A
study of history has certain inevitable consequences, one of which
is the 'what-if' and 'if only' theory. This is the sort of awareness
of what might have happened which only hindsight affords.
The
following is a brutally brief glance at the history of reincarnation
- a history which tempts one to indulge in more what-iffing than
usual. For the sake of all, we will suppose Atlantis never was
and start where standard received history normally begins.
Poor
Western man. For centuries he has suffered, confronted with absurdity,
meaninglessness and injustice. Death, blind faith, materialism,
political and patriotic passion were possible antidotes. But whether
he applied the remedy of faith and dogma, or of materialism, indeed
whatever was tried, his reality remained fragmented. However he
tried to make sense of life and death some nagging questions remained.
(If only the teachings of Origen had not been pronounced anathema...)
There
is one way - the way of knowledge through experience and intuition.
This is the way of the initiates, the great thinkers, whose names
are well known and whose impact is felt even centuries later.
Space does not allow anything but the briefest mention of these
extraordinary and highly evolved people. A list of brilliant thinkers,
who intuited and taught the doctrine of rebirth is virtually endless.
Let
us name a few: Plato, Pythagoras, Origen, St. Augustine, Philo
Judaeus, Paracelsus, Boehme, Spinoza, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Goethe,
Leonardo da Vinci, Bruno, Kant, Blake, Schiller, Emerson, Thoreau,
Whitman, Browning, Flaubert, Wagner, Tolstoy, Kipling, Sibelius,
McTaggart, Gandhi.
Golden
seam
Tracing
the idea of rebirth backwards into remote times, we find that
it runs like a golden seam through the thought and teachings of
some of these greatest minds and existed too in early cultures.
That a belief in reincarnation forms a basic part of many eastern
religions is well known. What may be surprising to some is its
acceptance by peoples and cultures as diverse as some African
tribes and the Eskimos; Australian and Finns, Lapps, Danes and
Norse; Pacific Islanders and Celts of Gaul, Wales, England and
Ireland. In other words, it is not difficult to make a case for
reincarnation.
The
idea seems to have been with mankind from earliest times and in
many different often unconnected cultures. In the development
of Western civilization the doctrine of rebirth is always present:
explicit and popular at times, persecuted and forced underground
at others, the essence of philosophers' teachings, the cause of
cruel deaths. It formed an integral part of many religions including
Christianity. The doctrine of metempsychosis was always known
to esoteric groups: the Egyptian and Greek Mystery Schools, in
the Hermetic tradition, part of Kabalism, Manicheism, Gnosticism,
Sufism, to give a few examples.
Philosophical
tradition
The
great initiate-philosophers knew and taught metempsychosis. Pythagoras,
Plato, Pindar, Herodotus the historian and Socrates all believed
in reincarnation.
Pythagoras
had the surname 'Mnesarchides', which means 'one who remembers
his origins'. According to Diogenes Laertius in his Life of Pythagoras,
the sage talked of previous lives which he recalled.
Pindar
is quite explicit not only about the soul's immortality and its
cyclical manifestation but also on the subject of karma and evolution
into greater divinity: "As for those from whom Persephone has
exacted the penalty of their ancient sins, she once more restoreth
their souls to the upper sunlight; and from these come into being
august monarchs, and men who are swift in strength and supreme
in wisdom; and for all future time, men call them sainted heroes."
('supreme in wisdom', 'sainted heroes' - a description which accords
so well with those we have from various disciples of their Masters!)
Socrates
we know of through his pupil Plato; both accepted the doctrine
of rebirth, which rendered Socrates quite fearless, so that he
was able to devote "his last morning to reasoning on the real
distinction of the soul from the body, and the grounds for believing
that it is neither born with the body nor dies with it...." Plato's
ideas on reincarnation had an enormous influence on Western literature
and philosophy. The Platonic Schools of Athens, modelled on his
Academy, flourished for nine centuries until a decree by Justinian
forbade their existence. Rome's history was influenced by neighbouring
Greece. (Pythagoras settled in southern Italy, where he founded
a religious-philosophical group. The Stoics held that the soul
is immortal and periodically reincarnates. A powerful advocate
for the idea of rebirth was Posidonius, born in Syria a little
over a century before Christ. Among those who heard him speak
was Cicero who himself gradually became a reincarnationist. Other
famous Roman names connected with this doctrine were Virgil and
Ovid.
The
Early Church
In
the Early Church again we find a host of names of great and well-known
people whose ideas, had they not been declared anathema, would
certainly have ensured a broader and more logical view of reality
in the West. Among them are Tertullian, Origen (c. 185-c. 254
AD) and Saint Augustine (354-430).
Around
about the 4th century everything gets a little nasty; this is
a time when issues of dogma turn into disputes and battles which
the church council is called upon to settle. The cry 'heresy!'
seems to spring readily to the lips and notorious anathemas are
pronounced, persecution and murder instigated. Origenism is forbidden,
Platonism too. (See the article 'Emperor, not Pope...') By the
5th century Neoplatonism had reached a peak of popularity and
influence; one of the leading figures was Hypatia, philosopher
and mathematician. She lectured in Alexandria, her obvious wisdom
drawing crowds. So popular were Hypatia's teachings that, in 414,
Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, had her murdered. The Neoplatonist
School came to an end; some adherents fled to Athens and attempted
to found a similar school there but were prevented from doing
so by Emperor Justinius. Some members managed to escape to the
Middle East.
Suppressed
in Europe, the idea of reincarnation appears in Asia Minor, taught
and protected by the Paulinian Gnostics. The knowledge was deliberately
spread to Thrace (modern Bulgaria) and thence throughout the Slavic
world. Following the trade routes into central Europe, the doctrine
of metempsychosis reappeared in Europe where it was taken up by
groups and communities who became known as the Cathars and the
Albigenses. Their beliefs became so popular and threatening to
the established church that once again persecution broke out,
this time in the form of the fanatical Inquisition. Those who
escaped to England and their followers became known as the Lollards.
The
Renaissance throughout Europe meant a revival of Platonism, interest
in the Kabala and the ideas of Pythagoras. That a versatile genius
like Leonardo Da Vinci was a reincarnationist comes as no surprise;
in his Notebooks there are several passages that show clearly
that Leonardo accepted the pre-existence of the soul. At about
the same time, Paracelsus wrote: "Some children are born from
heaven and others are born from hell, because each human being
has his inherent tendencies, and these tendencies belong to his
spirit, and indicate the state in which he existed before he was
born." Philosopher and dramatist,
Giordano
Bruno, born in 1548, was put to death in 1600 accused of heresy.
Intellectually, he began within the Church but, dissatisfied,
he later studied the teachings of earlier reincarnationists -
Plato, Hermes, Raymond Lully, Nicolas de Cusa, and others. Threatened
with arrest on a charge of heresy he travelled through Europe,
lecturing at various universities. His theories were brilliantly
developed, he was a true evolutionist and one of the first Europeans
to introduce the term 'Monad (Leibniz later took this up). A fascinating
fact about Bruno is that by simply extending his views of the
cosmic laws of rebirth (that all movement and manifestation is
cyclic, and that the soul incarnates cyclically) to the workings
of the physical body, he was the first Westerner to teach the
idea of the circulation of the blood.
In books on reincarnation, many writers and poets have been cited
as believers in the doctrine, often because characters in their
books and plays talk about past or future lives. Whether the writers
can be described, therefore, as reincarnationists is debatable.
Shakespeare's characters, for instance, vary in their ideas on
death, life and immortality. Edmund Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton
all address the idea of rebirth. Spinoza and Leibniz, born within
a few years of each other, both recognized and wrote about man's
immortality and the process of evolution through reincarnation.
Concurrently, similar ideas held the attention of other great
minds. Voltaire in France, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine
in America, Kant, Herder and Lessing in Germany, Hume and Pope
in England were all men of the eighteenth century, the age of
enlightenment and the predominance of rationalism. They all believed
in the notion of rebirth. Voltaire wrote: "The doctrine of metempsychosis
is, above all, neither absurd nor useless...It is not more surprising
to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection."
Immanuel
Kant
Immanuel Kant's exposition on reincarnation is extraordinary in
that he theorizes about man's continued life not only on this
planet but on others too. His transcendentalism opened up a new
era in metaphysical thought which flourished, especially in 19th
century Germany. Others whose brilliance added light to the Kantian
revolution were Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Hegel, and
Schopenhauer. Their influence was not limited to Germany alone,
but was felt in Europe and America and was enhanced by an increased
interest in Oriental philosophy and religious writings. Schopenhauer
was the first to collect and publish references to the doctrine
of rebirth from early to contemporary times; in the compilation
he himself wrote: "We find the doctrine of metempsychosis springing
from the earliest and noblest ages of the human race, always spread
abroad on the earth as the belief of the great majority of mankind."
Translations
of Eastern scriptures - the Bhagavad Gita, the Vedas, etc, -now
became more widely available, with far-reaching consequences.
The American Transcendental movement was deeply influenced by
Oriental doctrines. Thoreau, Emerson and their contemporaries
studied them and also read Platonic philosophers in the original
Greek. Thoreau, Emerson, Walt Whitman and others, too numerous
to mention here, were all reincarnationists. In France, Flaubert,
Victor Hugo and others examined the doctrine in their works, many
were absolutely convinced that they had lived before.
In
Russia, Dostoevsky (in The Brothers Karamazov) refers to the idea,
while Tolstoy seems to have been quite definite that he had lived
before. The Theosophical Society was founded in 1875 by Helena
Petrovna Blavatsky, Henry Olcott and William Judge. This marked,
from the Hierarchical point of view, the first step towards its
externalization, making more exoteric much information that had
up to then been known to few. From this point on, through the
work of Madame Blavatsky and her colleagues, the doctrine of rebirth,
the idea of a great law equivalent to the scientifically known
law of cause and effect, the theory of the existence of a soul
and its immortality and other related ideas became available to
the general public. If only there had been a more favourable press
reception of these teachings... "When I see nothing annihilated
and not a drop of water wasted, I cannot suspect the annihilation
of souls...I believe I shall, in some shape or other, always exist.
I shall not object to a new edition of mine, hoping, however,
that the errata of the last may be corrected." (Benjamin Franklin)
"I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times
before, and I hope to return a thousand times...Man is a dialogue
between nature and God. On other planets this dialogue will doubtless
be of a higher and profounder character. What is lacking is Self-Knowledge.
After that the rest will follow." (Goethe)
Reprinted
with the kind permission of Share International Magazine.
