The Illusion of Separation: Reincarnation, Justice, and Psychic Pollution
The refusal to believe in the possibility of reincarnation is not without consequences. It leads to a series of mental and social attitudes which, while not always cruel in themselves, allow cruelty to spread unchecked. Among the many implications of this denial, none is as destructive as the inner monster it legitimizes through the rationalization of torture and its consequences for the afterlife.
Let us consider a simple yet troubling example: that of a person who wishes for a criminal’s final days to be marked by suffering, in order for their wrongdoing to be “paid for.” Behind this vengeful impulse lies a double illusion: first, the belief that telepathy or psychic interconnection does not exist; and second, the notion that the individual is an isolated island, disconnected from the subtle environment that surrounds them.
For if thought can radiate — and nothing rigorously excludes this possibility — then seeking to generate a field of hatred in one’s vicinity is like building a toxic waste incinerator beside your own water source. It is the contamination of shared resources. There lies a fundamental form of psychic ecology we must acknowledge: what we generate mentally does not vanish into the void. It seeps, it affects, it contaminates.
This is what I call the illusion of separation — the illusion that what we do to others affects only them. The illusion that the individual mind is sealed within itself, and that its actions — mental or physical — echo only within a single, isolated body. This illusion is compounded, especially among strict materialists, by another: the illusion of the discontinuity of consciousness. Denying reincarnation is also denying the persistence of the soul, and therefore the idea of responsibility beyond the grave — and, in a deeper sense, the law of cause and effect extended across multiple lives.
But if the soul does persist — not only until the mastery of form, as many traditions assert, but also between lives, in those intermediate states that some call bardos, dreams, or collective nightmares — then the acts we commit in this life stain the subtle fabric in which we are all immersed. It is a kind of energetic and mental pollution that transcends individual boundaries and affects the entire planet — or even the solar system, if we dare think in terms of cosmic consciousness.
From this perspective, the act of torture — whether physical or psychological, immediate or drawn out — creates a dark knot in the collective weave. And denying this is to unknowingly participate in its perpetuation.
In that sense, reincarnation works like a reversed Pascal’s wager: if it’s true, it is wiser to live with full awareness of our deep interdependence; and if it’s not, then it is still more prudent — and healthier — to act as if it were, because cruelty’s consequences remain destructive even in a strictly materialist world.
This leads us to reclaim a model of justice that is not punitive but transformative — a justice that seeks not to isolate and destroy individuals, but to restore, heal, and reintegrate them. A humanist justice, yes — but more importantly, a holistic one, that considers not just the person, but the invisible field in which they move. A justice that does not merely punish darkness, but lights a flame.
For ultimately, treating wrongdoers better is not just a matter of efficiency or morality: it is a matter of collective mental hygiene. The better we treat those who fall, the less likely they are to fall again. And that remains true whether or not we believe in reincarnation.
But if it does exist, then hatred is a debt we incur over the long term — and compassion, a seed we plant in our own future.