Afterlife, Reincarnation and Spirits in Religion.
What happens after death?
Every society/religion has an answer that reflects the culture, geography, values and history of the society/religion.
In Christian death, assuming one has behaved appropriately, one becomes an Angel retaining human form, ascending above to heaven to watch over their friends and families, dance, fulfill desires, be content. This is interesting in that desires are suppressed with the expectation that they will be filled in Heaven, or just emptiness needing to be filled in with love from Jesus. Morality is not subjective and everyay encounters with angels only happens in movies. The imagery is of European humans and the specialness and seperateness of humans is stressed as well. The painting of South American painting of heaven and hell is a good example of how imagery is just idealized vignettes of possible scenarios of great pleasure or despair. Animals serve occasonaly as symbols, but there are are no real elements of the animism and other aspects of PNG traditional beliefs dealing with nature. Ceremonies are based around societal constructs, with music, dress, language and subject matter based around human history and explanations and discoveries/inventions rather than things found in nature and in dreams.
The belief of Hare Krshna's and Buddhists in reincarnation is based around the idea that life will be used in an attempt to achieve Nirvana or the ultimate love with Krshna. It is believed that in reincarnation the spirit can enter any animal, but a human is preferable for it supposedly is the most effective in attaining goals. Buddhism shares some elements of the power and eternity of nature and the human psyche, but Buddhism is more focus on personal deliverance to universality and the transcendence and elimination of desire, while traditional PNG beliefs are more based around community bonds and connections between the dimensions of spirits, animals, plants and humans. The Krshna doctrine dictates vegetarianism, because love is the only true emotion and animals. being loved, are not to be eaten. Besides this, the connections found in Krshna theology are mainly of love and do not expand to deeper more complex connectivities.
In traditions of PNG, with death it is believed one becomes a spirit that can occupy animals, masks or other ceremonial objects, plants, human bodies, energy shifting between dimensions yet remaining in contact through the entrance and manipulation of the dreams of the living. The imagery is incredibly intimate, since each person in a ceremony creates thier own outfits based off thier own ideas which are in turn mostly based of elements of nature rather than mathematics or science.
I feel that through traditional PNG's spiritual, mystical interpretation of death, a greater truth of science and spirituality is reached. Bodies decompose and the organic matter is directly and indirectly utilized by plants and animals, and the person essentially occupies many living beings at once, never again to become fully realized as a conscious solid human, but as spiritual energy.
