Dalai Lama)
is supposed to pass into an infant born nine months after his decease.
Buddhist believe that our
suffering
is due to our ignorance of reality. Because of our delusion and
attachment to false cravings and pleasures we become ensnared in this
world and in the cycle of rebirth. By following the Eight Fold
Path we eventually can reach enlightenment (nirvana), and
permanantly escape the cycle of rebirth.
In Jainism, gods reincarnate after
they die. A Jainist, who accumulates enough good karma, may become a
god; but, this is generally seen as undesirable since gods eventually
die and one might then come back as a lesser being.
Ayyavazhi says all souls are
continuosely reborn unless they reach Dharma Yukam, a state of union
with God.
Reincarnation is an intrinsic part of
many Native American and Inuit traditions. Regardless
of the actual religious beliefs and practices of today's Native
Americans, with varying religious beliefs, the idea has survived for
centuries. In the now heavily Christian Polar North (now mainly parts of
Greenland and Nunavut), the concept of reincarnation is enshrined in the
Inuit language. The survival of the concept of reincarnation applies
across the Nations in varying degrees of integrity. The Nations are, of
course, now sandwiched between Eastern [Native] and Western traditions.
Some ancient Greek philosophers
believed in reincarnation; see for example Plato's Phaedo and
The Republic. Pythagoras was probably the first Greek philosopher to
advance the idea.
We do not know exactly how the
doctrine of metempsychosis arose in Greece; most scholars do not believe
it was borrowed from Egypt or that it somehow was transmitted from
ancient Hindu thinkers of India. It is easiest to assume that earlier
ideas which had never been extinguished were utilized for religious and
philosophic purposes. The Orphic religion, which held it, first appeared
in Thrace upon the semi-barbarous north-eastern frontier. Orpheus, its
legendary founder, is said to have taught that soul and body are united
by a compact unequally binding on either; the soul is divine, immortal
and aspires to freedom, while the body holds it in fetters as a
prisoner. Death dissolves this compact, but only to re-imprison the
liberated soul after a short time: for the wheel of birth revolves
inexorably. Thus the soul continues its journey, alternating between a
separate unrestrained existence and fresh reincarnation, round the wide
circle of necessity, as the companion of many bodies of men and
animals." To these unfortunate prisoners Orpheus proclaims the message
of liberation, that they stand in need of the grace of redeeming gods
and of Dionysus in particular, and calls them to turn to God by ascetic
piety of life and self-purification: the purer their lives the higher
will be their next reincarnation, until the soul has completed the
spiral ascent of destiny to live for ever as God from whom it comes.
Such was the teaching of Orphism which appeared in Greece about the 6th
century BC, organized itself into private and public mysteries at Eleusis and elsewhere, and produced a copious literature.
The earliest Greek thinker with whom
metempsychosis is connected is Pherecydes; but Pythagoras, who is said
to have been his pupil, is its first famous philosophic exponent.
Pythagoras probably neither invented the doctrine nor imported it from
Egypt, but made his reputation by bringing Orphic doctrine from
North-Eastern Hellas to Magna Graecia and by instituting societies for
its diffusion.
The real weight and importance of
metempsychosis in Western tradition is due to its adoption by Plato. Had
he not embodied it in some of his greatest works it would be merely a
matter of curious investigation for the Western anthropologist and
student of folk-lore. In the eschatological myth which doses the
Republic he tells the story how Er, the son of Armenius, miraculously
returned to life on the twelfth day after death and recounted the
secrets of the other world. After death, he said, he went with others to
the place of Judgment and saw the souls returning from heaven and from
purgatory, and proceeded with them to a place where they chose new
lives, human and animal. He saw the soul of Orpheus changing into a
swan, Thamyras becoming a nightingale, musical birds choosing to be men,
the soul of Atalanta choosing the honours of an athlete. Men were seen
passing into animals and wild and tame animals changing into each other.
After their choice the souls drank of Lethe and then shot away like
stars to their birth. There are myths and theories to the same effect in
other dialogues, the Phaedrus, Meno, Phaedo, Timaeus and Laws. In
Plato's view the number of souls was fixed; birth therefore is never the
creation of a soul, but only a transmigration from one body to another.
Plato's acceptance of the doctrine is characteristic of his sympathy
with popular beliefs and desire to incorporate them in a purified form
into his system. Aristotle, a far less emotional and sympathetic mind,
has a doctrine of immortality totally inconsistent with it.
In later Greek literature the doctrine
appears from time to time; it is mentioned in a fragment of Menander
(the Inspired Woman) and satirized by Lucian (Gallus 18 seq.). In Roman
literature it is found as early as Ennius, who in his Calabrian home
must have been familiar with the Greek teachings which had descended to
his times from the cities of Magna Graecia. In a lost passage of his
Annals, a Roman history in verse, Ennius told how he had seen Homer in a
dream, who had assured him that the same soul which had animated both
the poets had once belonged to a peacock. Persius in one of his satires
(vi. 9) laughs at Ennius for this: it is referred to also by Lucretius (i.
124) and by Horace (Epist. II. i. 52). Virgil works the idea into his
account of, the Underworld in the sixth book of the Aeneid (vv. 724 sqq.).
It persists in antiquity down to the latest classic thinkers, Plotinus
and the other Neoplatonists.
Classic works of the Kabbalah,
Shaar ha Gilgulim ("Gate of Reincarnations") of Arizal or Isaac
Luria, describes complex laws of reincarnation gilgul and
impregnation ibbur of 5 different parts of the soul. It shows
many references of reincarnation in the Hebrew Bible (the Tanach).
The notion of reincarnation,
the transmigration of a soul after death into a new body, is not openly
mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. The classical rabbinic works (midrash,
Mishna and Talmud) also are silent on this topic. These beliefs
originally existed among the gnostics and other non-Jewish faiths.
Although how this occurred is still a matter of debate among Jewish
historians, the doctrine of reincarnation eventually made its way into
the mainstream of Jewish mysticism.
In the eighth century these ideas had
found their way into the beliefs that the belief of reincarnation
existed among some Jews despite the inherent "nonsense and stupidities"
of such beliefs. The concept was elucidated in an influential mystical
work called the Bahir (Illumination) (one of the most ancient
books of Jewish mysticism) around 1150. After the
publication of the Zohar in the late 13th century, the idea of
reincarnation spread to most of the general Jewish community.
While ancient Greek philosophers like
Plato and Socrates attempted to prove the existence of reincarnation
through philosophical proofs, Jewish mystics who
accepted this idea did not. Rather, they offered explanations of why
reincarnation would solve otherwise intractable problems of theodicy
(how to reconcile the existence of evil with the premise of a good God.)
Rabbis who accepted the idea of
reincarnation include Levi ibn Habib (the Ralbah), Nahmanides (the
Ramban), Rabbenu Bahya ben Asher, Rabbi Shelomoh Alkabez and Rabbi
Hayyim Vital. The argument made was that even the most righteous of Jews
sometimes would suffer or be murdered unjustly. Further, children would
sometimes suffer or be murdered, yet they were obviously too young for
them to have committed sins that God would presumably punish them for.
Jewish supporters of reincarnation said that this idea would remove the
theodicy: Good people were not suffering; rather, they were
reincarnations of people who had sinned in previous lifetimes. Therefore
any suffering which was observed could be assumed to be from a just God.
Yitzchak Blua writes "Unlike some other areas of philosophy where the
philosophic battleground revolves around the truth or falsehood of a
given assertion, the gilgul debate at points focuses on the
psychological needs of the people." (p.6)
Other rabbis who rejected the idea of
reincarnation include Hasdai Crescas, Yedayah Bedershi (early 14th
century), Joseph Albo, Abraham ibn Daud and Leon de Modena. Crescas
writes that if reincarnation was real, people should remember details of
their previous lives. Bedershi offers three reasons why the entire
concept is dangerous: (a) There is no reason for people to try and do
good in this life, if they fear that they will nonetheless be punished
for some unknown sin committed in a past life. (b) Some people may
assume that they did not sin in their past life, and so can coast on
their success; thus there is no need to try had to live a good life. In
Bedershi's view, the only psychologically tenable worldview for a
healthy life is to deal with the here-and-now. (c) The idea presents a
conundrum for those who believe that at the end of days, God will
resurrect the souls and physical bodies of the dead. If a person has
lived multiple lives, which body will God resurrect? Joseph Albo writes
that in theory the idea of gilgulim is compatible with Jewish theology.
However, Albo argues that there is a purpose for a soul to enter the
body, creating a being with free will. However, a return of the soul to
another body, again and again, has no point. Leon De Moden thinks that
the idea of reincarnation make a mockery of God's plans for humans; why
does God need to send the soul back over and over? If God requires an
individual to achieve some perfection or atone for some sin, then God
can just extend that person's life until they have time to do what is
necessary. de Modena's second argument against reincarnation is that the
entire concept is absent from the entire Bible and corpus of classical
rabbinic literature.
The idea of reincarnation, called
gilgul, became popular in folk belief, and is found in much Yiddish
literature among Ashkenazi Jews. Among a few kabbalists, it was posited
that some human souls could end up being reincarnated into animal
bodies. These ideas can be found in a small number of Kabbalistic works
from the 1200s, and even existed among a few mystics at least into the
late 1500s.
"Over time however, the philosophical
teaching limiting reincarnation to human bodies emerged as the dominant
view. Nonetheless, the idea that one can reborn as an animal was never
completely eliminated from Jewish thought, and appears centuries later
in the Eastern European folk tradition". [Simcha Paull-Raphael,Jewish
Views of the Afterlife, p.319]
While many Jews today do not believe
in reincarnation, the belief is common amongst Orthodox Jews,
particularly amongst Hasidim; some Hasidic siddurim (prayerbooks) have a
prayer asking for forgiveness for one's sins that one may have committed
in this gilgul or a previous one.
Many Gnostic groups
believed in reincarnation. For them, reincarnation was a negative
concept: Gnostics believed that the material body was evil, and that
they would be better off if they could eventually avoid having their
'good' souls reincarnated in 'evil' bodies.
The Gnostic Gospel of the Nazirenes -
Chapter 69:
- 1. As Yeshua sat by the west of
the temple with his disciples, behold there passed some carrying one
that was dead, to burial, and a certain one said to Him, "Master, if a
man die, shall he live again?"
- 2. He answered and said, "I am
the resurrection and the life, I am the good, the beautiful, the true;
if a man believe in me he shall not die, but live eternally. As in
Adam all (1997 = are bound to cycles of rebirth) die, so in the
Messiah shall all be made alive. Blessed are the dead who die in me,
and are made perfect in my image and likeness, for they rest from
their labors and their works do follow them. They have overcome evil,
and are made pillars in the temple of my God, and they go out no more,
for they rest in the eternal."
- 3. "For them that persist in
evil there is no rest, but they go out and in, and suffer correction
for ages, till they are made perfect. But for them that have done good
and attained to perfection, there is endless rest and they go into
life everlasting. They rest in the eternal."
- 4. "Over them the repeated death
and birth have no power, for them the wheel of the eternal revolves no
more, for they have attained to the center, where is eternal rest, and
the center of all things is God."
The texts contains several parallels
to the Gospels, which are, though, traditionally interpreted differently
in their context:
- "I am the resurrection and the
life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and
whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. John 11:25f RSV
- Him who overcomes I will make a
pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will he leave it.
Revelation 3:12 (NIV)
Parallels to reincarnation are often
seen by outsiders in the Christian concepts of rebirth and resurrection
which are taught by all mainstream branches of Christianity (Orthodox,
Catholic, Protestant) as well as most non-traditional branches
(Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.). But these groups reject the
concept of reincarnation, though some smaller groups (Christian gnostics,
the Liberal Catholic Church, and the Christian Community) do include the
concept of reincarnation in their doctrine.
In related groups it is frequently
maintained, based on certain Bible texts and church fathers, that the
early Christians did believe in reincarnation and that the reincarnation
proofs had been destroyed by the church later on.
Bible verses used as proof texts for
the reincarnation teachings of early Christians are, e.g. Mt 11:14 and
17:12f and John 9,1 ff. Read with a new-age worldview, these texts can
indeed be interpreted as referring to reincarnation. :Jesus identifies
John the Baptist as the returning prophet Elijah in Matthews 11:14.
- When the disciples ask Jesus about
a blind man who had sinned: John 9:2 (NIV) His disciples asked him,
"Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
- John 9:34 (NIV) To this they
replied, "You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!"
And they threw him out.
- In the Old Testament, David writes:
- Psalms 51:5 (NIV) Surely I was
sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
It is also maintained by many that the
3rd century church father Origen had been an adherent of reincarnation.
Origen stood for the pre-existence of the soul -- the concept that the
human soul existed already before birth. "The soul has neither beginning
nor end... [They] come into this world strengthened by the victories or
weakened by the defeats of their previous lives" (De Principiis).
He knew the teachings of reincarnation and mentions them in his
writings. However, many scholars argue that he clearly refutes the idea
of reincarnation in his writings. In his exegesis of the above Bible
verses, he discusses how they are interpreted by adherents of
reincarnation. Origen, Comment on the Gospel of John, Book VI, Chapter
7.
At the Renaissance we find the
doctrine in Giordano Bruno, and in the 17th century in the theosophist
van Helmont. During the classical period of German literature
metempsychosis attracted much attention: Goethe played with the idea,
and it was taken up more seriously by Lessing, who borrowed it from
Charles Bonnet, and by Herder. It has been mentioned with respect by
Hume and by Schopenhauer. Modern theosophy, which draws its inspiration
from India, has taken metempsychosis (or rather reincarnation as a
cardinal tenet; it is, says a recent theosophical writer, "the
master-key to modern problems," and among them to the problem of
heredity. The idea of reincarnation is also part of the New Age
culture.
Today, among newer movements, belief
in reincarnation is widespread in New Age and Neopagan circles. It is an
important tenet of Theosophy, and central to Spiritism, founded by Allan
Kardec. It was also widely popularized by the American mystic and
psychic, Edgar Cayce, who performed thousands of "readings" while in a
trance state that detailed the past life experiences of many
individuals.
Similarly, Scientology holds that the
people of earth have been brainwashed into believing that they cannot
exist without a physical body, and that the resulting fear of death and
compulsive need to reincarnate immediately after death are responsible
for much of their misery. The Church of Scientology's Sea Org has been
known to issue employment contracts with a duration of one billion years
and a clause specifically stipulating that the contractual obligations
continue after death.
Toward the Light is an example of a
contemporary work originating in the western world, which very detailed
accounts for reincarnation.
The most detailed collections of
personal reports in favor of reincarnation have been published by Dr.
Ian Stevenson in works such as Reincarnation and Biology: A
Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects, which
documents thousands of detailed cases where claims of injuries received
in past lives sometimes correlate with atyptical physical birthmarks or
birth defects.
Perhaps the most significant anecdotal
evidence in this regard is the phenomenon of young children
spontaneously sharing what appear to be memories of past lives, a
phenomenon which has been reported even in cultures that do not hold to
a belief in reincarnation. Upon investigating these claims, Stevenson
and others have identified individuals who had died a few years before
the child was born who seem to meet the descriptions the children
provided.
In the most compelling cases, autopsy
photographs reveal that the deceased individuals have fatal injuries
that correspond to the unusual marks or birth defects of the child; for
example, marks on the chest and back of a child line up precisely with
the bullet entry and exit wounds on the body of an individual who has
been shot.
However, Stevenson cautions that such
evidence is suggestive of reincarnation, but that more research
must be conducted.
Objections to metempsychosis
include: that personal identity depends on memory, and we do not
remember our previous incarnations. An answer given by Hindu
philosophers (like
Swami Vivekananda)
is that although we do not remember our infanthood, we cannot deny its
reality or its profound affect on us.
The second is that the soul, whatever
it may be, is influenced throughout all its qualities by the qualities
of the body. Modern psychology discredits the idea that the soul is a
metaphysical essence which can pass indifferently from one body to
another. If the soul of a dog were to pass into a man's body it would be
so changed as to be no longer the same soul; and so, in a less degree,
of change from one human's body to another.
A great number of scientists and
skeptics, such as Paul Edwards, have analyzed many of these anecdotal
accounts. In every case they claim they have found that further research into the
individuals involved provides sufficient background to weaken the
conclusion that these cases are credible examples of reincarnation.
Others, such as philosopher Robert
Almeder, having analyzed the criticisms of Edwards and others, say that
the gist of these arguments can be summarized as "we all know it can't
possibly be real, so therefore it isn't real."
Critics who claim that reincarnation
is impossible often espouse the alternate theory that a large number of
mental phenomena such as memory and ability are already accounted for by
physiological processes; and may point to moral and practical
inconsistencies in the various theories of reincarnation. To the
materialistic mind, Occam's Razor would then seem to dictate that the
critical view is to be preferred, as it demands no extraordinary new
evidence beyond what is already known to science.
A more skeptical view is that without
solid evidence showing that reincarnation exists (regardless of the
current state of science), the theory of reincarnation cannot be
considered to be a valid scientific theory regarding the real world.
Some skeptics explain the abundance of
claims of evidence for reincarnation to originate from selective
thinking and the psychological phenomena of false memories that often
result from one's own belief system and basic fears, and thus cannot be
accounted as empirical evidence.
Another argument often made is that
claims of reincarnation by casual adherents are usually of having been
some famous historical figure instead of being another animal or an
insignificant person. This argument, however, is seldom substantiated
with a quantitative count of famous and non-famous reincarnation claims.
A belief in reincarnation does not
discount the existence of heaven, hell, or a final judgment. There are a
number of small children who have reported having memories of past lives
prior to their present life, and some also report being able to recall a
time between lives (see books by Dr. Ian Stevenson, Carol Bowman, and
Elisabeth Hallett). In some cases these children have also reported
being in a place like heaven between lives, and sometimes that they were
given some degree of choice as to whether and when to be reborn, and
even in selecting their future parents.
Some of these children claim that
being reborn is not necessarily a punishment for past bad "karma", but
rather an opportunity for a soul to grow spiritually. Additional
lifetimes could give individual souls a greater opportunity to
accomplish more for God, if that is a person's goal, and to develop
better character traits. Eastern views of reincarnation vary and several
parallels with this idea are to be found in certain branches of Hinduism
and Buddhism.
Quote: "So convincing is the evidence
in favor of past life influences that one can only conclude that those
who refuse to consider this to be an area worthy of serious study must
be either uninformed or excessively narrow-minded." -- Stan Grof M.D.,
Holotropic Mind
Energy can be neither created nor
destroyed. The human brain works on electrical impulses. Since
electricity is energy, where does it go? Where does it come from? This
could be cited as scientific, if circumstancial, evidence of
reincarnation.
In the Seth series of books Jane
Roberts talks about reincarnation and life after death. Seth believed
that time and space are basically illusions. Consistent with this view,
Seth argues that only parts of each person incarnate (appear in physical
reality). This last argument is part of Seth's view that man is a
multi-dimensional entity simultaneously alive in many contexts.
There are many nowadays who "
remember" their past lives and use that knowledge to help them with
their current lives; in fact this kind of occurrence is fairly central
to the new age faith. Some of the people who remember simply remember
without any effort on their part. They simply " see" previous times and
see themselves interacting with others. Most of the people who
experience this kind of happening are certain of the veracity of their
experience. As this type of experience is not in the canons of western
science and knowledge it can create tension with the world around one
and most people are circumspect as to whom they confide in. The beliefs
of the New Age are not at odds with reincarnation; on the contrary they
are in line with Buddhism and Hinduism and indeed Christianity before
the Council of Nicae sometime in the 560s.
Mostly it could be explained as
follows. There is a central belief that we are all splinters of the
divine out to experience this third dimension in an attempt to “report”
to the divine on completion of our journey.
The journey takes many many
incarnations; counted in hundreds and thousands; depending on whether
the individual is counted as one soul or merely the portion of one soul.
Many think that one person is only one-eighth of a soul; hence parallel
lives; soul mates; instant recognition,etc
The richness contained in the ability
to remember is that it reinforces the knowledge of who one is at a deep
level i.e what one’s original journey was about (not every soul is out
for the same trip of discovery we are all specialists in one way or the
other) and therefore and that is the crux of the matter to be more apt
more astute in one’s daily dealings with all the people and events
surrounding us and more likely to be of useful service to Humanity and
the Divine Universe
Of course if one does not effortlessly
remember their past times here on earth they can always have recourse to
specialist therapists who do past life readings. Some of them use
hypnosis; but many use psychic aptitude; some psychics can “tune” into
others and “read” their past incarnations. This is always done for
didactic and therapeutic motives and never for simply voyeuristic
desire.
Adapted
with permission from
Wikipedia.
