My speech to a 50 year HS reunion would ask, "At the time of our graduation, who among us in our wildest dreams, our deepest desires, our plans, projections, expectations, intentions, etc. was thinking that my life 50 years from now will be just as it is now."

Those who answer affirmatively may be among the saints and sages who know now that 'it is just as it is' whether we believe, understand, grok or deny such objectivity.

Things happen! For those seeking certainties and explanations for everything, I suggest the 'Ultimate Conspiracy Theory', the greatest of all creative speculation, Advaita Vedanta.
Everything is an inside job and "you're it".

As I replied in this thread, https://www.democraticunderground.com/100215544975
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100215544975

Behind, beneath, at base of human cruelty is the near universal truth of poorly integrated, sick-selves who never learned self-worth nor self-control and thus seek-satisfaction through sadism.

Within and under the question why? is a deeper truth about the human condition.

Why do people confuse/ conflate the 'self' with 'non-self'?
Why is it so hard to understand the beam and mote?

The 'self' is objectively this "body-mind-sense-complex with a name and a story.
No good comes when the truth-value-worth of this 'self' falsely becomes subjectively mixed-up with objectively other selves.

We all understand human-subjectivity and tolerate (or try to avoid) those with out of-bounds subjectivity (partly cultural/social boundaries). Those whose subjectivity is too-far-out are not tolerated (prisons, mental hospitals, shunning, exile).

Now, if we could only teach our kids the truth about their "self', they would all grow up saintly without the need/desire for crushing others to feel good themselves.

Within and under the question is a deeper truth about the human condition.

Why do people confuse/ conflate the 'self' with 'non-self'?
Why is it so hard to understand the beam and mote?

The 'self' is objectively this "body-mind-sense-complex with a name and a story.
No good comes when the truth-value-worth of this 'self' falsely becomes subjectively mixed-up with objectively other selves.

We all understand human-subjectivity and tolerate (or try to avoid) those with out of-bounds subjectivity (partly cultural/social boundaries). Those whose subjectivity is too-far-out are not tolerated (prisons, mental hospitals, shunning, exile).

Now, if we could only teach our kids the truth about their "self', they would all grow up saintly without the need/desire for crushing others to feel good themselves.

De acuerdo

So much truth in few words
The choices are ours to make
The ultimate gift is our heritage
Uncountable desires divert our denouement

As I understand their POV, I suggest the souls of aborted beings return directly to God as they are never culpable of original sin or any other sinful behavior.
Going to God is said to be good.

Since they say God's hand gets involved human matters (like "God put me in the Capitol on 1/5", they ought also understand that God put the soul into that to-be-aborted body, knowing the soul would soon come home.
As they say the world around us is a temptingly dangerous, temporary place prior to Heaven, why do they insist so hard that souls must stay on this plane?

Altruism is highly regarded and doesn't seem to require premeditation or thinking or consideration of cause and effect, like the soldier instantly diving onto the grenade.
In this way we need to celebrate the altruism of the aborted souls and of the aborted-bodies' cellular descendants.

Religionists insult their own God by rejecting the God-given gifts of minds and knowledge and progress.

Or so it seems to this non-religionist.

However, I know about each of the half-million dead in the USA.

Everyone used the personal pronoun "I" and everyone had the same sense of 'myself'.
Every self had experiences, knowledge, fears, hopes, plans and some (or more) existential angst.
Each was the center of a known universe, though for most their own universe ended at the epidermis.
All were certain in their knowing even when they did not know. All knew they lived in a real world even when they didn't.
All had desires, memories, non-verifiable beliefs and births from some form of family; they were known to others.
One perhaps (I am generous) did not fear death.

I hope to know that one personally.

"Karmic trajectories rush inevitably to balance forces when no further actions continue manifesting results which themselves must be appropriately paid."

"Karmic trajectories" = the general trend, apparent path of the ship of any "self". Some people seem to tend toward the good and others toward the worst (of choices). Trajectory is not fate but more like the momentum of a large ship at sea. It can slowly be changed.

"rush inevitably to balance forces" = the momentum of cause-effect (action-result) seeking equilibrium = arc of the moral universe (a near universal value).

"when no further actions continue manifesting results" = (awkward sentence construction) until we cease adding more momentum to our trajectory, we continue accruing karmic debt (imbalance). Our continuing actions bring added consequences that need resolution, while we carry still outstanding previously accrued balances.

"which themselves must be appropriately paid" = in the 'karmic-model' and in common-mores, we postulate that the consequences of our actions will be adjusted (debits and credits balanced); some say death is less final on a moral scale than on a human scale.

Karma-ethic ought to be thought of, less as reward-retribution-punishment, and more like gravity- unseen but certain.

Karmic trajectories rush inevitably to balance forces when no further actions continue manifesting results which themselves must be appropriately paid. The piper will not be put off.

I hope never to share Rush's realms.

People, there are, whose karmic trajectories will bring results desired, not as reward but rather as paid-interest on investment.
Of these folk we can say, "They choose wisely". I hope to be "One".

Desires impel choices that initiate actions that become habits. Once one becomes a karmic-clown, the path to which realm will be roamed is, as though, set in stone.

*The word Bhagavan can be understood as cosmic-balance in stillness. Like pendulums coming to rest; consequences cease when activity is stilled.

Consciousness exists. This is in disputable. Indeed consciousness is required to even try denying the existence of consciousness.

Consciousness is non-negateable because (again) it takes consciousness to know or to deny, to prove or refute anything.
One's own conscious-beingness is self-evident, requiring no proof. "I know I am" is a priori to knowing who I am (gender, nationality, desires, interests, occupation, activity, all other concepts).

Knowledge exists in consciousness. There is nothing known except by consciousness. Without consciousness, nothing can be explained.
Consciousness can not be explained away. Science can reveal where to find in the brain, various emotions, intentions, memories and other 'objects of consciousness" and activity.
Science can't explain nor negate consciousness-knowingness (separate from the known) without using the very consciousness that is being investigated.

Thus the Vedas call ultimate reality "sat-chit-ananta" or satcitananda.
Sat=existence
Chit=consciousness
Ananta=limitless; or ananda, usually called bliss but better understood as free of all limitations.

Consciousness is not equivalent to 'what is known', the objects of consciousness, nor to the brain nor to that of which we are aware.

...(pregnant pause) fricasseed."

The insanity of the reality of people believing 'stupidity' is indeed dangerous as said in a post above.
The Qanuts must be identified as and treated as too mentally-different to be accepted in sane society; their subjective projection upon the manifest world is beyond any morally-acceptable societal norms; the Qanuts are beyond the continuum of socially tolerated activity.

This is not a matter of manners or mores like some gentile southern customs or pre-JFK expectations of good teens.
This is a matter of a social-pathology infecting the collective psyche of society.
Acted out delusions of dull minds, like infected boils, must be lanced, drained, cleansed and salved.
There is pain and will be pain, but temporary pain is to be preferred to permanent poisoning.