Theos-Talk Archives (December 2003 Message tt00203)

Dec 12 2003

Dear Friend:

The following may be of help:

REINCARNATION, RESPECTING


 
RESPECTING REINCARNATION


OBJECTIONS frequently raised against "Reincarnation," and that appear to
those who make them to be strong, are some growing out of the emotional
part of our nature. 

They say, "We do not wish to be some one else in another life; how can
we recognize our friends and loved ones if they and we thus change our
personality? The absorbing attachments we form here are such that
happiness would seem impossible without those we love."

It is useless to say in reply that, if Reincarnation be the law, it can
and will make no difference what we would like or dislike. So long as
one is governed by his likes and dislikes, logical arguments will not
dissipate objections, and, if it is coldly asserted that the beloved
objects of our affection pass at death forever beyond us, no relief is
afforded to the mind nor is a strictly accurate statement made. In fact,
one of the miseries of conditioned existence is the apparent liability
of forever losing those upon whom we place our hearts. So to meet this
difficulty raised by ever present death, the Christian churches have
invented their heaven in which reunion is possible under a condition,
the acceptance of the dogma of the Redeemer. None of their believers
seem to consider that, inasmuch as constantly many of those most closely
bound to us by every tie do not and never will meet the prerequisite
condition, happiness in that heaven cannot be possible when we
constantly are aware that those unbelievers are suffering in hell, for,
enough memory being left to permit us to recognize believing friends, we
cannot forget the others. 

Greater than ever, then, that difficulty becomes.
What are these loves? must be asked. They are either (a) a love for the
mere physical body, or (b) one for the soul within. Of course in the
first case, the body being disintegrated at death, it is not possible
for us, nor need we wish--unless we are grossly materialistic--to see
that in the other life. And personality belongs only to the body. Hence,
if the soul that we do love inhabits another physical frame, it is the
law--a part of the law of Reincarnation not often stated or dwelt
on--that we will again, when incarnated, meet that same soul in the new
tenement. We cannot, however, always recognize it. But that, the
recognition or memory of those whom we knew before, is one of the very
objects of our study and practice. Not only is this the law as found in
ancient books, but it has been positively stated, in the history of the
Theosophical Society, in a letter from an Adept addressed not many years
ago to some London theosophists. In it he asked them if they imagined
that they were together as incarnated beings for the first time, stated
that they were not, and laid down the rule that the real affinities of
soul life drew them together on earth.

To be associated against our will with those who lay upon us the claim
of mother, father, brother, son, or wife from a previous life would
neither be just nor necessary. Those relations, as such, grew out of
physical ties alone, and souls that are alike, who really love each
other, as well as those who harbor hate, are brought together in mortal
bodies as now father and now son--, or otherwise.


So, then, with the doctrine of Devachan we have the answer. In that
state we have with us, for all practical purposes and to suit our
desire, every one whom we loved on earth: upon being reincarnated we are
again with those whose souls we are naturally attracted to.


By living up to the highest and best of our convictions, for humanity
and not for self, we make it possible that we shall at last recognize in
some earth-life those persons whom we love, and to lose whom forever
seems such a dreary and uninviting prospect.”

Path, August, 1888
 
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REINCARNATION IN JUDAISM AND THE BIBLE


THE lost chord of Christianity is the doctrine of Reincarnation. It was
beyond doubt taught in the early days of the cult, for it was well known
to the Jews who produced the men who founded Christianity. The greatest
of all the Fathers of the Church--Origen--no doubt believed in the
doctrine. He taught pre-existence and the wandering of the soul. This
could hardly have been believed without also giving currency to
reincarnation, as the soul could scarcely wander in any place save the
earth. She was in exile from Paradise, and for sins committed had to
revolve and wander. Wander where? would be the next question. Certainly
away from Paradise, and the short span of human life would not meet the
requirements of the case. But a series of reincarnations will meet all
the problems of life as well as the necessities of the doctrines of
exile, of wanderings for purification, of being known to God and being
judged by him before birth, and of other dogmas given out among the Jews
and of course well known to Jesus and whoever of the seventy-odd
disciples were not in the deepest ignorance. Some of the disciples were
presumably ignorant men, such as the fishermen, who had depended on
their elders for instruction, but not all were of that sort, as the
wonderful works of the period were sufficiently exciting to come to the
ears of even Herod. Paul cannot be accused of ignorance, but was with
Peter and James one of several who not only knew the new ideas but were
well versed in the old ones. And those old ones are to be found in the
Old Testament and in the Commentaries, in the Zohar, the Talmud, and the
other works and sayings of the Jews, all of which built up a body of
dogmas accepted by the people and the Rabbis. Hence sayings of Jesus, of
Paul, and others have to be viewed with the well-known and
never-disputed doctrines of the day held down to the present time, borne
well in mind so as to make passages clear and show what was tacitly
accepted. Jesus himself said that he intended to uphold and buttress the
law, and that law was not only the matter found in the book the
Christian theologians saw fit to accept, but also in the other
authorities of which all except the grossly unlearned were cognizant.

So when we find Herod listening to assertions that John or Jesus was
this, that, or the other prophet or great man of olden time, we know
that he was with the people speculating on the doctrine of reincarnation
or "coming back," and as to who a present famous person may have been in
a former life. Given as it is in the Gospels as a mere incident, it is
very plain that the matter was court gossip in which long philosophical
arguments were not indulged in, but the doctrine was accepted and then
personal facts gone into for amusement as well as for warning to the
king. To an Eastern potentate such a warning would be of moment, as he,
unlike a Western man, would think that a returning great personage would
of necessity have not only knowledge but also power, and that if the
people had their minds attracted to a new aspirant for the leadership
they would be inflamed beyond control with the idea that an old prophet
or former king had come back to dwell in another body with them. The
Christians have no right, then, to excise the doctrine of reincarnation
from their system if it was known to Jesus, if it was brought to his
attention and was not condemned at all but tacitly accepted, and
further, finally, if in any single case it was declared by Jesus as true
in respect to any person. And that all this was the case can, I think,
be clearly shown.


First for the Jews, from whom Jesus was born, and to whom he said
unequivocally he came as a missionary or reformer. The Zohar is a work
of great weight and authority among the Jews. In II, 199 b, it says that
"all souls are subject to revolutions." This is metempsychosis or a'leen
b'gilgoola; but it declares that "men do not know the way they have been
judged in all time." That is, in their "revolutions" they lose a
complete memory of the acts that have led to judgment. This is precisely
the Theosophical doctrine. The Kether Malkuth says, "If she, the soul,
be pure, then she shall obtain favor .. . but if she hath been defiled,
then she shall wander for a time in pain and despair. . . until the days
of her purification." If the soul be pure and if she comes at once from
God at birth, how could she be defiled? And where is she to wander if
not on this or some other world until the days of her purification? The
Rabbis always explained it as meaning she wandered down from Paradise
through many revolutions or births until purity was regained.


Under the name of "Din Gilgol Neshomes" the doctrine of reincarnation is
constantly spoken of in the Talmud. The term means "the judgment of the
revolutions of the souls." And Rabbi Manassa, son of Israel, one of the
most revered, says in his book Nishmath Hayem: "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
is 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 in duty bound to obey and to accept this dogma with
acclamation . . . as the truth of it has been incontestably demonstrated
by the Zohar, and all books of the Kabalists."


These demonstrations hold, as do the traditions of the old Jews, that
the soul of Adam reincarnated in David, and that on account of the sin
of David against Uriah it will have to come again in the expected
Messiah. And out of the three letters ADM, being the name of the first
man, the Talmudists always made the names Adam, David and Messiah. Hence
this in the Old Testament: "And they will serve Jhvh their God and David
their king whom I shall reawaken for them." 

That is, David reincarnates again for the people. Taking the judgment of
God on Adam "for dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return," the
Hebrew interpreters said that since Adam had sinned it was necessary for
him to reincarnate on earth in order to make good the evil committed in
his first existence; so he comes as David, and later is to come as
Messiah. The same doctrine was always applied by the Jews to Moses,
Seth, and Abel, the latter spelt Habel. Habel was killed by Cain, and
then to supply the loss the Lord gave Seth to Adam; he died, and later
on Moses is his reincarnation as the guide of the people, and Seth was
said by Adam to be the reincarnation of Habel. Cain died and
reincarnated as Yethrokorah, who died, the soul waiting till the time
when Habel came back as Moses and then incarnated as the Egyptian who
was killed by Moses; so in this case Habel comes back as Moses, meets
Cain in the person of the Egyptian, and kills the latter. Similarly it
was held that Bileam, Laban, and Nabal were reincarnations of the one
soul or individuality. And of Job it was said that he was the same
person once known as Thara, the father of Abraham; by which they
explained the verse of Job (ix, 21), "Though I were perfect, yet would I
not know my own soul," to mean that he would not recognize himself as
Thara.
All this is to be had in mind in reading Jeremiah, "Before I formed thee
in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest out of the womb I
sanctified thee"; or in Romans ix, v, 11, 13, after telling that Jacob
and Esau being not yet born, "Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated";
or the ideas of the people that "Elias was yet to first come"; or that
some of the prophets were there in Jesus or John; or when Jesus asked
the disciples "Whom do men think that I am?" There cannot be the
slightest doubt, then, that among the Jews for ages and down to the time
of Jesus the ideas above outlined prevailed universally. Let us now come
to the New Testament.


St. Matthew relates in the eleventh chapter the talk of Jesus on the
subject of John, who is declared by him to be the greatest of all,
ending in the 14th verse, thus:

And if ye will receive it, this is Elias which was for to come.
Here he took the doctrine for granted, and the "if" referred not to any
possible doubts on that, but simply as to whether they would accept his
designation of John as Elias. In the 17th chapter he once more takes up
the subject thus:

10. 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 to 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.


The statement is repeated in Mark, chapter ix, v. 13, omitting the name
of John. It is nowhere denied. It is not among any of the cases in which
the different Gospels contradict each other; it is in no way doubtful.
It is not only a reference to the doctrine of reincarnation, but is also
a clear enunciation of it. It goes much further than the case of the man
who was born blind, when Jesus heard the doctrine referred to, but did
not deny it nor condemn it in any way, merely saying that the cause in
that case was not for sin formerly committed, but for some extraordinary
purpose, such as the case of the supposed dead man when he said that the
man was not dead but was to be used to show his power over disease. In
the latter one he perceived there was one so far gone to death that no
ordinary person could cure him, and in the blind man's case the incident
was like it. If he thought the doctrine pernicious, as it must be if
untrue, he would have condemned it at the first coming up, but not only
did he fail to do so, he distinctly himself brought it up in the case of
John, and again when asking what were the popular notions as to himself
under the prevailing doctrines as above shown. Matthew xvi, v. 13, will
do as an example, as the different writers do not disagree, thus:]

When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi he asked his
disciples, 
Whom do men say that I am? 

And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist, some Elias, and
others Jeremias or one of the prophets.


This was a deliberate bringing-up of the old doctrine, to which the
disciples replied, as all Jews would, without any dispute of the matter
of reincarnation; and the reply of Jesus was not a confutation of the
notion, but a distinguishing of himself from the common lot of sages and
prophets by showing himself to be an incarnation of God and not a
reincarnation of any saint or sage. He did not bring it up to dispute
and condemn as he would and did do in other matters; but to the very
contrary he evidently referred to it so as to use it for showing himself
as an incarnate God. And following his example the disciples never
disputed on that; they were all aware of it; St. Paul must have held it
when speaking of Esau and Jacob; St. John could have meant nothing but
that in Revelations, chap. iii, v. 12.
Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God and he
shall go no more out.

Evidently he had gone out before or the words "no more" could have no
place or meaning. It was the old idea of the exile of the soul and the
need for it to be purified by long wandering before it could be admitted
as a "pillar in the temple of God." And until the ignorant ambitious
monks after the death of Origen had gotten hold of Christianity, the
doctrine must have ennobled the new movement. 

Later the Council of Constantinople condemned all such notions directly
in the face of the very words of Jesus, so that at last it ceased to
vibrate as one of the chords, until finally the prophecy of Jesus that
he came to bring a sword and division and not peace was fulfilled by the
warring nations of Christian lands who profess him in words but by their
acts constantly deny him whom they call "the meek and lowly."

W.Q.J.

Path, February, 1894
 
 
==================================


-----Original Message-----

From: krishtar
Sent: Friday, December 12, 2003 12:38 AM
To: 
Subject: Re: Life and Death

" LEFT here - that is the quickest way.' 

Why has human being got this strong tendence to always choose the left
way first?

Is evil tendence the first instinct of ordinary man?

It seems that no matter how much light you set in a blind´s way, he´ll
continue to see nothing.

Krishtar

----- Original Message ----- 
Life and Death


Hallo all of you,

Here is a little something, which coul be added to the deabte on the
number 7...


Life and Death

Nasrudin - the famous trickster from The Middle East - climbed a tre
to saw through a branch. A 
passer-by who saw what he was doing cried: 'Look 
out! You are on the wrong side of the branch. You 
will fall with it.'

'Am I a fool that should believe you; or are you a seer that 
you can tell me the future?' demanded Nasrudin.

Soon afterwards, however, the branch gave way, and he fell 
to the ground. Nasrudin ran to catch up with the other man.
'Your prediction has been fulfilled! Tell me now, how shall I
die?'

However much he tried, the other man could not now convince
Nasrudin that he was not a seer. Ultimately he lost his temper
and said: 'You might as well die now.'

As soon as he heard these words the Nasrudin fell down and lay
still. His neighbours cam and found him and put him in a coffin.
As they were walking towards the cemetery, there was a dispute
as to the shortest route. Nasrudin lost his patience. Raising his
head from the coffin he said: 'When I was alive, I used to turn
LEFT here - that is the quickest way.'

CUT