heart of your soul is the part that is the deepest, inner part ofyou.This is the self.It contains the most mysterious aspects of whom you are.Itgrows and becomes strong throughout your life, feeding on all your experiencesand knowledge that you have acquired.The next aspect of your soul is actually the physical body.Within the body allaspects of the soul are fused.This is the vehicle by which we experience the uni-verse that surrounds us, and we can direct our wills to affect the objective world.The next important part of the soul is the ghost.The ghost is the plasmicquasi-material aura that we might consider to be what the soul is, according to aChristian interpretation.This is the ghost that lingers on, half in this world andhalf in the next, when someone dies.The thought is our intellectual, logical and analytical part of the soul.It lieswithin the left side of the brain.Thought is personified by Odin s raven, Huginn.Next is memory, which is personified by Odin s other raven, Muninn.This isthe sum total of our personal, collective and racial memories and is located in theright side of the brain.Another aspect of the soul is the Bifrost Gland
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