Reading the ‘Journal of a Disappointed Man’ by Barbellion I reach back to the early 20th.Century to hope for him. What can that hope, that prayer, that earnest supplication ‘give that man a break’ God; what can it do? Are prayers dropped into eternity and in that way outside time? Are they are retroactively effective, landing into Barbellion’s time and helping him? What is the Christian theology on this point? The Hindus who have thought of everything, for whom abstruse points are the old normal, speak of the uncanny, the apurva. The wikipedia article :
summarises the main thinking on the topic. Essentially its this: how can the sacrifice rightly done, the results of which must fructify, remain in abeyance and benefit the celebrant after their death. The normal causal connections seem broken.
And now I remember that in Christianity prayer for the souls of the dead in Purgatory is efficacious. The space time continuum is not as firm a construction as we suppose it to be. Adepts at an advanced level regularly flout it.
Ramana Maharshi the great sage was once asked whether it was possible that someone could be the reincarnation of a person who had not yet died.
Yes, he replied, because the upadhis (forms of limitation) are different in that case. Causal logic is subverted and by the normal understanding of karma actions yet to be performed were fructifying in another life.
How very apurva!!
I absolutely recommend ‘Journal of a Disappointed Man’ by Barbellion as the sort of book that you can take up and read some entries occasionally for their poignant beauty and resolute courage in the face of a dismal prognosis. He died at age 27.
available on
gutenberg.org
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