Is paradise is a universal archetypal concept? Or has it been the carrot to keep people subjected to rules and laws decreed by treacherous religions and upheld by governments?
The Egyptians believed it; that's why their bodies were so carefully embalmbed, organs preserved in gobi jars; possessions included in the burial chambers, including live slaves destined to die to accompany their master; a lifetime spent planning a funeral.
No wonder the Pyramid factors into these religions. Perhaps the concept of paradise comes from this ancient Babylonian culture.
We are always hoping for a better life, and somehow knowing it will never exist in this world.
excerpts:
How Was Paradise Made?
Why all this fantasy about the paradise? Any person given to scientific reasoning and query may ask. The answer is simple, though not so simple as it may look. The world we live in is a mix of pleasures and pain but it appears that God has not given to mankind pleasures and pains in equal measures. Often on the scale of human fortunes, pains seem to outweigh pleasures and, more often than not, the stings of pain are much more severe than the soothing sensations of pleasure. While the moments of pleasure are few and far between, agonizing days and nights of pain are long and unending.
In this context, an English novelist has aptly remarked: “Happiness is but an occasional episode in the general drama of pain” (Thomas Hardy in his The Mayor of Casterbridge). The picture of pain and misery is writ so large on the canvas of this world of mortals that it impelled the highly compassionate Lord Buddha to make “affirmation of pain” as one of ‘Four Noble Truths’ (Chattwari Arya Sattyani) of Buddhism.
The fact being so, whenever the highly tormented man has attempted, in his moments of leisure, to fancy about an after-life existence, he has willfully omitted from it everything which causes him pain and lavished it with everything that gives him pleasure, even though for a passing moment.
The Moral Impact of Paradise
The ideas of ‘paradise’ and ‘hell’ were used by the religious leaders as moral precepts to ensure the restoration of a ‘moral order’ in the world or at least within the community to which they belonged.
Thus we find that the concepts of paradise and hell, though having no more than a mythical reality, have proved to be quite useful in sustaining a moral order in the world, which could otherwise have been reduced to a state of anarchy.
Even if the concept of paradise be a myth, can this myth be realized? Normally speaking, no myth has the potential to be realized in actual reality but the myth of paradise is of a peculiar type. If I am given the liberty to say so, the myth of paradise is made out of hard realities of this world. As it has been observed earlier on, man first observed the realities of this universe and then chose from it the best and the most fancied ones to fashion his ‘abode of permanent bliss’.
....the concept of paradise has given to the suffering humanity a hope, a soothing balm to his battered and brutalized ego and also a sanctified code of ethical precepts for sustenance of a moral order in this world. If for nothing else, the concept of paradise deserves to be extolled, not rejected.
---------------
These words make it sound as though it is selfish to disrupt this controlling myth. Do we hurt our loved ones more when we shatter them with the truth?
Isn't this what Jesus tried to do oh so delicately?
Isn't this why he harped so much on 'love'...so that we could have a better existence now, and not waste our lives dreaming about some otherworld where everything would be perfect?
Did he not say his teachings were so we could have life more abundantly now?
Paradise would be an OK concept to fantasize about if iron-fisted evil factions like WT had not misused the idea to dominate and control people to their own ends.
Other religions have done the same thing, but used it for great monetary gain.
WT has used it for the thrill of power, sadism, just to destroy families and futures.
Any religion that sells you a dream at the expense of giving up your family, your pursuit of happiness, your interests in life, is the most evil of demons I can imagine.
Sometimes I think the only way we can wake up our loved ones is by showing love, kindness, and long-suffering. But if we are shunned we have little opportunity to even do that.
People usually resent the bearer of bad news, anyway.
I hate the WT and all who are participating in propagating this evil. They get their jollies from abusing the weaker ones. They are sadists. Even the local elders, though they may not realize all the principles involved, are feeding their egos on destroying lives. They are the demons.