Дониш Форум • 3. Initiation – Planet Earth is a prison

3. Initiation – Planet Earth is a prison

The Bible recounts the expulsion from Paradise. Paradise is simply a home that is better than Planet Earth. For several millennia, many religions currently found on Earth have maintained that we humans have been punished.

If one simply describes this dispassionately, one arrives at the realization that Earth is a prison. And that is correct: Earth is a prison planet.

If you look at war, the aftermath involves a situation with war victims living in prisoner camps somewhere — and the Bible, as well as other religions, tells of this.

In Greek mythology, for example, Zeus — the father of the gods —declares that humans (the beings living on Earth as humans) are not permitted to leave the planet. It is even stated that if private individuals attempt to leave Earth, they will be shot down.

In higher spirituality, we also learn that the Earth is covered by a force shield. This force shield makes it impossible for souls to leave the planet Earth.

Reincarnation — the repeated rebirth of the soul into a subsequent human biological body — also keeps the soul trapped here on Earth.

In Buddhism, the Buddha points to this reincarnation and draws attention to the need to attain higher states of consciousness—known in Buddhism as *Bodhi* — which exist beyond the physical body. This involves leaving the body not through death, but by achieving a higher state of consciousness through practice, allowing the soul to separate from the biological body. This higher state of being is necessary to ascend once more to a higher state of existence as a being or soul; yet, this can only be achieved by stepping off the wheel of rebirth.

A look back at China three thousand years ago: here, we find the "free spiritual knowledge of China," which any person in the country could engage with if they wished. This teaching holds that one can live again and again in the land of China, and that the gods placed us on Earth — endowing us with this spiritual knowledge — so that we might ascend once more to higher realms and eventually leave this place, this planet Earth.