Demystifying Reincarnation 13 – Reincarnation accepted across history and geography

Demystifying Reincarnation series.

We will discuss today about how the concept of reincarnation has been accepted and respected and even propagated on every inhabited continent of the world. Whereas some people think it is barely a quaint Eastern belief and particularly a Hindu or a Buddhist belief, but far from it. It is actually an idea that has found expression among deep thinkers all over the world.

The transmigration dating back to remote antiquity and being spread all over the world seems to be anthropologically innate. McClintock and Strong's Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature. So, this is a Christian encyclopedia and there they are saying that it is anthropologically innate.

That means within human culture, human society, it seems to be innate. It is everywhere. Let us look at this both geographically and historically.

Today, much of the world is becoming increasingly westernized and most of modern western civilization finds its roots in the Greek civilization. And among the Greeks, most of the influential Greek thinkers accepted and propagated reincarnation. The first among the documented thinkers is the great mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras.

He said, souls never die, but always on quitting one body, one abode passed to another. All things change, nothing perishes. The soul passes hither and thither, occupying now this body, now that.

As a wax is stamped with certain figures, then melted, then stamped anew with others, yet it is always the same wax. So, the soul being always the same, yet wears at different times, different forms. In fact, Pythagoras did not just propound reincarnation, he actually even claimed to recollect his previous lives.

And not just one or two, many previous lives he would recollect and he would describe the events that he had seen in those lives. Now, after Pythagoras, this is the series of thinkers who also accepted reincarnation, but the most prominent among them was Socrates. Now, Socrates' written word is available to us primarily through the writings of Plato.

So, before them, there was Orpheus, who also was a legendary musician, poet and prophet, who founded the Orphic mystery religion. And he taught that the body holds the prisoner, the immortal soul, which aspires for and achieves freedom after reincarnating over many lifetimes. And in Plato's work, which depicts Socrates' life, many of his works such as Republic, Phaedrus, Mino, Timaeus, Laws and Phaedo, all of them talk about reincarnation.

For example, in Plato's Phaedo it is said, I am confident that there is truly such a thing as living again, that the living spring from the dead and the souls of the dead are in existence. Now, after the Greeks came the Romans. While the Greeks were more intellectual, the Romans were more political and martial.

And despite their worldly focus, even among the Romans, there were many who accepted and propagated reincarnation. For example, Cicero was a reputed statesman orator. And he said in his book, Scipio's Dream, know that it is not thou, but that body alone, which is mortal.

The individual in his entirety resides in the soul and not in the outward form. Learn then that thou art a God, thou the immortal intelligence, which gives eternal moments to a perishable body, just as the eternal God animates an incorruptible body. After that, there are thinkers like Ovid and Plotinus, who also accepted reincarnation.

So, Ovid, who was a poet said, nothing perishes, although everything changes here on earth. The souls come and go unendingly in visible forms. The animals which have acquired goodness will take upon them human form.

Plotinus was a Roman philosopher who was also the leading representative of Neoplatonism. Such things as happened to the good without justice, as punishments or poverty or disease, may be said to take place through offenses committed in a future, in a former life. And in this Platonic academy, reincarnation continued to be taught till the last successor, Damascus, who taught till 529 AD, starting from over a thousand years before and even before that.

And at that time, it was the Christian Emperor Justinian, who persecuted Damascus. And then after that, under the influence of the Roman Empire, which had become Christianized, reincarnation teachings went underground. Now, if we look at the European civilization, even apart from the Greeks, there have been many others.

For example, there were the Druids and they were the members of the priestly class in northwestern Europe. And so strong was the belief in reincarnation among them, that many times, they would often, in the British Museum, so it is said by Arthur Manley Hall in his book, The Reincarnation, The Cycle of Necessity, that in the British Museum are receipts and other Druidic legal remains, proving that it was not uncommon for these men to borrow money on their promise to repay it in a future existence. Then, the fearlessness of the Druids in the face of death was so extraordinary, that the powerful Emperor Caesar decided to investigate it.

And he noted its cause in his Gallic Wars, Book 4, Part 14. They wished to inculcate this as one of their leading tenets, that souls do not become extinct, but pass after death from one body to another. And they think that men by this tenet are in a great degree excited to valor, the fear of death being disregarded.

Now, another ancient civilization, whereas the Greek civilization doesn't exist so much now, let's consider another civilization, the Chinese civilization. And Chinese had eloquent proponents of reincarnation right from holy antiquity, in classic and pre-classic times. So, in the 6th century BCE, Lao Tse, the great Chinese writer of the classic Tao Te Ching, and considered the founder of Taoism, he taught that to be ignorant, the true self is immortal, is to remain in a grievous state of error, and to experience many calamities by reason thereof.

Similar, Chong Tzu, an influential Chinese intellectual who lived around 4th century BCE wrote, birth is not a beginning, death is not the end. Now, if we move forwards, Po Chu Wan, the reputed 8th century Chinese intellectual and poet of the Tang dynasty, stated, after I depart, I cast no look behind, still wed to life, I am still free from care, since life and death in cycles come and go, of little movement are the days to spare, the strong in faith I wait and long to be, one with the pulsings of eternality. After the Chinese civilization, let's move down now to the African civilization.

So, English anthropologist Sir Edward Tyler, in his book Primitive Culture, described the Yorubas, who are one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa, greeting a new-born infant with a salutation, Thou art come! They look for signs to show what ancestral soul has returned among them. Similarly, Ghanian researcher K.K. Bracoteau-Ateko wrote in the Canadian Theosophist, Jan 5, 1962, about North African outlooks. So, from West Africa, we can look at North Africa.

Death was not looked upon as an enemy to be feared and propitiated. If one died, he was believed to have been born on the other side of the vein, and vice versa, in the case of birth in our world. Similarly, researcher E.J. Parinder wrote in the Hibbert Journal, under the title, Varieties of Belief in Reincarnation, in tropical Africa, belief in rebirth is deeply enrooted.

Now, if we move from African civilization now to Australian civilization, we can find over there that Baldwin Spencer and F.J. Gillen state, in northern tribes of Central Australia, in every tribe without exception, there exists a firm belief in the reincarnation of ancestors. Emphasis must be laid on the fact that this belief is not confined to tribes such as the Arunta, Waramunga, Bimbiga, Anula and others, amongst whom descent is counted on the male line, but is found just as strongly developed in the Uravanna tribe, in which descent, both of class and totem, is strictly maternal. Similarly, J.G. Fraser, in his book, The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, he states, belief in the rebirth or reincarnation of the dead was formerly universal among the Australian aborigines.

Now, if we move onwards from there to the American Indians, so, in his book, The Soul of the Indian, researcher Charles Eastman wrote, many of the Indians of the United States believed that one may be born more than once, and there were some who claimed to have full knowledge of a former incarnation. Daniel G. Brinton, in The Myths of a New World, states that reincarnation was in fact one of the most deeply rooted and widespread convictions, especially among the tribes of the eastern United States. It is indissolubly connected with their highest theories of a future life, their burial ceremonies and their modes of expression.

So, like that, we can see across history and geography, it is a small sample. There are encyclopedic books which talk about reincarnation in world thought, but after this sampling, let's move towards the times which are most relevant for us, the modern times. There have been eminent thinkers who have accepted and propagated reincarnation.

Let's look at a few of them. We have Ralph Waldo Emerson, who is considered by many of the greatest thinkers, whose thoughts led to the intellectual fabric of modern America. He wrote in journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the soul comes from without into the human body, as into a temporary abode, and it goes out of it anew.

It passes into other habitations, for the soul is immortal. Similarly, Jack London says in the Star Rover, I did not begin when I was born, nor when I was conceived. I have been growing, developing through incalculable myriads of millenniums.

All my previous selves have their voices, echoes, promptings in me. Oh, incalculable times again shall I be born. Similarly, Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, in stories from behind the stove, states, there is no death.

How can there be death if everything is part of the Godhead? The soul never dies and the body is never really alive. Nobel laureate Harman Hassan Siddhartha states that he saw all these forms and faces in a thousand relationships, becoming newly born. Each one was mortal, a passionate, painful example of all that is transitory.

Yet, none of them died. They only changed, were always reborn, continually had a new face. Only time stood between one face and another.

Richard Back also says in Jonathan Levington's Seagull, Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through before we even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating or fighting or power in the flock? A thousand lives, John, ten thousand. We choose our next world through what we learn in this one. But you, John, learned so much at one time that you didn't have to go through a thousand lives to reach this one.

Similarly, the prominent Russian thinker Count Leo Tolstoy said, As we live through thousands of dreams in our present life, so is our present life only one of many thousands of such lives which we enter from the other more real life and then return after death. Our life is but one of the dreams of that more real life. And so it is endlessly until the very last one, the very real, the life of God.

Now, this is a brief sample. Let's now look at how the idea of reincarnation has been considered in the major religions of the world. We look at broadly five religions, out of which we look first at four and then one we look elaborate.

So there are the three Abrahamic religions which come from Abraham as one of their founding prophets, that is Judaism, Christianity and Islam. And then there are what are called the Dharmic religions as Buddhism and Hinduism. So generally reincarnation is accepted in the Dharmic religions.

But we will look at Buddhism also before we go into the Vedic texts more in detail. Let's start with the Abrahamic religions. Among them, Judaism is the oldest.

So Moses gave the Ten Commandments and then the Jews accept the Old Testament as their sacred text. And in general, among the Jews, the emphasis has been on living well in this world with the idea that knowledge about the world is not so easy to know. So one needn't agonize over that.

So the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament is in this mood. It is actually silent about reincarnation. It doesn't explicitly proclaim it nor is it explicitly denied.

But there is a mystical side of Judaism which is known as the Kabbalah. And it helps seekers to cautiously fathom those mysteries which are unknowable by ordinary ways. In Zohar, the foundational Kabbalah text, it states that the souls must re-enter the absolute from whence they have emerged.

But to accomplish this end, they must develop the perfection, the germ of which is planted in them. And if they have not developed these traits in this one life, then they must commence another, a third and so forth. They must go on like this until they acquire the condition that allows them to associate again with God.

Now the Kabbalahs were not just mystical, but many of them were also influential mainstream Judaism. And several among them have also not only accepted but propagated reincarnation. Abraham, Abulafia, Joseph Caro, Moses Cordovero, Isaac Luria, Haim Wittel, Israel Baal Shem Tov, who was the founder of the Hasidic movement, and Moshe Haim Nuzato, and Yahud Ashluk.

Now because of such Kabbalites actually were influential in the mainstream Judaism also, the idea of reincarnation moved out from the mystics into the mainstream culture. And there are many plays which were popular in Judaism, and they also had reincarnationist themes depicted in them. For example, in the Die book, a much-loved play based on Jewish folklore, one character exclaimed, the souls of the wicked return in the form of beasts or birds or fish, or plants even, and are powerless to purify themselves by their own efforts.

They have to wait for the coming of some righteous sage to purge them of their sins and set them free. Similarly, Rabbi Mensah Ben Israel, who was a 15th century esteemed theologian, he not only talks about reincarnation, but he's central to Judaism. For example, he says, the belief in the doctrine of transmigration of souls is a firm and infallible dogma accepted by the whole assemblage of our church with one accord, so that there is none to be found who would dare deny it.

Indeed, there are a great number of sages in Israel who hold firm to this doctrine so that they made it a dogma, a fundamental point of our religion. We are therefore duty-bound to obey and accept this dogma with acclamation, as the truth of it has been incontestably demonstrated by Zohar and all books of the Kabbalists. So, similarly, there have been many thinkers who have actually talked about reincarnation.

And now, if we move on to the world's most populous religion, that is Christianity. Actually, Christianity emerged from Judaism. If we would say that Jesus Christ, Jesus was actually a Jew, and he never really started a new religion, but he said that he has come to fulfill whatever was given in the Old Testament.

But his teachings came to be known as the New Testament. Some of them are his teachings, but most of them are his teachings as conveyed through his apostles. So, there are within the New Testament books that describe, the Gospels describe his life and activities as told by some of the apostles.

And then a major part of the Bible is what is told by Paul and his epistles to various people to whom he had shared the Gospel. So now, actually, the Bible does not talk about reincarnation, just as it does not talk about the Trinity. The Trinity is, although not explicitly mentioned in the Bible, is considered to be, at least in some Christian groups, to be a central Christian belief.

So, reincarnation, although it's not explicitly mentioned, but we can see from various texts that it was discussable and it was implicit. So, consider a well-known incident from the Bible, which comes in John 9, 1 and 2, where when Jesus passed by an area and his followers, they saw there a blind man. And then they asked, why is this man blind? Is it because of the sins that he did or is it because of the sins of his parents? Now, this man had been born blind.

So now, when his followers, they're given two options. One could say that, okay, the parents were sinful, that's why they had the difficulty that comes with raising a son who does not have eyes. But then, what is the other option that they're saying that, was this man sinful? Now, if he's born blind, when could he have committed any sins? What sin could he have committed and when? Before his birth, was it that he crossed his legs wrong in the womb? Many of his followers, they went on to become apostles, leading church authorities.

They would not even consider such an absurd possibility. So, it's clear that when they're asking, is he blind because of his own sins, that's implicit in their understanding that, that this person, did he live before and in his pre-existence, did he actually do something wrong, do something sinful because of which he has become blind now? Now, when Jesus answers the question, his answer is actually very interesting. And he says neither, he says that, actually, neither had this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

Now, after that, Jesus, by a miracle, heals that person and thus, the works of God become manifest in him. Now, this is, if you look at it, Jesus miraculously heals the person, but at the same time, He does not address the issue. Now, every blind person is not miraculously healed by God.

So, what Jesus is answering over there is actually demonstrating a special principle of grace. He is not talking about a universal philosophical truth. The very fact that He does not dismiss the option, how could he have committed sin, He does not say like that.

Indicates that He does not, if He had wanted to consider the idea of reincarnation as heretical, as something that could be rejected, He has the ideal opportunity. He would have said, no, that man, he did not exist before, he could not have sinned in the past. But Jesus does not do that, which indicates that actually, Jesus considered the idea of past life as acceptable, as discussable, but that was not the stress of the discussion.

And there are many prophets also, whose reincarnation is talked about in Christianity. Actually, in the Bible, Christianity is reconcilable with the Bible. Sorry, reincarnation is reconcilable with the Bible.

But subsequently, unfortunately, the idea of reincarnation was exiled from Christianity. How that happened, that we will discuss in our next talk. Suffice it to say, to summarize in this talk, we discussed about how the idea of reincarnation, as was said in the Ecclesiastical Encyclopedia, is anthropologically innate.

Right from the Greek and the pre-Greek civilization, the post-Greek Romans, the Chinese, the African, the Australian, the American, everywhere people have believed in reincarnation. And not just believed, but eloquently articulated their understanding of reincarnation. And even in modern times, there have been many who believe in reincarnation.

We discussed in Judaism, although it doesn't focus on otherworldly truths, more on this worldly conduct, but still there also the Kabbalahs do talk about reincarnation. And by their influence, it has also been depicted in some mainstream plays also. And there are Jewish thinkers who consider it to be a central dogma, central belief of Judaism.

And in the Bible, we discuss that, just that the Trinity is not explicitly mentioned. Similarly, reincarnation is not explicitly mentioned. But it was a discussable concept.

Jesus certainly does not reject it as heretical. How it became heretical, that we will discuss in our next session. Thank you.