Contemplation on Reincarnation & Manvantaras
In my contemplation of reincarnation today, I began to consider what the relationship of a person's soul is to the cycle of the universe. I paused in the consideration of what differences might the soul observe and/or experience in its existence between a Manvantara and a Pralaya - namely : the "sleep state" and the "awake state" (of any particular soul you care to mention) in relation to its habitable universe at large.
Now for clarity's sake, we should know that in pre-Christian Gnosticism, a manvantara is considered as the "awake/day-cycle" of a universe while the pralaya is considered as the "sleep/night-cycle". For instance, since you are alive, you are in a human-life "Manvantara". When you die (id est: physically), you will enter a "Pralaya". The same is supposed to happen for everything that exists. Accordingly, this would mean for the "disincarnate" soul itself, as well.
I found it easy to imagine, the manvantara for this particular universe to have begun at the moment theoretical astrophysicists have calculated that a "Big Bang" had occurred, given that a manvantara is supposed to be roughly : 44,434,000,000,000 (human) years in length. What was less comprehensible, was how our souls might be behaving in the period "before" or "between" such Big Bangs.
Noting that the soul is immortal, I began to wonder whether one soul's sleep cycle is so "firmly tied" to a universe's sleep cycle that even an act of free will couldn't prevent that soul from falling into torpidity with the rest of the universe, or that it might be possible to imagine a soul who could behave much like a restless child in the middle of the night - (perhaps, half asleep, but "willfully" so) - while his "universal" parent(s) slept peacefully in their own pralaya.
While most people (who believe in reincarnation in the first place) see their reincarnations as somewhat "sequential" events in the linearity of our existence - in this; our "known" universe of time and space - I pondered the variations of sentient evolution and that "complimentary" or, "eventual" moment, of full ascension (optimistically speaking). We're all sentient for some omniscient reason, right ?
Although, realistically, it doesn't matter whether it occurs in one life time or several, I was wondering what the reader's thoughts were - and perhaps, if they themself had any experiences they could relate about their own soul's existence - regarding it's own transitional experience between pralayas, or whether they consider themself as "wholey intact," and "as evolved as they'll ever be", by means of one - and only one - manvantara.
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