Reincarnation in World Religions

1. Reincarnation in World Religions “Rebirth is an affirmation that must be counted among the primordial affirmations of mankind.” C. G. Jung, Concerning Rebirth

2. Reincarnation: What it is, and what it’s not Reincarnation: literally means “the process of coming into flesh again.” Implied is the notion that some part of us separates from the flesh, or body, and returns after death. Other words signifying the same concept are metempsychosis, metensomatosis, palingenesis, and resurrection. The latter, however, is defined quite differently. While reincarnation refers to the life force (soul) passing out of the body and into a “newer model,” resurrection refers more specifically to the religious belief that we will one day be raised again, in the same body, with the same identity and familial connections that we had during our time on earth. Transmigration: literally means “the process of moving across, from one to the other.” Term has been used interchangeably with reincarnation since the 16th century, but has come to be more closely associated with a soul occupying an animal body in the 20th century; i.e. “transmigration of the soul”

3. What some have said... Socrates: “I am confident that there truly is such as thing as living again, that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence.” Ralph W. 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.” Henry Ford: “I adopted the theory of reincarnation when I was twenty-six. Religion offered nothing to the point. Even work could not give me complete satisfaction. Work is futile if we cannot utilize the experience we collect in one life in the next. When I discovered Reincarnation it was as if I had found a universal plan I realized that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited. I was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock. Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives. Some are older souls than others, and so they know more. The discovery of Reincarnation put my mind at ease. If you preserve a record of this conversation, write it so that it puts men’s minds at ease. I would like to communicate to others the calmness that the long view of life gives to us." ~San Francisco Examiner, 26 Aug 1928

4. Resources in Print Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation by Dr Ian Stevenson. This book is a detailed exposition of 20 cases from India, Ceylon, Brazil, Alaska and Lebanon of children who demonstrated early knowledge of the lives of individuals who had died previously. Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect by Dr Ian Stevenson. In his research of over 2600 cases, Dr Stevenson has found that birthmarks or other physiological manifestations have related to experiences of the remembered past life, particularly violent death. This book summarizes his findings which are presented in full in the multi-volume work Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects. Children Who Remember Previous Lives : A Question of Reincarnation by Dr Ian Stevenson. The revised edition of Dr. Stevenson's 1987 book, summarizing for general readers almost forty years of experience in the study of children who claim to remember previous lives. New material relating to birthmarks and birth defects, independent replication studies with a critique of criticisms, and recent developments in genetic study are included. The work gives an overview of the history of the belief in and evidence for reincarnation. Echoes from the Battlefield : First-Person Accounts of Civil War Past Lives by Barbara Lane - a well recommended book on regressions which appeared to uncover past lives in the American Civil War. Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian L. Weiss, M.D. The story of how the author, who was once firmly entrenched in a clinical approach to psychiatry, finds himself reluctantly drawn into past-life therapy when a hypnotized client suddenly reveals details of her previous lives. ...and many, many others

5. Resources on the Web PRO: (non-reactionary, non-New Age sites) • reluctant-messenger.com • www.aboutreincarnation.org • www.edgarcayce.org • www.near-death.com/reincarnation.html CON: (non-fundamentalist, rational site) • comparativereligion.com

6. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) The Body of B. Franklin, Printer, Like the Cover of an Old Book, Its Contents Torn Out And Stripped of its Lettering and Gilding, Lies Here Food for Worms, But the Work shall not be Lost, For it Will as He Believed Appear Once More In a New and more Elegant Edition Revised and Corrected By the Author • This epitaph was written when Franklin was 22 years-old, and is the most famous of American epitaphs; it appears slightly modified by Franklin in almost a dozen versions as he made copies for his friends through the years.

7. But what about the older Franklin? At age 79, Franklin wrote the following in a letter: “When I see nothing annihilated and not a drop of water wasted, I cannot suspect the annihilation of souls, or believe that [God] will suffer the daily waste of millions of minds ready made that now exist, and put Himself to the continual trouble of making new ones. Thus, finding myself to exist in the world, I believe I shall, in some shape or other, always exist; and, with all the inconveniences human life is liable to, I shall not object to a new edition of mine, hoping, however, that the errata of the last may be corrected.”

8. Who believes and why? • In a 1969 Gallup poll, 23% of Americans professed a belief in reincarnation; in a 2003 Harris poll that number was at 27%, just over one-quarter of the population. In England, 35% are believers. • A 1989 poll found that the “latest survey on reincarnation indicates more than 58% of Americans polled either believed in it or believed it to be a distinct possibility.” • In a 2001 Gallup poll: 25% believe, 20% don’t know, 54% do not believe; slightly higher belief among males. Believers: 25% ages 20-29; 22% 30-49; 28% 50 and over • Among Eastern religions a full 80% of people surveyed embrace the doctrine. In total, this accounts for well over half the world’s population. • Main reasons for the continuing rise in reincarnation beliefs: • Growing fascination with and respect for Eastern thought, which has proven the timeliness of its ancient wisdom in other areas, such as holistic medicine • Growing preoccupation in Western cultures with the subject of death • Appreciation for the validity of past-life therapy • Logic of reincarnation in the face of a world that often seems cruel, random, and inconsistent in regards to the human condition

9. Is there any proof for reincarnation?For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible. • 1. It makes more sense when we consider the system of cause and effect, of sin and punishment, and of justice.2. Weight is added when we consider the general agreement between the many nations and scriptures. • 3. We have a weak form of proof from hypnotic regression. • 4. We have strong suggestive case collections by Dr. Ian Stevenson, M.D., a professor of psychiatry. For more than 30 years he has collected and analyzed thousands of cases, all strongly supporting the existence of reincarnation. • 5. Confirmed memories of various people. Examples can be found in Ian Stevenson's books. In his "Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation," Stevenson describes cases from Ceylon, India, Brazil, Alaska, and   Lebanon where small children were describing their previous lives, property, people theyknew, their killers, etc. At times, these children even spoke in their previous language. All these stories were checked out carefully and found to be correct, leaving us with some very impressive cases and a hard time to find any other logical conclusion other than reincarnation is a fact. Of course, reincarnation does not go on forever. Reincarnation finds its conclusion when Evolution has led the Soul back to its Source.  

10. Karma Karma is much like Newton’s Third Law of Motion: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. A Biblical equivalent would be, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” Karma is a concept that is often misunderstood in the West, where it is thought to be fate or predestination. The Sanskrit word, however, means ‘action’ and describes the eternal law of cause and effect, action and reaction. Karma is both the power latent within action and the results each action brings. Every action, without exception, will have consequences both immediate and universal, for each action not only affects the individual but reverberates through the cosmos. Therefore, every thought or action is important. Our present life and circumstances are the result of our past actions and our future depends on how we act right now. The law of karma operates on all levels: individual, family, group, nation and species. As a practical morality, karma teaches that by seeing clearly how we affect others by our own selfishness, we can take responsibility for reducing suffering in our own environment. Karma provides the situation, not the response to the situation—so the living being always has free will.

11. World religions have historically embraced reincarnation, for it proscribes that ethical, moral behavior leads to rebirth in human form—the only species normally endowed with the intellect suitable for seeking God. Moreover, reincarnation speaks directly to the logic of God’s compassion, as it provides repeated opportunity for conditioned (embodied) souls to correct themselves. The scriptural references from the world’s religions used in this presentation point to a vision shared by their adherents: God is seen as Facilitator, a benign and beneficent Supreme Being who sends helpful hints through saints and scriptures. With their guidance, the seeker of enlightenment can escape from the cycle of rebirth (leave the Wheel) and achieve some degree of parity with the Godhead. (Where the enlightened soul goes upon achieving freedom is one of the greatest adventures ever imagined and merits more than a little personal study and thought!)

12. Hinduism“As the embodied soul continually passes, in this body, from childhood, to youth, to old age, the soul inhabits another body at the time of death” ~Bhagavad-gita • Karma can be transcended by akarma, or spiritually-based activities, activities that do not engender a material reaction; akarma frees the soul to return to its original nature. • The mass of people are motivated to act by their perception of what will bring the most immediate rewards • Man’s consciousness is naturally most absorbed by that which is dearest to us. The Gita says that whatever state of being one remembers when he dies (“quits his body”), that is the state “he will attain without fail.” The character of the subtle body (mind, intelligence, sense of identity) at the time of death is determined by the sum total of activities during one’s lifetime. If he is taught to change his subtle body by focusing on God, at the time of death his subtle body will create a gross body in which he will be a devotee of the Lord—or not take another material body at all, but return with his spiritual body to his spiritual home, with the Godhead.

13. Samsara: wheel of reincarnation, cycle of birth and death

14. Hinduism’s Process of Liberation, or Five Steps to Enlightenment • Each of us is a living soul within a material body; the soul is caught in the body and falsely identifies with it from birth. In one lifetime, we pass through many bodies: baby, child, youth, adult, etc., but remain the same person. We do not change; it is our body that changes. As the body changes, so the same soul passes into another body at death. The Bhagavad-gita asks: Since the soul has been “transmigrating” from body to body in this one life, why assume that process is discontinued at the time of death? • Souls first devolve, then evolve, through the species. The soul, attempting to be Lord of its own domain, leaves the spiritual realm and enters Brahma’s world. There, many souls realize their folly and return to their original spiritual state, in unity with God. The majority, however, due to irrational passions and envy, fall to the lowest species of life and must re-learn the lost godly nature in order to return to the perfect state. As the Gita says: “After many births and deaths, he who is actually in knowledge surrenders unto Me [God], knowing Me to be the cause of all causes and all that is. Such a great soul is very rare.”

15. Hinduism, continued • Actions we perform in this body determine our next body. The Vedic texts assure that the soul’s migration from body to body does not take place in a random way. Our desires become manifest in reality; the physical world is a “playground” where we can taste all material nature has to offer in order to discover that none equal the spiritual bliss of God’s kingdom. • One must know the two souls that pervade the body: the individual spark of life (you-ness and me-ness) and the source of all life (God) in a localized form called the Supersoul (paramatma). Analogy from Vedic texts: There is one sun in the sky, but its reflection will appear simultaneously in thousands of waterpots. Knowing that God lives in our hearts (as Supersoul) is prerequisite to breaking free from the cycle. • The soul can escape rebirth by cultivating consciousness with God. A person situated in transcendence no longer hankers or laments for anything, but lives simply in service to God.

16. Instances from Hindu scripture • The Bhagavad Gita:2:22 "Even as a person casts off worn-out clothes and puts on others that are new, so the embodied Self casts off worn-out bodies and enters into others that are new.“ • 4:5 Krishna: "Many a birth have I passed through, and so have you. I know them all, but you know them not."

17. Buddhism“The Books say well, each one’s lifeThe outcome of his former living is;The bygone wrongs bring forth sorrows and woesThe bygone right breeds bliss.” ~Buddha • Buddhism arose in India 2,500 years ago as a reaction to a fanatical priestly class (Brahmanism) who saw an exhortation to animal sacrifice in Vedic texts. The path of the Buddha (from Sanskrit budh, or enlightened) was viewed as a heterodox tradition, although it shares much in common with Hinduism, its parent faith. This includes its own Buddhistic interpretation of reincarnation. • Buddhism came to emphasize that one’s primary thought at death becomes the very image that infuses the core of one’s new existence in a subsequent body. • The idea of rebirth is implicity in Buddhism, which teaches that the enlightened state cannot be achieved in one liftime but takes many thousands of years. • Southern Buddhism contains the doctrine of no-soul—Theravada Buddhism—in countries of Burma, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Thailand, part of Vietnam. • Northern Buddhism sympathetic to reincarnation—Mahayana Buddhism—in Tibet, China, Japan, and Korea.

18. Four Noble Truths • 1. Life means suffering. • 2. The origin of suffering is attachment. • 3. The cessation of suffering is attainable. • 4. The path to the cessation of suffering. • These are at the foundation of all Buddhistic thought, focusing on inherent desire and consequential suffering of material existence, and point squarely to the laws of karma and rebirth from Hinduism. Thus we see the connection between the idea of reincarnation with the suffering that prevades all levels of existence.

19. Zen Buddhism • Zen’s teachers have traditionally taught reincarnationist ideas, but Zen’s focus is on complex meditational techniques and not on metaphysical questions per se. • Several great Zen masters have taught rebirth and the eternality of the soul. By the 13th century the master Dogen expounded reincarnationist ideas more clearly than any previous school of Zen Buddhism. Dogen analyzed the birth-death-rebirth philosophy in his essay Shoji (Japanese term for samsara, the cycle of birth and death) • Zen prescribes an analytical study of death as well as daily meditation, with the objective of conquering fear of death and the illusions which come from identifying with the body. Death meditations are not a morbid exercise, but a cerebral jolt aimed at freeing one from the bodily concept of life. Only then could one attain the calmness of mind necessary to meditate on higher truths.

20. Judaism The souls must re-enter the Absolute, from whence they have emerged. But to accomplish this end they must develop the perfections; 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. ~The Book of the Zohar, 11th-century classical text of the Kabbalah

21. Flavius Josephus, 37-98? CE Josephus matter-of-factly wrote about reincarnation in his famed work The Jewish War, written in Aramaic between 75 and 79 CE. As a general in a campaign against the Roman commander Vespasian, he had been one of the few survivors of a bloody siege. Addressing some Jewish soldiers who were about to commit suicide rather than be captured by the Romans, he said: The bodies of all men are, indeed, mortal, and are created out of corruptible matter; but the soul is ever immortal, and is a portion of the divinity that inhabits our bodies....Do not you know, that those who depart out of this life according to the laws of nature...enjoy eternal fame: that their houses and posterity are sure; that their souls are pure and obedient, and obtain a most holy place in heaven, from whence, in the revolution of ages, they are again sent...into bodies; while the souls of those whose hands have acted madly against themselves are received by the darkest place in Hades?

22. According to Josephus... • Sadducees: argued that the soul does exist but that it dies with the body • Pharisees: believed in the eternality of the soul but that only good men and women were reborn in new bodies—the bad were condemned to eternal punishment (eternal used figuratively at this time to mean “for a very long time”)

23. “The Essenes condemn the miseries of life, and are above pain, by the generosity of their mind. And as for death...our war with the Romans gave abundant evidence what great souls they had in their trails....They smiled in their very pains and laughed to scorn those who inflicted torments upon them, and resigned up their souls with great alacrity, as expecting to receive them again. For their doctrine is this, that bodies are corruptible, and that the matter they are made of is not permanent; but that the souls are immortal, and continue forever; and that they come out of the most subtile [sic] air, and are united to their bodies as to prisons, into which they are drawn by a certain natural enticement; but that when they are set free from the bonds of flesh, they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward....These are the divine doctrines of the Essenes about the soul, which lay an unavoidable bait for such as have once had a taste of their philosophy.” ~Flavius Josephus, The Jewish War

24. The Kabbalah The Kabbalah (Kabala, Cabala, Cabalah) is said to represent the hidden wisdom behind the Old Testament, derived by the rabbis of the Middle Ages from still older secret doctrines. The earliest known Kabbalists flourished in Jerusalem in the 3rd century BCE, belonging to a Jewish sect called the Tanaiim. Shortly before the birth of Jesus, three important Kabbalist rabbis were born: Jehoshua ben Pandira; Hillel, the great Chaldean teacher; and Philo Judaeus, the Alexandrian Platonist. All three openly taught reincarnationist doctrine and are, even today, respected by adherents to all forms of Judaism.

25. The word Kabbalah means “a thing received,” or traditional law, and was received by Moses on Mt. Sinai together with the written law, i.e., Ten Commandments. The Talmud teaches that the words of the Kabbalah are to be regarded just the same as the words of the law. The Big Picture, at right, traces Kabbalistic Judaism from its suspected roots to the present. The Kabbalah gained widespread acceptance in the 12th-13th centuries

26. What does the Kabbalah teach about reincarnation? • Medieval Kabbalists recognized three kinds of reincarnation: • Gilgul—reflects what is commonly understood as reincarnation: a soul enters the fetus during pregnancy (concept very similar to that of Hinduism) • Ibbur—a “foreign” soul enters one’s body during one’s life, staying for some time to accomplish a particular end • Dybbuk—when the ibbur inhabits a person’s body for an evil purpose

27. ...from The Book of Zohar Like Hinduism, Kabbalistic thought teaches that one’s destination at the time of death is largely determined by one’s passion throughout life and one’s final thoughts just before dying: “It is the path taken by man in this world that determines the path of the soul on her departure. Thus, if a man is drawn towards the Holy One, and is filled with longing towards Him in this world, the soul in departing...is carried upward towards the higher realms by the impetus given her each day in this world.” (It is interesting that the soul, in this quote and generally, is referred to in Hebrew as neshamah, which is the feminine form of the noun. Hindu texts also refer to the soul as feminine in relation to God.)

28. Book of Zohar Timeline • 80—Attributed to Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai, who escaped during the siege of Jerusalem in 80 CE, hiding in a cave for 12 years. After his death, two of his disciples collected some of the manuscripts he left, compiling them into a book: the original Zohar—The Book of Splendor. • 1080—For the next thousand years the Kabbalah in its various forms was studied in secrecy and silence. In the 11th century the renowned Rabbi Ibn Gebirol, also known as Avicebron, produced two important Kabbalistic works, the Fons Vitae and the Kether Malchuth. • 1280—the Zohar reappeared, this time compiled and edited in Spain by Rabbi Moses de Leon. After this appearnce Kabbalistic teachings were taken up by the Christians; the first to call himself a Kabalist was the Spanish mystic Raymond Lully. • ~1400—Kabalists played a part in bringing to birth both the Italian Renaissance and the German Reformation. John Milton and William Blake made abundant use of the Kabbalah. Other Europeans who came under its influence were Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme, Pope Sixtus IV, Cornelius Agrippa, Spinoza, Leibniz, Henry More, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and the German philosophers Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Schelling.

29. Book of Zohar Timeline, cont. • 1534-1572—Rabbi Isaac Luria returns to Rabbi ben Jochai’s territory and attracts scholars to Safed (upper Palestine) from all over Europe. Rabbi Luria “differentiated between the five different aspects of the human soul, and taught not only metempsychosis...but also the “impregnation” of two souls...in one body.” His teachings quickly spread throughout the Jewish world, giving fresh life to old observances. It was called by British Jewish historian Cecil Roth “the most vital movement that had come from Palestine since the days of the Second Temple.” • 1604-1657—Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel influenced Oliver Cromwell to remove the legal prohibition of Jews from England that had existed for 350 years since the reign of Edward I. Rabbi ben Israel writes: “The belief or the doctrine of the 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 to 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...as the truth of it has been incontestably demonstrated by the Zohar, and all the books of the Kabalists.” • 18th century Poland—Martin Buber devoted much of his life to spreading the teachings of the Kabbalah and the way of life of the Hasidims, for whom reincarnation is a universal belief. • 21st century—There are perhaps a dozen branches of Hasidism today, the largest being the Lubavitcher movement based in Brooklyn, NY, with over 100,000 members. All Hasidim differ from Orthodox Jewry by the wearing of distinctive clothing including sidelocks and a greater than average study of the inner aspects of Torah.

30. Book of Zohar, cont. “All souls are subject to the trials of transmigration; and men do not know the designs of the Most High with regard to them; they know not how they are being at all times judged, both before coming into this world and when they leave it. They do not know how many transformations and mysterious trials they must undergo; how many souls and spirits come to this world without returning to the palace of the divine king. The souls must re-enter the absolute substance whence they have emerged. But to accomplish this end they must develop all the perfections, the germ of which is planted in them; and if they have not fulfilled this condition during one life, they must commence another, a third, and so forth, until they have acquired the condition which fits them for reunion with God.” As quoted in Isaac Myers’ Qabbalah, Philadelphia, 1888, p. 413.

31. Sections of the Kabbalah in Support of Reincarnation Most souls being at present in a state of transmigrations, God requites a man now for what his soul merited in a bypast time in another body, by having broken some of the 613 precepts....Thus we have the rule: No one is perfect unless he has thoroughly observed all the 613 precepts. If this is so, who is he and where is he that has observed all the 613 precepts? For even the lord of the prophets, Moses our Rabbi—peace be on him!—had not observed them all...He who neglects to observe any of the 613 precepts, such as were possible for him to observe, is doomed to undergo transmigration (once or more than once) till he has actually observed all he had neglected to do in a former state of being. ~Kitzur Sh’lu, p. 6, col. I & II Know thou that Sarah, Hannah, the Shunammite [2 Kings 4:8], and the widow of Zarepta were each in turn possessed by the soul of Even....The soul of Rahab transmigrated into Heber the Kenite, and afterwards into Hannah; and this is the mystery of her words, “I am a woman of sorrowful spirit: [1 Sam. 1:15], for there still lingered in her soul a sorrowful sense of inherited defilement....Sometimes the souls of pious Jews pass by metempsychosis into Gentiles, in order that they may plead on behalf of Israel and treat them kindly. ~Yalkut Reubeni, Nos. 8, 61, 63 ~FINIS~