The
History of Reincarnation
by
C.
Jinarajadasa
Issued
September, 1921
(in
place of pamphlet issued June, 1919)
Theosophical
Publishing House, Adyar, Chennai (Madras), India 600
020
THE
belief in reincarnation - that man after death returns to birth again
in a human form - is found in many parts of the world, and practically
in all periods of human history. This belief is well known as an
integral part of Hinduism and Buddhism, but it is erroneous to
suppose it is an exclusively Hindu or Buddhist doctrine, as it
appears in many parts of the world where no such influence can be
traced.
With
the conception of the return to birth in human form, is also found
the belief in rebirth as an animal or plant or mineral; this,
however, is not the ' teaching of Theosophy. According to Theosophy,
the soul does not retrograde by reincarnation, and no human soul
takes birth in any form lower in evolution than the human.
There
is, however, a possibility, in the case of an ego with strongly
marked animal cravings, that either soon after or before birth he may
join his consciousness to that of an animal. These rare cases are not
instances of true reincarnation, as there is no rebirth as an animal,
but only the temporary obsession by a man's soul of an animal. It
must be remembered, however, that the soul of man has ascended from
earlier kingdoms
of life. The life which is now man was, eons ago at an earlier
stage, the life in animals, and previous to that the life in plants,
and at an earlier age still the life of minerals. All these facts of
evolution are confused in popular tradition.
PRIMITIVE
PEOPLES
" Permanent
transition, new birth, or reincarnation of human souls in other human bodies,
is considered especially to take place by the
soul of a deceased person animating the body of an infant. North
American Indians of the Algonquin districts, when little children
died, would bury them by the wayside, that their souls might enter
into mothers passing by, and so be born again. In North-West
America, among the Tacullis, we hear of direct transfusion of soul
by
the medicine-man, who, putting his hands on the breast of the dying
or the dead, then holds them over the head of a relative and blows
through them; the next child born to this recipient of the departed
soul is animated by it, and takes the rank and name of the deceased.
The Nutka Indians, not without ingenuity, accounted for the existence
of a distant tribe speaking the same language as themselves, by
declaring them to be the spirits of their dead.
" In
Greenland, where the wretched custom of abandoning
and even plundering widows and orphans was
tending to bring the whole race to
extinction, a helpless
widow would seek to persuade some father that the soul of a dead
child of his had passed into a living child of hers, or vice versa,thus gaining for herself a new relative and protector. It is mostly
ancestral or kindred souls that are thought to enter into children,
and this kind of transmigration is therefore, from the savage point
of view, a highly philosophical theory, accounting as it does so well
for the general resemblance between parents and children, and even
for the more special phenomena of atavism. In North-West America,
among the Koloshes, the mother sees in a dream the deceased relative
whoso transmitted soul will give his likeness to the child; in
Vancouver's Island in 1860, a hid was much regarded by the Indians
because he had a mark like the scar of a shot-gun wound on his hip,
it being believed that a chief, dead some four generations before,
who had such a mark, had returned.
"
In Old Calabar, if a mother loses a child, and another is born soon
after, she thinks the departed one to have come back. The Winika
consider that the soul of a dead ancestor animates a child, and this
is why it resemble its father or mother; in Guinea, a child bearing
a strong resemblance, physical or mental, to a dead relative, is
supposed to have inherited his soul; and the Yorubas, greeting a
newborn infant with the salutation, " Thou art come ! " look
for signs to show what ancestral soul has returned among them. Among
the Khonds of Orissa, births
are celebrated by a feast on the seventh day, and the priest,
divining by dropping rice grains in a cup of water, and judging from
observations made on tho person of the infant, determines which of
his progenitors has reappeared, and the child generally, at least
among the northern tribes, receives the name of that ancestor.
"In
Europe the Lapps repeat an instructive animistic idea just noticed
in America; the future mother was told in
a dream what name to give her
child, this message being usually given by the very spirit of the
deceased ancestor who was about to incarnate in her. Among the
lower races generally, the renewal of old family names
by giving them to
new-born children may always bo .suspected of involving some such
thought. The following is a curious pair of instances from the two
halves of the globe. The New Zealand priest would repeat to the
infant a long list of names of its ancestors, fixing upon that name
which the child, by sneezing or crying when it was uttered, was
considered to select for itself; while the Cheremiss Tatar would
shake the baby till it cried, and then repeat names to it till it
chose itself one by leaving off crying.
" The
belief in the new human birth of the departed
soul, which has led even West African negroes
to commit suicide when in distant
slavery,
that they may revive in their own land, in fact amounts among several
of the lower races to a distinct doctrine
of an earthly resurrection. One of the most remarkable forms which
this belief assumes is when dark-skinned races, wanting some
reasonable theory to account for the appearance among them of human
creatures of a new strange sort, the white men, and struck with their
pallid, deathly hue, combined with powers that seem those of
superhuman spiritual beings, have determined that the manes of their
dead must have come back in this wondrous shape.
"The
aborigines of Australia have expressed this theory in the simple
formula: ' Blackfellow tumble down, jump up Whitefellow.' Thus a
native, who was hanged years ago at Melbourne, expressed in his last
moments the hopeful belief that he would jump up Whitefellow, and
have lots of sixpences. The doctrine has been current among them
since early days of European intercourse, and in accordance with it
they habitually regarded the Englishmen as their own deceased
kindred, come back to their country from an attachment to it in a
former life. Real or imagined likeness completed the delusion, as
when Sir George Grey was hugged and wept over by an old woman who
found in him a son she had lost, or when a convict, recognised as a
deceased relative, was endowed anew with the land he had possessed
during the former life.
" A
similar theory may be traced northward by the
Torres Islands to New Caledonia, where the
natives thought the white men to
be the spirits
of the dead who
bring sickness, and assigned this as their reason for wishing to kill
white men. In Africa again, the belief is found among the Western
negroes that they will rise again white, and the Bari of the White
Nile, believing in the resurrection of the dead on earth, considered
the first white man they saw as departed spirits thus come back." (Primitive
Culture, by Edward 13. Tylor, Professor of Anthropology
in
the University of Oxford, Volume II, pp. 3 - 6. Professor Tylor
gives all the references.)
"
Among the same tribe [of Indians in Alabama] pregnant women were
accustomed to go and meet funeral processions in the hope of
receiving within themselves the soul of the deceased, for the benefit
of the unborn child; the Algonquin Indians used to bury the bodies
of children by the roadside that their souls might enter into the
bodies of passing women and so be born again. For the same reason,
the Calabris, the finest and most highly civilised negroes of the
slave coast, buried their dead in their houses; the soul of a dead
man thus buried was thought to pass into the child that was next born
in the house." (The Transmigration of Souls, by D. A.
Berthelot,
Professor of Theology in the University of Basle, page 25.)
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, Warramunga, Binbinga, Anula, and
others, amongst whom descent is counted in the male line, but is
found just as strongly developed in the Urabunna tribe, in which
descent, both of class and totem, is strictly maternal." (The
Northern Tribes of Central Australia, by Baldwin Spencer and F.
J.
Gillen, 1904, page 145.)
" Every
individual is the reincarnation of a spirit
left behind by totemic ancestors in a far past
time. The method of determining the
totem of the individual varies in different tribes, the idea of the
Arunta and Kaitish tribes, who inhabit the central area, being
probably the simplest and most primitive in this respect. Various
spots are inhabited by spirit individuals of a particular totem, and
a child conceived at any spot is naturally regarded as a
reincarnation of one of those spirit ancestors, and thus, of course,
belongs to that special totemic group." (Ibid., page
174.)
"
When a woman conceives, it simply means that one of these spirits has
gone inside her, and, knowing where she first became aware that she
was pregnant, the child, when born, is regarded as the reincarnation
of one of the spirit ancestors associated with that spot, and
therefore it belongs to that particular totemic group"' (Ibid.
page
150.)
" Suppose,
for example, a Kirarawa man of the Emu totem
dies . . . When undergoing reincarnation it
can only enter the body of a Matthurie woman,
who, of necessity, belongs to another totem, and thus at each
incarnation the individual changes both his or her moiety and totem.
Not only is this so, but it also changes sexa belief which is
also met with in the Warramunga tribe. In the course of ages any
single individual can run the whole gamut of the totems, alternating
from side to side of the tribe, but always returning at death to its
original home." (Ibid., page 149.)
" During
his early years, up till perhaps the age of
fourteen, the boy is perfectly free, wandering
about in the bush, searching for food,
playing with his companions in the daytime, and perhaps spending the
evening watching the ordinary corroborees. From the moment of his
initiation, however, his life is sharply marked out into two parts.
He has first of all what we may speak of as the ordinary life, common
to all the men and the women, and associated with the procuring of
food and the performance of corroborees, the peaceful monotony of
this part of his life being broken every now and then by the
excitement of a fight. On the other hand, he has what gradually
becomes of greater and greater importance to him, and that is the
portion of his life devoted to matters of a sacred or secret nature.
As he grows older he takes an increasing share in these, until
finally this side of his life occupies by far the greater part of his
thoughts. The sacred ceremonies, which appear very trivial matters
to
the white
man, are most serious matters to him. They are all connected with the
great ancestors of the tribe, and he is firmly convinced that when
it comes to his turn to die his spirit part
will finally return to his
old acheringa home, where he will be in communion with them until
such time as it seems good to him to undergo reincarnation." (Ibid.,
page 34.)
"
The belief in reincarnation is very firmly held by all the central
tribes from the Urabunna in the South, right across the continent to
those inhabiting the Coburg Peninsula on the northern coast line. In
the Arunta tribe, the natives believe that in the far past times
their ancestors, who were endowed with powers much superior to those
of their living representatives, wandered across the country. They
were divided into groups, kangaroo men and women in one, witchetty
grub people in another, emu people in another, and so on. The track
followed by each group is well known and, when they halted at various
places, some of them went into the ground, their spirit parts
remaining above, each of them in company with a churinga. The whole
Arunta country is thus dotted over with local centres - one
haunted by kangaroo, another by grub spirits, and so on. At the
present day it is these spirit children who are continually
undergoing reincarnation. Each spirit has associated with it another,
called Arumburinga, which is its double and always remains outside,
living at the old camping
ground of the spirit when the latter is reincarnated. Many of the
more important of these old ancestors are known by name, and the old
men decide the particular one of whom any child is the reincarnation.
If the latter be known, the child bears the name of the ancestor.
This name, however, is not used in public; it is secret, and known
only to the old men of the totemic group. The individual himself only
hears it when he is fully grown, and it is never mentioned except
in
whispers. When a child is born, one or two of the old men actually
go out in search of the churinga. Sometimes
they find it, sometimes they
do not, in which event they make a new one, so that each individual
is represented by his churinga in the local storehouse called
ertnatu-lunga. A woman going into the vicinity of one of these places
is always liable to be entered by one of the spirit children.
Whenever also a native dies, his spirit goes buck to its old
camping-ground and remains there until it chooses to be
reincarnated." (Reincarnation and
spirit Children among the Aboriginals of Australia, by W. Baldwin
Spencer, C.M.G., M.A., F.R.S., Professor of Biology in the University
of
Melbourne, Special Commissioner for Aboriginals, Northern Territory.
From Federal Handbook, prepared in connection with the eighty-fourth
meeting of The British Association for the Advancement of Science,
held in Australia, August, 1914.)
EGYPT
Reincarnation
is not mentioned in any inscription so far deciphered, and was not
a part of the exoteric faith of Egypt; but
it must have been a teaching
of the secret mysteries of the Egyptian priesthood. Herodotus thus
relates : " The Egyptians are also the first who reported the
doctrine that the soul of man is immortal, and that when the body
dies the soul enters into another creature which chances then to be
coming to the birth; and, when it has gone all the round of all the
creatures of land and sea and of the air, it enters again into a
human body as it comes to the birth; and that it makes this round in
a period of three thousand years. This doctrine certain Hellenes
adopted, some earlier and some later, as if it were of their own
invention, and of these men I know the names but I abstain from
recording them. " (Book II, para 123, translated by G.
C.
Macaulay.)
GREECE
Reincarnation
was no part of the popular belief, but Greek philosophers knew of
it. In Greece it was openly taught in the school of Pythagoras, who
claimed memory of some of his past births.
" He
remembered to have been Aethalides, the son
of Mercury, to have assisted the Greeks during
the Trojan war in the character of
Euphorbus, to have been
Hermotimus (a philosopher of Clazomenre), and last of all Pythagoras"
(Various classical authors quoted in article on " Pythagoras," Lemprière's Classical Dictionary.)
The
philosopher Enapedocles remembered his previous existences and
declared: " I have been a youth and a maiden and a bush and a
bird and a gleaming fish in the sea. " Rebirth as a means of
purification for sin is thus taught by him:
"
There is an utterance of Fate, an ancient decree of the gods,
everlasting, sealed with broad oaths; when any being stains his hand
with sin of heart, or swears an oath of deceiving, aye, though he be
a Spirit, whose life is for ever, for thrice ten thousand years he
wanders away from the Blessed, growing, as the ages pass, through all
the shapes of mortal things, passing from one to another of the weary
ways of life. The might of the Aether hunts him to the sea, the sea
vomits him back to the floor of Earth, and Earth flings him to the
fires of Helios the unwearied, and he to the whirlwinds of Aether.
He
is received of one after another, and abhorred of all. " (A
History of Ancient Greek Literature, by Gilbert Murray, pp. 75-6.)
ROME
All
Latin writers were aware of the teachings of the Pythagorean School,
Virgil teaches it in the Aeneid, Book
VI. Eneas visits the realms of the dead inside the earth, and there
meets Anchises, his father. Anchises describes the purification of
the soul through suffering in the underworld, followed by a period
of
happiness, and rebirth on earth thereafter.
"
And we, the happy few, possess the fields of bliss; till length of
time, after the fixed period is elapsed, hath done away the inherent
stain, and hath left the pure celestial reason, and the fiery energy
of the simple spirit. All these, after they have rolled away a
thousand years, are summoned forth by the god in a great body to the
river Lethe; to the intent that, losing memory [of the happy period
in the underworld], they may revisit the vaulted realms above, and
again become willing to return into bodies." (Translated by
Davidson.]
Note.
- According to Greek and Roman mythology, drinking
of the water of the river
Lethe effaces the memory of the past.
THE
ANCIENT DRUIDS
" They
wish 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 valour, the fear of death being disregarded.' (Julius
Caesar, Gallic War, Book VI, Chapter 14.)
THE
TEUTONS
"
Some of the Teutons seem (in the eighth century, at least) to have
believed in the transmigration of souls, in a dead hero being born
again in his descendant. Hence, when Hakon the Goodour
Athelstane's foster-soncame back to Norway, men said : ' It is
Harold Fairhair come again !' And the soul of Helge the Good
wasaccording to a fine tenth-century poemtwice
reincarnated in heroes named Helge." "Teutonic Heathendom," by
F. York Powell, in Religious Systems of the World, page 287.)
ANCIENT
IRELAND
The
following story, found in the old Irish collection, The Voyage
of
Bran, (translated by Kuno Meyer, Section I, page 49), shows the
belief in reincarnation, though it seems to have been considered a
secret.
It will be seen that Mongán is the reincarnation of Finn the son of
Cumal, but objects to the fact being openly proclaimed.
" Mongán
was in Rathmore in Moylinny in his kingship.
To him went Forgoll the poet. One day Mongán
asked his poet what was the death of
Fothad Airgdech. Forgoll said he was slain at Duffry in Leinster.
Mongán said it was false."
Mongán
then bets all, even his kingdom, that his word will be proved true,
and that within three days, on
the night of the third day, a strange man comes from the south.
"His
cloak was in a fold around him, and in his
hand a headless spear-shaft that was not very
small. 'What is the matter here ?'said
he. 'I and the poet yonder' said Mongán, ' have made a wager about
the death of Fothad Airgdech. He said it was at Duffry in Leinster.
I said it was false' The warrior said the
poet was wrong. ' It shall be
proved. We were with thee, with Finn/ said the warrior. 'Hush!' said
Mongán, 'that is not fair.' ' We were with Finn, then', said he. '
We came from Scotland. We met with Fothad Airgdech
here yonder on the
Larne river. There we fought a battle. I made a cast at him, so it
passed through him and went into the earth beyond him and left its
iron head in the earth. This here is the shaft that was in that
spear. A stone chest is about him there in the earth. There, upon the
chest, are his two bracelets of silver, and his two arm-rings, and
his neck-torque of silver. And by his tomb there in a stone pillar.
And on the end of the pillar that is in the earth there is Ogam. This
is what it says: ' This is Eochidl Airgdech. Calite slew me in an
encounter against Finn. They went with the warrior. Everything was
found thus. It was Calite, Finn's foster-son, that had come to them.
Mongán, however, was Finn, though he would not let it be told."
PALESTINE
(PRE-CHRISTIAN)
The
Jews had clearly the idea of Pre-existence, i.e., that the soul was a
self-conscious entity before birth in the body. At this time it is
doubtful if the idea of reincarnation, that is, of successive births
in a body, was accepted. :
"Then
the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee
in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth
out of the womb
I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations." (Old
Testament, Jeremiah, i: 4, 5.)
The
exact nature of this preexistence is not clear, but that it was a
condition where actions, both good and bad, might be done, is shown
by the question propounded to the Christ by His disciples, showing
that they believed it possible that the blind man might have sinned
before his birth.
" And
as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was
blind from his birth.
"
And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man,
or his parents, that he was born blind ? " (New Testament, S.
John, ix : 1, 2.)
PALESTINE
(TIME OF CHRIST)
"And
Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea
Philippi: and by the way he asked
his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am ?
"
And they answered, John the Baptist: but some say Elias; and others,
One of the prophet."" (S. Mark, viii: 27, 28.)
" And
his disciples asked him, saying, Why then say
the scribes that
Elias must first come ?
"And
Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and
restore all things.
" But
I say unto you, That Elias is come already,
and they knew him not, but have done unto him
whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall
also the Son of man suffer of them.
"Then
the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the
Baptist." (S. Matthew, xvii: 10 -13.)
" And
from the days of John the Baptist until now
the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and
the violent take it by force.
" For
all the prophets and the law prophesied until
John.
" And
if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which
was for to come.
"
He that hath earn to hear, let him hear.'" (S. Matthew, xi: 1215.)
PALESTINE
(POST-CHRISTIAN)
" Do
not you know that those who depart out of this
life, according to
the law of nature, and pay that
debt which was received from God, when he that let
it us is pleased to require it back again, enjoy eternal
fame; that their
houses and their 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 pure bodies?" (Josephus, Jewish War, Book III, chapter 8, para .5.)
" The
whole world once believed that the souls ofmen
were perishable, and that man had no preeminence above a beast,
till Abraham came and preached the doctrine of immortality and
transmigration." (The Threes of the Talmud, af Sec. 40,
translated in A Talmudic Miscellany, by P. I. Hershon.)
"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." (Kabbalah, Kitzur
Shlu, page
6,
col. 2.)
" The
sages of truth [the Kabbalists] remark that
Adam contains the initial letters of Adam,
David, and Messiah; for after Adam sinned
his soul passed into David and, the latter also having sinned, it
passed into the Messiah. The full text is : ' They shall serve the
Lord their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them
' (Jer., xxx .- 9) ; and it is written: ' My servant David shall be
their Prince for
ever' (Ezek., xxxvii: 25); and thus : ' They shall seek the
Lord
their God, and David their king (Hosea, iii: 5)." (Kabbalah,
Nishmath Chaim, fol. 152, col. 2.)
" Know
thou that Cain's essential soul passed into Jethro, but his spirit into Korah,
and his animal soul into the Egyptian. This is
what scripture saith: ' Cain shall be avenged sevenfold ' (Gen.,
iv:
24), i.e., the initial letters of the Hebrew word rendered
' shall be avenged ' form the initial letters of Jethro, Korah and
Egyptian . .
. Sampson the hero was possessed by the soul of Japhet, and Job by
that of Terah." (Kabbalah, Yalkut Keubini, Nos. 9, 18,
24.)
"Cain
had robbed the twin sister of Abel, and therefore his soul passed
into Jethro. Moses was possessed by the soul of Abel, and therefore
Jethro gave his daughter to Moses." (Kabbalah, Valkut Chadash,
fol. 127, col. 3.)
" If
a man be niggardly, either in a financial or
a spiritual regard, giving nothing of his money
to the poor or not imparting of his
knowledge to the ignorant, he shall be punished by transmigration
into a woman ...... . Know that Sarah, Hannah, the Shunammite (II
Kings, iv, 8), and the widow of Zarepta, were each in turn
possessed by the
soul of Eve . . . 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 a sorrowful spirit' (/ Sam., i: 15),
for
there still lingered in her soul a
sorrowful sense of inherited defilement ... Eli possessed the soul
of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite . . . 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. For this
reason have our Kabbis of blessed memory said : ' The pious of the
nations of the world have a portion in the world to come.' " (Kabbalah,
Yalkut Heubini, Nos. 1, 8, 61, 63.)
" We
have it by tradition that when Moses, our Rabbi - peace be unto
him! - said in the law : ' 0 God, the God of the spirits of all
flesh ' (Num., xvi: 22), he meant mystically to intimate
metempsychosis takes place in all flesh, in beasts, reptiles, fowls.
' Of all flesh' is, as it were, ' in all flesh'." (Kabbalah,
Avodath
Hakodesh, fol. 49, col. 3. Hershon's Miscellany, pp. 324-6.)
"
All souls are subject to transmigration: and men do not know the
ways of the Holy One, blessed be He ! They do not know that they are
brought before the tribunal both before they enter into this world
and after they leave it; they are ignorant of the many
transmigrations and secret probations which they have to undergo,
and of the number of souls and spirits which enter into this world
and which do not return to the palace of the Heavenly King. Men do
not know how the souls revolve like a stone which is thrown from a
sling. But the time is at hand when these mysteries will be
disclosed." (Zohar, II, 99b, quoted
in article on " Transmigration " in The Jewish
Encyclopedia.)
ARABIA
"
There is also a race called Al-Nakhawilah . . . This race of
sectarians, about 35,000 in number, holds to the Imamship or
supreme Pontificate of Ali and his descendants. They differ, however,
in doctrine from the Persians, believing in a transmigration of the
soul, which, gradually purified, is at last ' orbed into
a
perfect star '." (A Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Mecca,
by
Sir Richard
Burton, Chapter XXI, note.)
PERSIA
" I DIED from the mineral and became a plant;
I
died from the plant and
re-appeared in an animal;
I
died from the animal and became a man;
Wherefore then should I fear
? When did I grow
less by dying ?
Next time I shall die from the man
That I may grow
the wings of the angels.
From the angel, too, must I seek advance;
' All things shall perish save His face'.
Once more shall I wing my
way
above the angels,
I shall become that which entereth not the imagination.
Then
let me become naught, naught; for the harp-string
Crieth
unto me:' Verily unto Him do we return ! "
(Masnavi of
Jalalu'd-Din, translated by E. G. Browne.)
MlDDLE
AGES IN EUROPE
"
The Cathari believe that the soul was forced to migrate from
body to body, until it became reincarnate in a member of the sect,
that it might then be absolved of all guilt by the sacrament of the
laying-on of hands, and be received into Paradise after death. Many
believed that they had passed through hundreds of bodies. Paul was
said to have passed through thirteen bodies, according to some, and
through thirty-two according to others, before he attained the grace
of God." (The Troubadours and Courts of Love, by J. F.
Rowbotham, pages 98 and 99.)
"
With coarse violence and obloquy Izarm issues his fulminations
against the erring troubadours: ' In what school hast thou been
taught, my friend, that the soul of man, when it has quitted his
body, goes into that of an ox, an ass, a sheep, or a pig, or into
the first animal it meets with after its separation from the body,
until it returns again into the body of some man or woman ? This,
however, thou declarest for a fact to those whom thou hast seduced;
thou takest from God to give to the devil; and thus dost thou hope
to get salvation.' " (Ibid., page 304.)
SOME
MODERN GERMAN WRITERS
Goethe,
to Frau von Stein : " Ah, in the depths of time gone by, thou
wast my sister or my wife." In a letter to Wieland, 1776: "I
cannot explain the significance to me of this woman or her influence
over me, except by the theory of metempsychosis. Yes, we were once
man and wife. Now our knowledge of ourselves is veiled, and lies in
the spirit world. I can find no name for us - the past, the
future, the All ! " In a letter to Frau von Stein, July 2, 1781: " How
well it is that men should die, if only to erase their impressions
and return clean washed." (Quoted by Berthelot, in The Transmigrations of Souls.)
Richard
Wagner : " Only the profound hypothesis of Reincarnation has
been able to show me the consoling point where all converge in the
end to an equal height of redemption, after their diverse
life-careers, running severed but side by side in time, have met in
full intelligence beyond it. On that beautiful Buddhist hypothesis
the spotless purity of Lohengrin becomes easy to explain, in that he
is the continuation of Parsifalwho first had to wrest to
himself his purity ; in the same sense would Elsa reach up to
Lohengrin in her rebirth." (Letter 106a to Frau Mathilde
Wesendonck, translated by W. Ashton Ellis.)
Gotthold
Ephraim Lessing: " It is so ! The selfsame road by which the
Race reaches its perfection, must
every individual manone sooner, one later have traveled over.
Have traveled over in one and the same life ? Can he have been, in
one and the same life, a sensual Jew and a spiritual Christian ? Can
he in the self-same life have overtaken both ?
" Surely
not that! But should not every individual
man have existed more than once upon this
world ?
" Is
this hypothesis so laughable merely because
it is the oldest? Because the human understanding,
before the sophistries of the
schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once
?
" Why
may not even I have already performed those
steps of my perfecting which only temporal
punishments and rewards can effect for
man ?
" And
once more, why not another time have taken
all those steps which the prospects of Eternal
Rewards so powerfully assist us to perform
?
" Why
should I not come back as often as I am capable
of acquiring fresh knowledge, fresh expert-ness
? Do I bring away so much
from a
single visit that there is nothing to repay the trouble of coming
back?
" Is
this a reason against it ? Or is the objection
based on the ground of my forgetting that I
have been here already ? Happy is it for me
that I do forget. The recollection of my former condition would
permit me to make only a bad use of the present. And even that which
I must forget now, is that necessarily forgotten for ever ?
"
Or is it a reason against the hypothesis that so much time would have
been lost to me ? Lost ?And how much then should I miss ?Is
not a whole Eternity mine ?" ( The Education of the Human
Race, pages 93 to100, translated by F. W. Robertson.)
INDIA:
HINDUISM
" Nay,
but as when one layeth
His
worn-out robes away,
And, taking new ones, sayeth,
'
These will I wear today ! '
So putteth by the spirit
Lightly
its garb of flesh,
And passeth to inherit
A
residence afresh.'
(Bhagavad-Gita,
Discourse ii, verse 22.)
" The
Blessed Lord said : This imperishable Yoga
I declared to Vivasvan ; Vivasvan taught to
Manu ; Manu to Ikshvaku told it. This,
handed on down the line, the King-Sages knew. This
yoga by great efflux of
time decayed in the world, O Parantapa. This same ancient yoga hath
been to-day declared to thee by Me, for thou art My devotee and My
friend ; it is the supreme Secret.
" Arjuna
said : Later was thy birth, earlier the
birth of Vivasvan; how then am I to understand that
Thou declarest it in the beginning
?
" The
blessed Lord said : Many births have been left behind
by Me .and by thee, O Arjuna. I know them all, but
thou knowest not thine, O
Parantapa." (Bhagavad-Gita, Discourse, iv, 1 - 5.)
INDIA:
BUDDHISM
Gautama
Buddha speaks : " With his heart thus serene, made pure,
translucent, cultured, devoid of evil, supple, ready to act, firm and
imperturbable, he [the saint] directs and bends down his mind to the
knowledge of the memory of his previous temporary states, he recalls
to his mind his various temporary states in days gone by - one
birth, or two or three or four or five births, or ten or twenty or
thirty or forty or fifty or a hundred or a thousand or a hundred
thousand births, through many an eon of dissolution, many an eon
of
both dissolution and evolution. ' In such a place such was my name,
such my family, such my caste, such my food, such my experience of
discomfort or of ease, and such the limits of my life. When I passed
away from that state I took form again here' - thus does he
call
to his mind his temporary states in days gone by in all their
details, and in all their modes." (Samannaphala Sutta,
para
93,
" The Fruits of the Life of a Recluse". Dialogues of
the
Buddha, translated by T. W. Rhys Davids.)