I am more of a Hindu like you than a Buddhist. I like Buddhism for its psychology and philosophy and I pair that with a belief in God. Even the Buddha said that one can go to an afterlife as the God Brahma. It really depends on people's Views and Samadhi. I fear that Nirvana wouldn't be a state of happiness but simply a release from the round of birth and death, which I find repugnant if it is not a union with God. I don't agree with the universe being cyclic simply because i believe it to be infinite in space and time and matter. If a kalpa is the beginning and ending of a universe, I would think God likes to laugh and dance because it wouldn't make sense that a serious God would create just to destroy and create again and put people through reincarnation only to meet with her again. Then again, the Archetype of a God that Laughs and Dances invites absurdity and purposelessness, although I guess God can laugh because she is blissful and empty. I find it very difficult to believe in a God that laughs, but I'm trying the idea out.
I’d like to clarify a few things so as not to give the wrong impression. I do not believe in a personal god and am not a Hindu. I could be considered a budding esoteric Christian or a Christian Platonist. I lean towards Plotinus’ description of God as ONE beyond the limitations of time and space. Creation limited by time and space is within the pure consciousness of the ONE so is considered the body of god. The ONE IS while creation carries out the process of existence. Isness and process are not the same
It is reasonable to ask what I AM means. If I is pure consciousness why is AM necessary? It is a difficult question to do justice to. I accept it in a simplified way by saying that pure consciousness or ONE must manifest potentials or they will be lost. "I AM" as it concerns the Source is the unity of no-thing (conscious potential) and every-thing or the continual actualization of potentials. The universal process is a lawful means for doing so.
These ideas are very old and really little known in modern secular society. I will post a simple link not to be read but so as to prove I’m not making this all up. It raises the question if Man has the potential for conscious evolution. Can the essence of man continue to evolve beyond the mechanical evolution that produced the human organism into a greater quality of being?
https://blog.logos.com/2013/11/plato-ch ... h-fathers/
The world is against the transition from mechanical evolution into conscious evolution. Take the question of sex and all the misunderstanding that are rampant about it for example. Even modern psychology is aware that rape isn’t a sex crime but rather a crime of violence. What is not understood is that sex energy in modern society is directed to intensify cravings created by negative emotions. Sex isn’t the problem but rather the socially promoted misuse of sex energy creating a lust for imagination which completely negates conscious awareness. The only people aware of these things are involved with the esoteric paths of the great traditions and these are a small minority.
The universe as I understand it is a necessary creation. The question isn’t how it serves me but how I can better serve universal purpose by opening to conscious awareness.
I have to share and experience which shows my lack of conscious awareness. As usual Simone Weil punctures my ego. She wrote in Literature and Morality:
So what do I experience of objective good and evil and how much am I attached to imaginary concepts? So much for conscious awareness.“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvellous, intoxicating. Therefore "imaginative literature" is either boring or immoral (or a mixture of both). It only escapes from this alternative if in some way it passes over to the side of reality through the power of art— and only genius can do that.”
I think collectively we underestimate our ignorance and the importance of the Socratic axiom of what it means to “know thyself.” That is why this artificial division between science and religion, facts and objective values, has intensified over a time. Can our species survive this absurdity?