Read Online On God: An Uncommon Conversation by Norman Mailer, Michael Lennon - Free Book Online Page A

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    Let me shift our subject. What are the reasons—as far as you can surmise—that a soul is chosen for reincarnation? Does God or His aides choose to extinguish some hideous souls, or must the souls acquiesce, give up, and, in effect, commit eternal suicide, go out of existence?
    Let’s start with that. I think certain people can lose the desire to keep their soul alive. They’ve suffered too much, one way or another. The soul is weary.
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    Gary Gilmore might be one example.
    His soul was not too weary. On the contrary, he didn’t want his soul to die. He was the exact opposite. He wanted his body to die so his soul wouldn’t be extinguished. He felt if he didn’t seek the death penalty but stayed in jail for his remaining twenty or thirty years, his soul would expire from the sheer misery of living in jail, the emptiness of it, the ongoing, endless emptiness of living in prison if you’d already used up, as he had, all its few vital possibilities. But there are other people who might say, “Let my soul expire. It doesn’t deserve to go on”—which, by the way, is a thought that can also come to the rottennest human alive, a part that says, “You really are a swine; you don’t deserve to live any longer. You’re much worse than you think you are.” We all have comparable sentiments (in lesser degree) when we arrive at a reckoning with ourselves. But for some, it’s terminal. They are drenched in a mortal weariness of their own soul. So certain souls expire; they are ready to.
    Generally speaking, however, most souls are probably not willing to die that easily. On the other hand, the soul may not have the vigor to pass through endless reincarnations. If a cat has nine lives, what does a human soul possess? Three lives? It’s boundlessly speculative, comically so. But then you are asking, How does God choose? How do God and His aides choose?
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    Can God execute a soul?
    Why not? How not? God can create us, God can end us—which is part of the huge fear people have of God. God can terminate us. Absolutely.
    But God hates to give up on an interesting artistic possibility in a human. So let’s say He might take very bad people and have them reincarnated. Why? Is it to fill out the picture, to have a certain darkness, a few shadows for a certain corner? That is one of the clerical responses to explain why God tolerates evil. Of course, I would argue with that. I would say God sees wonderful potentialities in awful people. One of the reasons they
were
so awful was because they had large potentialities that became frustrated early and so turned into their opposites. Concerning this particular soul, therefore, God wants to try again. Or, to the contrary, take the case of someone who is perfectly bland and pleasant, good and decent, yet God is not vitally interested. That soul has done about what it’s going to do and is no longer interesting to the Lord’s higher purpose. God might then decide, We can only reincarnate him or her in an animal. We have to see if that soul responds to a more arduous life. Or God may decide—not worth repeating: Just as an artist can be ruthless, so can God when it comes to humans with mediocre lives. So reincarnation is, I think, the nexus of judgment.
    For example, if someone has an adventurous soul, but physically they were weakened by early childhood illnesses, they might be endowed with more strength next time out. God could send them to stronger parents. But that could also produce larger demands. To justify God’s new intention, you might have to become a skilled athlete. Think of what you’d have to endure to get there. Does this soul, interesting at present, have such capacity or not? God is experimenting. God is looking to find out. God, like a parent, learns from what the children