REINCARNATION

1. INTRODUCTION

The other day I was watching the famous Bengali movie, "Shonar Kella" by Satyajit Ray. I was pondering over the idea of 'Reincarnation' as in the case of the small boy, 'Mukul', and also its probable explanation using 'parapsychology' as Dr. Hazra was trying to do in that movie. I clearly remember the series of historical short stories (Amitava, Mritpradip, etc...) by Saradindu Bandopadhyay where the idea of rebirth was acutely penned. Again in the 'Jataka tales', I find the same concept popping up in the character of ‘Bodhisattwa’. I was also interested to see the use of 'hypnotism' for an easy recollection of the past life memory in that movie. This is nothing but the so-called 'Past life regression' (PLR). I wanted to know the concepts of Reincarnation in the Eastern Religions and also in Christianity. I found the differences striking and worth of spending time on. Again examples of the past life experiences, collected mainly by Dr. Ian Stevenson and its explanations are spellbound and pioneer to a new world of knowledge.

2. REINCARNATION

2.1 Concept

Reincarnation is the belief that some aspect of a person's being (e.g., consciousness, personality, or soul) survives death and can be reborn in a new body at some future date. Reincarnation is often seen as a repeating cycle of death and rebirth in which future lives are influenced by past and present actions through the law of karma.

The reincarnation of an entity defined as the core of human existence (atman or purusha) following a cycle that implies many lives and bodies, is not such an old concept as it is pretended today. It is neither a common element for most of the oldest known religions, nor does its origin belong to an immemorial past.

2.2 History

It is known that the Egyptians believed in reincarnation or the transmigration of the soul. According to "The Egyptian Book of the Dead", they thought the soul transmigrated from body to body and this was a reason why they embalmed the body in order to preserve it so that it could journey along with Ka, an animating force that was believed to be counterpart of the body, which would accompany it in the next world or life. Ka might be considered equivalent to the term of soul. This establishes the dating of the concept of reincarnation back to the ancient Egyptian religion but many think it dates beyond antiquity. The belief is thought to have been a necessity among primitive peoples.

Certainly long before ancient Egypt peoples believed in transmigration of the soul. If they were not sophisticated enough to understand the concept of a soul, then they may have simply called it life. An individual or object which moved had life, and the one which did not, did not have life. This is analogous to the belief of "animism".

The term animism is derived from the Latin word anima meaning breath or soul. The belief of animism is probably one of man's oldest beliefs, with its origin most likely dating to the Paleolithic age. From its earliest beginnings it was a belief that a soul or spirit existed in every object, even if it was inanimate. In a future state this soul or spirit would exist as part of an immaterial soul. The spirit, therefore, was thought to be universal. Gradually the concept of a soul developed with a further realization that the soul departed the body a death and entered the body at birth. Soon it was thought the soul leaving a dead body would seek another body to enter, or enter an animal of a lower life form. It was also thought the soul left the body during sleep. This soul was pictured as vapors that entered and left through the nostrils and mouth. Later grew the notion the soul transmigrated to an infant of one of dead person's kin. This helped to explain family resemblances. The terms reincarnation and transformation of the soul, especially when applied to humans, are about synonymous.

However reincarnation is not accurately synonymous with either metamorphosis or resurrection. Metamorphosis is roughly the changing of one life form into another life form. Resurrection, in the Christian sense, means the rising again of the body after death. About the first definition of soul transmigration came from Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher and mathematician, who taught that the soul was immortal and merely resides in the body; therefore, it survived bodily death. His further teachings held the soul goes through a series of rebirths. Between death and rebirth the soul rests and is purified in the Underworld. After the soul has completed this series of rebirths is becomes so purified that it can leave the transmigration or reincarnation cycle.

Plato, another Greek philosopher, shared similar views as Pythagoras in that the soul of man was eternal, pre-existence, and wholly spiritual. In Plato's view of the transmigration of the soul from body to body, however, there is a difference. Plato claimed the soul tends to become impure during these bodily inhabitations although a minimal former life knowledge remains. However, if through its transmigrations the soul continues doing good and eliminates the bodily impurities it will eventually return to its pre-existence state. But, if the soul continually deteriorates through its bodily inhabitations it will end up in Tartarus, a place of eternal damnation. This appears to be an origination of both the concept of karma and the Christian concept of hell. I have explained this concept in details on page 15.

It was around the first century AD that both the Greek and Roman writers were surprised by the fact that the Druids, a priestly caste of the Celts, believed in reincarnation. The Greek writer Diordus Siculus (c. 60 BC - 30 AD) noted that the Druids believed "the souls of men are immortal, and that after a definite number of years they live a second life when the soul passes to another body." The Greek philosopher Strabo (c. 63 BC - 21 AD) observed the Druids believed that "men's souls and the universe are indestructible, although at times fire and water may prevail." Even Julius Caesar wrote of the Celts "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 stimulated to valor, the fear of death being disregarded." Elsewhere Caesar complained the Druids were a troublesome people. They were difficult to destroy.

There is little evidence of reincarnation among the early Hebrew people but it later became a part of the Kabalistic teaching. The teaching occurred among the early Christians, especially the Gnostics, Manichaeans, and the Carthari, but was later repudiated by orthodox Christian theologians. Later, in AD 533, reincarnation was declared a heresy by the Council of Constantinople.

The reason reincarnation was repudiated was because of the eschatological teachings of death and judgment which were established as orthodox Christian doctrine. In simplicity this doctrine states man has just one life in which to merit his eternal reward or damnation. Such a doctrine also strengthened the Church. However, many Christians still believe in reincarnation because they think it was taught by Christ. I will describe this belief in Christianity later in this article. First I will try to delineate the belief of Reincarnation in Eastern Religions

The classic form of the reincarnation doctrine was formulated in India, but certainly not earlier than the 9th century BC, when the Brahmana writings were composed. After the Upanishads (7th to 5th century BC) clearly defined the concept, it was adopted by the other important Eastern religions which originated in India, Buddhism and Jainism. Due to the spreading of Buddhism, reincarnation was later adapted in Chinese Taoism, but not earlier than the 3rd century BC.

2.3 Reincarnation in Hinduism

The origin of samsara has to be searched for in Hinduism and its classic writings. It cannot have appeared earlier than the 9th century BC because the Vedic hymns, the most ancient writings of Hinduism, do not mention it, proving that reincarnation wasn’t stated yet at the time of their recording (13th to 10th century BC). Let us therefore analyze the development of the concept of immortality in the major Hindu writings, beginning with the Vedas and the Brahmanas. At the time the Vedic hymns were written, the belief was that man continues to exist after death as a whole person. Between man and gods was stated an absolute distinction, as in all other polytheistic religions of the world. The concept of an impersonal fusion with the source of all existence, as later stated in the Upanishads, was far away. Here are some arguments for this article that result from the interpretation of the funeral ritual:

1. As was the case in other ancient religions (for instance those of Egypt and Mesopotamia), the deceased was burned with food and clothing necessary in the afterlife. More than that, the belief of ancient Aryans in the preservation of personal identity after death led them to incinerate the dead husband together with his (living) wife and bow so that they could accompany him in the afterlife. In some parts of India this ritual was performed until the British colonization.

2. Similar to the tradition of ancient Chinese religion, the departed relatives constituted a holy hierarchy. The last one deceased was commemorated individually for a year after his departure and then included in the mortuary offerings of the yearly shraddha ritual. This ritual was necessary because the dead could influence negatively or positively the life of the living.

3. According to Vedic anthropology, the components of human nature are the physical body, ashu and manas. Ashu represents the vital principle (different from personal attributes), and manas the sum of psycho-mental faculties (mind, feeling and will). The belief in the preservation of the three components after death is proved by the fact that the family addressed the departed relative in the burial ritual as a unitary person: "May nothing of your manas, nothing of the ashu, nothing of the limbs, nothing of your vital fluid, nothing of your body here by any means be lost".

Yama, the god of death (mentioned in old Buddhist and Taoist scriptures too) was sovereign over the souls of the dead and also the one who received the offerings of the family for the benefit of the departed. In the Rig Veda it is said about him: "Yama was the first to find us our abode, a place that can never be taken away, where our ancient Fathers have departed; all who are born go there by that path, treading their own". Divine justice was provided by the gods Yama, Soma and Indra, not by an impersonal law such as karma. One of their attributes was to cast the wicked into an eternal dark prison out of which they can never escape.

2.3.1 Reincarnation in the Upanishads

The Upanishads were the first writings to move the place of one’s "second death" from the heavenly realm to this earthly world, considering its proper solution the knowledge of the atman-Brahma identity. Ignorance of one’s true self (atman) launches karma into action, the law of cause and effect in Eastern spirituality. Its first clear formulation can be found in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: "According as one acts, according as one behaves, so does he become. The doer of good becomes good. The doer of evil becomes evil. One becomes virtuous by virtuous action, bad by bad action." Reincarnation (samsara) is the practical way in which one reaps the fruits of his deeds. Therefore, the self is forced to enter a new material existence until all karmic debt is paid: "By means of thought, touch, sight and passions and by the abundance of food and drink there are birth and development of the (embodied) self. According to his deeds, the embodied self assumes successively various forms in various conditions".

There can be observed a fundamental mutation in the meaning of afterlife in comparison with the Vedic perspective. Abandoning the desire to have communion with the gods (Agni, Indra, etc.), attained as a result of bringing good sacrifices, the Upanishads came to consider man’s final destiny to be the impersonal fusion atman-Brahma, attained exclusively by esoteric knowledge. In this new context, karma and reincarnation are key elements that will mark from now on all particular developments in Hinduism.

2.3.2 Reincarnation in the Gita

In the Bhagavad Gita, which is a part of the Mahabharata, reincarnation is clearly stated as a natural process of life that has to be followed by any mortal. I will give examples of some verses in support of the concept of reincarnation.

What does reincarnation mean?

na tv evaham jatu nasam na tvam meme janadhipah

na caiva na bhavisyamah sarve vayam atah param

It is not that at any time (in the past) indeed, was I not, nor were you, nor these rulers of men. Nor, verily, shall we ever cease to be hereafter.

dehino smin yatha dehe kaumaram yauvanam jara

tatha dehantara-praptir dhiras tatra na muhyati

Just as in this body the embodied (soul) passes into childhood, youth and old age, so also does he pass into another body; the firm man does not grieve at it.

What is the theory of incarnation?

Bahuni me vyatitani janmani tava carjuna,

Tanyahm veda sarvani na tvam vettha paramtapa.

Many births of Mine have passed as well as yours, O Arjuna; I know them all but you know them not, O Paramtapa (scorcher of foes).

Why does reincarnation take place?

Yada yada hi dharmasya glanir-bhavati bharata,

abhy – utthanam-adharmasya tada-tmanam srjamy-aham.

Whenever there is a decay of righteousness, O Bharata, and a rise of unrighteousness, then I manifest Myself.

Paritranaya sadhunam vinasaya ca duskrtam,

Dharma-samsthapan-arthaya sambhavami yuge yuge.

For the protection of the good, for the destruction of the wicked and for the establishment of righteousness, I am born in every age.

Yam yam va pi smaran bhavam

Tyajaty ante kalevaram

Tam tam evai to kaunteya

Sada tadbhavabhavitah

Whosoever, at the end, leaves the body, thinking of any being, to that being only he goes, O Kaunteya (O son of Kunti) because of his constant thought of that being.

2.3.3 Who or what reincarnates in Hinduism?

According to the Upanishads and Vedanta philosophy, the entity that reincarnates is the impersonal self (atman). Atman lacks any personal element, reason for which the use of the reflexive pronoun "self" is not quite right. Atman can be defined only through negating any personal attributes. Although it constitutes the existential substrata of man’s existence, atman cannot be the carrier of one’s "spiritual progress", because it cannot record any data produced in the illusory domain of psycho-mental existence. The spiritual progress one accumulates toward realizing the atman-Brahma identity is recorded by karma, or rather by a minimal quantity of karmic debt. According to one’s karma, at (re)birth the whole physical and mental complex man consists of is reconstructed, all that pertains to the world of illusions. At this level, the newly shaped person experiences the fruits of "his" actions from previous lives and has to do his best to stop the vicious cycle avidya-karma-samsar.

As a necessary aid in explaining the reincarnation mechanism, Vedanta adopted the concept of a subtle body (sukshma-sharir), attached to atman as long as its bondage lasts, which actually records the karmic debts and transmits them from one life to another. However, this "subtle body" cannot be a form of preserving one’s personal attributes, as it does not offer any actual data belonging to previous lives to the present conscious psycho-mental life. All this kind of data is erased, so that the facts recorded by the subtle body are a sum of hidden tendencies or impressions (samskar) imprinted by karma. They will materialize unconsciously in the life of the individual, without giving him any hint for understanding his actual condition. There is no possible form of transmitting conscious memory from one life to another, because its domain belongs to the world of illusions and dissolves at death.

In the Samkhya and Yoga darshanas, the entity that reincarnates is purusha, an equivalent of atman. Given the absolute duality stated between purusha and prakriti (substance), nothing that belongs to the psycho-mental life can pass from one life to the other because it belongs to prakriti, which has a mere illusory relation with purusha. However, in the Yoga Sutra, is defined a similar mechanism of transmitting the effects of karma from one life to another, as was the case in Vedanta. The reservoir of karmas is called karmashaya. It accompanies purusha from one life to another, representing the sum of impressions (samskar) that could not manifest themselves during the limits of a certain life. In no way can it be a kind of conscious memory, a sum of information that the person could consciously use or a nucleus of personhood, because karmashaya has nothing in common with psycho-mental abilities. This deposit of karma merely serves as a mechanism for adjusting the effects of karma in one’s life. It dictates in an impersonal and mechanical manner the new birth (jati), the length of life (ayu) and the experiences that must accompany it (bhog).

2.4 Reincarnation in Buddhism

Buddhism denies the reality of a permanent self, together with all things pertaining to the phenomenal world. The appearance of human existence is generated by a mere heap of five aggregates (skandha), which suffer from constant becoming and have a functional cause-effect relation: 1) the body (rupa) - that consists of material form and senses, 2) feeling (vedana) - the taste of any experience, 3) cognition (sanna) - the process of classifying and labeling experiences, 4) mental constructions (sankhara) - the states which initiate action, and 5) consciousness (vijnana) - the awareness of a sensory or mental object. The five elements, as the whole assembly they construct, are impermanent (anitya), undergo constant transformation and have no abiding principle or self. Man usually thinks that he has a self because of consciousness. But being itself in a constant process of becoming and change, consciousness cannot be identified with a self that is supposed to be permanent. Beyond the five aggregates nothing else can be found in the human nature.

However, something has to reincarnate, following the dictates of karma. When asked about the differences between people in the matters of life span, illnesses, wealth, etc., the Buddha taught:

Men have, O young man, deeds as their very own, they are inheritors of deeds, deeds are their matrix, deeds are their kith and kin, and deeds are their support. It is deeds that classify men into high or low status.

If there is no real self, who inherits the deeds and reincarnates? Buddha answered that only karma is passing from one life to another, using the illustration of the light of a candle, which is derived from other candle without having a substance of its own. In the same manner there is rebirth without the transfer of a self from one body to another. The only link from one life to the next is of a causal nature. In the Garland Sutra (10) we read:

According to what deeds are done

Do their resulting consequences come to be;

Yet the doer has no existence:

This is the Buddha’s teaching.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes in detail the alleged experiences one has in the intermediary state between two incarnations, suggesting that the deceased keeps some personal attributes. Although it is not clear what actually survives after death in this case, there is mentioned a mental body that cannot be injured by the visions experienced by the deceased: When it happens that such a vision arises, do not be afraid! Do not feel terror! You have a mental body made of instincts; even if it is killed or dismembered, it cannot die! Since in fact you are a natural form of voidness, anger at being injured is unnecessary! The Yama Lords of Death are but arisen from the natural energy of your own awareness and really lack all substantiality. Voidness cannot injure voidness! Whatever the condition of the deceased after death might be, any hypothetical personal nucleus vanishes right before birth, so there can be no psycho-mental element transmitted from one life to another. The newborn person doesn’t remember anything from previous lives or trips into the realm of intermediary state (bardo).

Another important element in the Buddhist theory of reincarnation is the extreme rarity of being reincarnated as a human person. The Buddha taught in the Chiggala Sutta :

Monks, suppose that this great earth were totally covered with water, and a man were to toss a yoke with a single hole there. A wind from the east would push it west, a wind from the west would push it east. A wind from the north would push it south, a wind from the south would push it north. And suppose a blind sea-turtle were there. It would come to the surface once every one hundred years. Now what do you think: would that blind sea-turtle, coming to the surface once every one hundred years, stick his neck into the yoke with a single hole?

It would be a sheer coincidence, lord, that the blind sea-turtle, coming to the surface once every one hundred years, would stick his neck into the yoke with a single hole. It's likewise a sheer coincidence that one obtains the human state. It's likewise a sheer coincidence that a Tathagata, worthy and rightly self-awakened, arises in the world. If one would try to calculate the probability of obtaining the human state according to this text, and consider the surface of "this great earth" as being just the surface of India, the odds would be one chance in a time span in years of 5 followed by 16 zeros. This is 5 million times the age of the universe.

2.5 Reincarnation in Taoism

Reincarnation is a teaching hard to find in the aphorisms of the Tao-te Ching (6th century BC), so it must have appeared later in Taoism. Although it is not specified what reincarnates, something has to pass from one life to another. An important scripture of Taoism, the Chuang Tzu (4th century BC), states:

Birth is not a beginning; death is not an end. There is existence without limitation; there is continuity without a starting point.

Existence without limitation is space. Continuity without a starting point is time. There is birth, there is death, there is issuing forth, there is entering in. That through which one passes in and out without seeing its form, that is the Portal of God.

2.6 Reincarnation in modern thinking

Once the Eastern concept of reincarnation arrived in Europe, its meaning changed. During the Middle Ages it was a doctrine reserved for the initiates of some occult traditions (Hermetism, Catharism, etc.), who have taken it over from Neo-Platonism. A larger acceptance of reincarnation was promoted in the Western world only beginning with the last century, by the efforts of Theosophy, and later Anthroposophy. Their intense ministry, combined with that of many Eastern gurus, and especially the efforts of the New Age movement, determined a wide acceptance of reincarnation in our society today, so that this concept became one of the most fascinating doctrines in explaining the origin and meaning of life.

However, its modern version is substantially different from what Eastern religions stated. Far from being a torment out of which man has to escape by any price through abolishing personhood, New Age thinking considers reincarnation as an eternal progression of the soul toward higher levels of spiritual existence. Influenced by the Christian cultural context but totally opposing Eastern classic ideology, many consider today that the entity that reincarnates is our soul, which preserves the attributes of personhood from one life to another. This compromise obviously emerged from the desire to adopt the reincarnation doctrine to Western thought. The concept of an impersonal atman reincarnating was too abstract to be easily accepted, so Westerners needed a milder version of this doctrine. Although this tendency proves the soul’s yearning for a personal destiny, it doesn’t bear too much resemblance to classical Eastern spirituality, which rejects it as totally perverted.


2.7 Reincarnation and the Bible

2.7.1 The Biblical Examples

There are several Biblical texts that seem to imply reincarnation. The most "convincing" texts of this kind are the following:

1) Matthew 11,14 and 17,12-13, concerning the identity of John the Baptist;

2) John 9,2, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?";

3) John 3,3, "No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again";

1. The first text concerns the identity of John the Baptist, supposed to be the reincarnation of the prophet Elijah. In Matthew 11,14 Jesus says: "And if you are willing to accept it, he (John the Baptist) is the Elijah who was to come." In the same Gospel, while answering the apostles about the coming of Elijah, Jesus told them: "But I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but have done to him everything they wished. In the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands." The commentary adds: "Then the disciples understood that he was talking to them about John the Baptist."

At first sight, it may seem that these verses imply the reincarnation of the prophet Elijah as John the Baptist. The prophecy of the return of Elijah was stated in the last verses of the Old Testament, in the book of the prophet Malachi: "See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes." Right before this prophecy was fulfilled, through the birth of John the Baptist, an angel announced to his father Zechariah: "And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous-- to make ready a people prepared for the Lord". What could be the meaning of the words "in the spirit and power of Elijah"? According to other Biblical passages that refer to Elijah and John the Baptist, they do not teach reincarnation.

At the time when John the Baptist began his public preaching, the priests in Jerusalem asked him about his identity. They asked: "Are you Elijah?" In such circumstances a true "guru" wouldn’t have hesitated to state his position in the succession of spiritual masters (the guru parampara) of the tradition he is representing. However, John the Baptist answered simply: "I am not." His negation suggests another meaning to the words quoted from Matthew 11,14 and 17,12-13. John the Baptist was rather a kind of Elijah, a prophet who had to repeat the mission of Elijah in a similar context. The same as Elijah did, John the Baptist had to suffer persecution from the royal house of Israel and acted in the context of the spiritual degeneration of the Jewish nation, with the mission of bringing the people back to the right worship of God. John the Baptist had the same spiritual mission as the prophet Elijah, but not the same soul or self. For this reason the expression "in the spirit and power of Elijah" should not be interpreted as reincarnation of a person, but as a necessary repetition of a well-known episode in the history of Israel. Another Biblical text that contradicts the reincarnation theory in this case is the story of Elijah’s departure from this world. Elijah didn’t die in the proper sense of the word, but "went up to heaven in a whirlwind". According to the classic theory of reincarnation, a person has to die physically first in order that his self may be reincarnated in another body. In the case of Elijah this didn’t happen. So it must be considered an exception to both the natural process of death, and to the rule of reincarnation. Finally, the experience of the three apostles at the Mount of Transfiguration has to be remembered, when Elijah was identified by the apostles without being confused with John the Baptist.

2. The next disputed text is the introduction to the healing of the man born blind in John 9,2. Considering the apostles' question: "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?", it is obvious that the first option (the man was born blind because of his sin) implies that he could sin only in a previous life. According to the classic theory of reincarnation, he might have been a cruel dictator who got the just reward for his bad deeds.

However, the apostles' question about the possibility of having sinned before birth should not necessarily be judged as indicating an existing belief in reincarnation at that time in Israel. It rather confirms that some religious factions believed that the fetus can sin in his mother womb. If Jesus had considered reincarnation to be true, surely He would have used this opportunity - as was His custom - to explain to them the law of karma and reincarnation, as an immediate application to that man’s situation. Jesus never missed such occasions to instruct his disciples on spiritual matters, and reincarnation would have been a crucial doctrine for them to understand.

Nevertheless, by the answer Jesus gave to them, He rejected both options suggested by the apostles. Both the idea of sinning before birth and the punishment for the parents' sins were wrong. Jesus said: "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life". "The work of God" is described in the next verses, when Jesus healed the blind man as a proof of His divinity.

3. In the Gospel According to John Jesus said to Nicodemus: "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again" (John 3,3). Out of its context, this verse seems to suggest that reincarnation is the only possibility for attaining spiritual perfection and admission into the "kingdom of God". Nicodemus’ following question indicates that he understood by these words a kind of physical rebirth in this life, and not classic reincarnation: "How can a man be born when he is old? Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!". Jesus rejected the idea of physical rebirth and explained man’s need for spiritual rebirth, during this life, in order to be admitted into God’s kingdom in the afterlife.

Jesus further explained the meaning of His words by referring to a well-known episode in Israel’s history: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up”. That episode occurred while the Israelites were traveling in the wilderness toward the Promised Land under the command of Moses. They spoke against God and against Moses, and then God punished them by sending poisonous snakes against them. Grasping the gravity of the situation, they recognized their sin and asked for a saving solution. God’s solution was that Moses had to make a bronze copy of such a snake and put it up on a pole. Those who had been bitten by a snake had to look at this bronze snake, believing that this symbol represented their salvation, and were healed. Coming back to the link Jesus made between that episode and His teaching, He said: "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life". In other words, as Moses lifted up the bronze snake 1400 years earlier, in the same way was He to be lifted up on the cross, in order to be the only solution, the only antidote to the deadly bite of sin. As the Jews had to believe that the bronze snake was their salvation from death, the same way had Nicodemus, his generation and the entire world to believe that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is the perfect solution provided by God for the sins of the world. Therefore the kind of rebirth Jesus was teaching is not the Eastern concept of reincarnation but a spiritual rebirth that any human can experience in this life.

As it can be observed, in all situations where "Biblical proofs" for reincarnation are mentioned, the context is always ignored. Other passages used as indications of reincarnation mean, in fact, the existence of Christ prior to His human birth, the continuity of the souls' existence after death, or the spiritual rebirth of believers in their present life, without giving any plausible indication for reincarnation.

2.7.2 Did the clergy rewrite the Bible, to remove the passages teaching reincarnation?

Some people hold that the Bible contained many passages teaching reincarnation in an alleged initial form, but they were erased and forbidden by the clergy at the fifth ecumenical council, held in Constantinople in the year 533 AD. The reason for this would have been the spiritual immaturity of the Christians, who could not grasp the doctrine at that time, or the desire of the clergy to manipulate the masses. However, there is no proof that such "purification" of the Biblical text has ever occurred. The existing manuscripts, many of them older than AD 533, do not show differences from the text we use today. There are enough reasons to accept that the New Testament was not written later than the first century AD.

At the same time, if the clergy had, as alleged, decided to erase from the Bible the "compromising" passages about reincarnation, why did they keep the ones mentioned above (concerning the identity of John the Baptist, etc.)? On the other hand, it is obvious that there are many texts in the Bible that clearly contradict the idea of reincarnation, explicitly or implicitly. Here is one verse in the New Testament which contradicts reincarnation as clearly as possible:

Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

The Christian teaching that we live only once is a fact beyond doubt, being as true as the fact that Jesus had to die only once for our sins. In other words, the unique historical act of Jesus’ crucifixion and the fact that we live only once are equally true and cannot be separated. This text cannot possibly be interpreted otherwise. The judgment that follows death is obviously not the judgment of the impersonal karma, but that of the personal almighty God, after which man either enters an eternal personal relation with Him in heaven, or an eternal separation from Him in hell.

2.7.3 Did the early Church fathers believe in reincarnation?

Early Christianity spread in a world dominated by Greek philosophy. Many important figures of the early church had this spiritual background when they were converted. When addressing their world with the Christian message, they had to do it without any syncretistic compromise to Greek philosophy.

To what extent could they have been influenced by the doctrine of reincarnation? In order to answer this, we first have to understand what was actually taught about reincarnation at that time.

2.7.4 Reincarnation according to Platonism

The dominant form of reincarnation known by ancient Greek philosophy during the first three Christian centuries belongs to Platonism. Unlike the Eastern spiritual masters, Plato taught that human souls existed since eternity in a perfect celestial world as intelligent and personal beings. They were not manifested out of a primordial impersonal essence (such as Brahma) or created by a personal god. Although the souls lived there in a pure state, somehow the divine love grew cold in them and, as a result, they fell in physical bodies to this earthly, imperfect world. Plato writes in Phaedrus about this:

But when she the celestial soul is unable to follow, and fails to behold the truth, and through some ill-hap sinks beneath the double load of forgetfulness and vice, and her wings fall from her and she drops to the ground, then the law ordains that this soul shall at her first birth pass, not into any other animal, but only into man; and the soul which has seen most of truth shall come to the birth as a philosopher, or artist, or some musical and loving nature.

In the same work, Plato states that "ten thousand years must elapse before the soul of each one can return to the place from whence she came". Only the soul of the philosopher or of the lover can get back to its original state in less time (three thousand years). The souls that fail to aspire to perfection and live in ignorance are judged after their earthly life and then punished in "the houses of correction, which are under the earth". One lifetime is not enough to return to the original celestial state of purity. For this reason "the soul of a man may pass into the life of a beast, or from the beast return again into the man". This is the Platonist idea of reincarnation. It does not represent a voyage of an impersonal essence (as atman) toward an impersonal merging with the Absolute (Brahma), but only a temporary punishment on the way back towards a purified personal existence (the state of pure being). Between Platonism and Eastern religions there is a big difference concerning man’s identity in general and reincarnation in particular. Plato’s meaning of salvation is definitely personal, as can be understand from Phaedo:

Those also who are remarkable for having led holy lives are released from this earthly prison, and go to their pure home which is above, and dwell in the purer earth; and those who have duly purified themselves with philosophy live henceforth altogether without the body, in mansions fairer far than these, which may not be described, and of which the time would fail me to tell.

How did these ideas affect the beliefs of the early church fathers? We will now proceed to examine the most important cases of early church fathers accused of holding reincarnationist convictions.

2.7.5 Origen and Origenism

The most controversial early church father concerning his alleged beliefs on reincarnation is undoubtedly Origen (185-254). Many adherents of reincarnation mention him today as a classic example proving the alleged early Christian belief in reincarnation, which is supposed to have been condemned and forbidden by the fifth ecumenical council (Constantinople, 533 AD). Although it is a fact that Origen was strongly influenced by Platonism prior to his conversion to Christianity, the claim that he believed reincarnation is absurd.

As it can easily be observed, there is no clear concept of reincarnation mentioned at this council of the early church, but only the Platonist ideas concerning the pre-existence of souls, besides universalism and a wrong form of Christology, as main heresies to be rejected. Origenism has incorporated these Platonistic ideas and they were condemned at the council of Constantinople, certainly not some classic form of reincarnation, as is claimed today. For instance, the fourth anathema states:

If anyone shall say that the reasonable creatures in whom the divine love had grown cold have been hidden in gross bodies such as ours, and have been called men, while those who have attained the lowest degree of wickedness have shared cold and obscure bodies and are become and called demons and evil spirits: let him be anathema.

The condemned ideas are very close related to what Plato has stated in Phaedrus. Therefore it cannot be stated that Origenism taught a classic form of reincarnation. In fact, Origen rejected plainly this doctrine in his Commentary on Matthew (Book XIII,1), written in the last years of his life. He refutes the speculation of considering John the Baptist the reincarnation of Elijah, a text we mentioned earlier. Origen writes:

In this place it does not appear to me that by Elijah the soul is spoken of, lest I should fall into the dogma of transmigration, which is foreign to the church of God, and not handed down by the Apostles, nor anywhere set forth in the Scriptures; for it is also in opposition to the saying that "things seen are temporal," and that "this age shall have a consummation," and also to the fulfillment of the saying, "Heaven and earth shall pass away," and "the fashion of this world passeth away," and "the heavens shall perish," and what follows.

In the same commentary, under the title "The spirit and power of Elijah" - not the soul - were in the Baptist, Origen adds: "For, observe, he did not say in the ‘soul’ of Elijah, in which case the doctrine of transmigration might have some ground, but ‘in the spirit and power of Elijah.’" Origen’s whole commentary on this text is a refutation of the reincarnation theory. Therefore it is obvious that he cannot be considered at all an "early Christian adherent of reincarnation".

2.7.6 Why Christianity can not accept reincarnation?

The idea of reincarnation was never accepted by Christianity because it undermines its basic tenets. First, it renders futile God’s sovereignty over creation, transforming Him into a helpless spectator of the human tragedy. Because He is sovereign and omnipotent over creation, God can punish evil and will do it perfectly well at the end of history. There is no need for impersonal karma and reincarnation to play this role. Second, believing in reincarnation may affect one’s understanding of morality and motivation for moral living. An extreme application of reincarnationist convictions could lead to adopting a detached stand to crime, theft, lying and other such social plagues. They could be considered nothing else but normal debts to be paid by their victims, originated in their previous lives.

Following this reasoning, social injustice should not be punished at all in order to not complicate even more someone’s karmic debt. Therefore it is hard to believe that accepting reincarnation would transform us into better people, pursuing moral values with more conviction, as reincarnationists usually claim. The amorality proposed by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, the demand to act totally detached from what results, is the highest moral status that can be reached as the result of accepting karma and reincarnation. Third, reincarnation represents a threat to the very essence of Christianity: the need for Christ’s redemptive sacrifice for our sins. If we are to pay for the consequences of our sins ourselves in further lives and attain salvation through our own efforts, the sacrifice of Christ becomes useless and absurd. It wouldn’t be the only way back to God, but only a stupid accident of history. In this case Christianity would be a mere form of Hindu Bhakti-Yoga.

As a result, no matter how many attempts are made today to find texts in the Bible or in the history of the Church that would allegedly teach reincarnation, they are all doomed to remain pure speculations.

3. Past Life Memory

3.1 Back ground

Many people who accept reincarnation in the West today claim that it can be scientifically proven. They usually ground their belief on so-called past life recall experiences, which represent the ability of certain persons to recall facts of alleged previous lives. There are two categories of this phenomenon. One is observed under hypnosis, while regressing certain persons beyond the date of birth. The other is produced by some children who spontaneously remember a previous life identity, amazing their neighbors with specific details that match with the life of a deceased person. Parapsychologists deal with this field of study.

3.2 Parapsychology

Parapsychology is the scientific study of paranormal phenomena. The "paranormal" (beside or beyond the normal) refers to unusual experiences that do not seem to be explainable in terms of our everyday understanding or known scientific principles. Paranormal experiences often seem weird, uncanny, or unnatural. Typically they are quite rare but there are a few exceptional "stars" who have regular paranormal experiences and may show seemingly consistent paranormal ability.

Most paranormal phenomena can be categorised in terms of whether they are primarily MENTAL (involving the obtaining of information in paranormal ways) or PHYSICAL (involving paranormal influences on physical objects, events or processes, or on living systems). In practice, however, this distinction is often blurred (e.g., a phenomenon may have both mental and physical features). Additionally, there are varieties of MISCELLANEOUS phenomena that do not fit neatly into either category. Many parapsychologists do not accept some or all of these miscellaneous phenomena as the legitimate study of parapsychology.

Mental Phenomena:

• Extrasensory Perception
• Telepathy
• Clairvoyance and clairaudience
• Psychometry
• Precognition and Premonitions
• Remote Viewing
• Mental mediumship
• Dowsing
• Past-life memories
• Possession
• Out of body and near death experiences
• Apparitions
• Automatic writing
• Xenoglossy

Physical Phenomena:

• Psychokinesis
• Physical mediumship
• Psychic photography
• Thoughtography
• Healing
• Poltergeist activity
• Materialization and dematerialization
• Levitation

Miscellaneous Phenomena:

• Bizarre coincidences
• Miracles
• Unidentified Flying Objects
• Other mysterious sightings
• Alien Abductions
• Animal Mutilations
• Corn Circles
• Stigmata
• Occult systems of knowledge and practice
• Psychological Phenomena (e.g., lucid dreaming, glossolalia).

3.3 Past Life Regression

Past life regression (PLR) is the alleged journeying into one's past lives while hypnotized. While it is true that many patients recall past lives, it is highly probable that their memories are false memories. The memories are from experiences in this life, pure products of the imagination, intentional or unintentional suggestions from the hypnotist, or confabulations.

Some New Age therapists do PLR therapy under the guise of personal growth; others under the guise of healing. As a tool for New Age explorers, there may be little harm in encouraging people to remember what are probably false memories about their living in earlier centuries or for encouraging them to go forward in time and glimpse into the future. But as a method of healing, it must be apparent even to the most superficial of therapists that there are great dangers in encouraging patients to create delusions. Some false memories may be harmless, but others can be devastating. They can increase a person's suffering, as well as destroy loving relationships with family members. The care with which hypnosis should be used seems obvious.

3.4 Spontaneous past life recall as proof for reincarnation

Dr. Ian Stevenson has written extensively on this topic, and anyone interested in this area should start with him. During his original research into various cases involving children's memories of past lives, Dr. Stevenson did note with interest the fact that these children frequently bore lasting birthmarks which supposedly related to their murder or the death they suffered in a previous life. Stevenson's research into birthmarks and congenital defects has such particular importance for the demonstration of reincarnation, since it furnishes objective and graphic proof of reincarnation, superior to the - often fragmentary - memories and reports of the children and adults questioned, which even if verified afterwards cannot be assigned the same value in scientific terms.

In many cases presented by Dr. Stevenson there are also medical documents available as further proof, which are usually compiled after the death of the person. Dr. Stevenson adds that in the cases he researched and "solved" in which birthmarks and deformities were present, he didn't suppose there was any other apposite explanation than that of reincarnation. Only 30% - 60% of these deformities can be put down to birth defects which related to genetic factors, virus infections or chemical causes (like those found in children damaged by the drug Thalidomide or alcohol). Apart from these demonstrable causes, the medical profession has no other explanation for the other 40% to 70% of cases than that of mere chance. Stevenson has now succeeded in giving us an explanation of why a person is born with these deformities and why they appear precisely in that part of their body and not in another.
I am not interested to include any particular past life experience in this article. I am concerned more on search of an explanation of such experiences. Most of the cases where birthmarks and congenital deformities are present for which no medical explanations exist have one to five characteristics in common.

1. In the most unusual scenario, it is possible that someone who believed in reincarnation expressed a wish to be reborn to a couple or one partner of a couple. This is usually because they are convinced that they would be well cared for by those particular people. Such preliminary requests are often expressed by the Tlingit Indians of Alaska and by the Tibetans.

2. More frequent than this are the occurrences of prophetic dreams. Someone who has died appears to be a pregnant or not as yet pregnant woman and tells her that he or she will be reborn to her. Sometimes relatives or friends have dreams like this and will then relate the dream to the mother to be. Dr. Stevenson found these prophetic dreams to be particularly prolific in Burma and among the Indians in Alaska.

3. In these cultures the body of a newborn child is checked for recognizable marks to establish whether the deceased person they had once known has been reborn to them. This searching for marks of identification is very common among cultures that believe in reincarnation, and especially among the Tlingit Indians and the Igbos of Nigeria. Various tribes of West Africa make marks on the body of the recently deceased in order to be able to identify the person when he or she is reborn.

4. The most frequently occurring event or common denominator relating to rebirth is probably that of a child remembering a past life. Children usually begin to talk about their memories between the ages of two and four. Such infantile memories gradually dwindle when the child is between four and seven years old. There are of course always some exceptions, such as a child continuing to remember its previous life but not speaking about it for various reasons.

Most of the children talk about their previous identity with great intensity and feeling. Often they cannot decide for themselves which world is real and which one is not. They often experience a kind of double existence where at times one life is more prominent, and at times the other life takes over. This is why they usually speak of their past life in the present tense saying things like, "I have a husband and two children who live in Jaipur." Almost all of them are able to tell us about the events leading up to their death.

Such children tend to consider their previous parents to be their real parents rather than their present ones, and usually express a wish to return to them. When the previous family has been found and details about the person in that past life have come to light, then the origin of the fifth common denominator – the conspicuous or unusual behavior of the child - is becoming obvious.

5. For instance, if the child is born in India to a very low-class family and was a member of a higher caste in its previous life, it may feel uncomfortable in its new family. The child may ask to be served or waited on hand and foot and may refuse to wear cheap clothes.

Many of these children with past-life memories show abilities or talents that they had in their previous lives. Often children who were members of the opposite sex in their previous life show difficulty in adjusting to the new sex. These problems relating to the 'sex change' can lead to homosexuality later on in their lives. Former girls who were reborn as boys may wish to dress as girls or prefer to play with girls rather than boys.

Until now all these human oddities have been a mystery to conventional psychiatrists - after all, the parents could not be blamed for their children's behavior in these cases. At long last research into reincarnation is shedding some light on the subject. In the past, doctors blamed such peculiarities on a lack or a surplus of certain hormones, but now they will have to do some rethinking.

3.5 Correspondences between Wounds and Birthmarks

Almost nothing is known about why pigmented birthmarks (moles or nevi) occur in particular locations of the skin. The causes of most birth defects are also unknown. About 35% of children who claim to remember previous lives have birthmarks and/or birth defects that they (or adult informants) attribute to wounds on a person whose life the child remembers. The birthmarks were usually areas of hairless, puckered skin; some were areas of little or no pigmentation (hypopigmented macules); others were areas of increased pigmentation (hyperpigmented nevi). The birth defects were nearly always of rare types. In cases in which a deceased person was identified the details of whose life unmistakably matched the child's statements, a close correspondence was nearly always found between the birthmarks and/or birth defects on the child and the wounds on the deceased person.

A correspondence between birthmark and wound was judged satisfactory if the birthmark and wound were both within an area of 10 square centimeters at the same anatomical location; in fact, many of the birthmarks and wounds were much closer to the same location than this. A medical document, usually a postmortem report, was obtained in 49 cases. The correspondence between wound and birthmark was judged satisfactory or better by the mentioned criterion in 43 (88%) of these cases and not satisfactory in 6 cases. The high proportion (88%) of concordance between wounds and birthmarks in the cases for which postmortem reports (or other confirming documents) were obtained, increases confidence in the accuracy of informants' memories concerning the wounds on the deceased person in those more numerous cases for which no medical document could be obtained. Not all errors of informant’s memories would have resulted in attributing a correspondence between birth marks and wounds that did not exist; in some cases reliance on an informant's memory would have resulted in missing a correspondence to which a medical document attested.

Because most (but not all) of these cases develop among persons who believe in reincarnation, we should expect that the informants for the cases would interpret them as examples according with their belief; and they usually do. It is necessary, however, for scientists to think of alternative explanations.

The most obvious explanation of these cases attributes the birthmark or birth defect on the child to chance, and the reports of the child's statements and unusual behavior then become a parental fiction intended to account for the birthmark (or birth defect) in terms of the culturally accepted belief in reincarnation. There are, however, important objections to this explanation. First, the parents (and other adults concerned in a case) have no need to invent and narrate details of a previous life in order to explain their child's lesion. Believing in reincarnation, as most of them do, they are nearly always content to attribute the lesion to some event of a previous life without searching for a particular life with matching details. Second, the lives of the deceased persons figuring in the cases were of uneven quality both as to social status and commendable conduct. A few of them provided models of heroism or some other enviable quality; but many of them lived in poverty or were otherwise unexemplary. Few parents would impose an identification with such persons on their children. Third, although in most cases the two families concerned were acquainted (or even related),in some cases the two families concerned had never even heard about each other before the case developed. The subject's family in these cases can have had no information with which to build up an imaginary previous life which, it later turned out, closely matched a real one. In some other cases the child's parents had heard about the death of the person concerned, but had no knowledge of the wounds on that person. Fourth, I think I have shown that chance is an improbable interpretation for the correspondences in location between two or more birthmarks on the subject of a case and wounds on a deceased person.

Persons who reject the explanation of chance combined with a secondarily confected history may consider other interpretations that include paranormal processes, but fall short of proposing a life after death. One of these supposes that the birthmark or birth defect occurs by chance and the subject then by telepathy learns about a deceased person who had a similar lesion and develops an identification with that person. The children subjects of these cases, however, never show paranormal powers of the magnitude required to explain the apparent memories in contexts outside of their seeming memories.

Another explanation, which would leave less to chance in the production of the child's lesion, attributes it to a maternal impression on the part of the child's mother. According to this idea, a pregnant woman, having knowledge of the deceased person's wounds, might influence a gestating embryo and fetus so that its form corresponded to the wounds on the deceased person. The idea of maternal impressions, popular in preceding centuries and up to the first decades of this one, has fallen into disrepute. Nevertheless, some of the published cases -- old and new -- show a remarkable correspondence between an unusual stimulus in the mind of a pregnant woman and an unusual birthmark or birth defect in her later-born child.

4. Conclusion

Even if hypnotic regression and spontaneous recall of past life by children were free of any contradiction, there still would be another major argument against their veracity: According to the classic doctrine of reincarnation, the entity which reincarnates is the impersonal self (atman or purusha), accompanied by karmic debt. Any psycho-mental element that defines personhood does not belong to the self or to the subtle body, and therefore ceases to exist at physical death. Memory is such an element. It acts only inside the limits of a physical life and vanishes at death. If things were different, if memory could pass to further lives through reincarnation, it would have the same ontological nature as the self, which is absurd, because memory belongs to the psycho-mental realm of personhood.

Usually it is said that the vehicle that carries the psychic impressions from one life to another is the subtle body (sukshma sharir in Vedanta) or the karmic deposit (karmashaya in Sankhya-Yoga). Although some say that these two elements act as a kind of unconscious memory of previous lives, they cannot represent a third ontological nature (different to both the self and the psycho-mental realm), which could play the role of a transmissible personal memory from one life to another. Karmashaya and sukshma sharir are a mere expression of the way karma records the debts of the past. As karma represents an impersonal and mechanical law which functions with mathematical precision, karma itself cannot justify one’s state at a certain moment. In other words, man cannot communicate with his karma. Karma is simply pushing the self into a foreordained scenario, without communicating which debts are to be paid from previous lives.Even though some special meditative techniques are mentioned, which could render some limited information about past lives (for instance Yoga-Sutra mentions the possibility to know the previous birth through practicing samyama), they are available only for the advanced Yogi. Even so, the veracity of the information received in altered states of consciousness is doubtful.

One’s karmic debts could at best be imagined intuitively. For instance, it is supposed that a man who was murdered took his just reward for a murder he did himself in a previous life. Not even the past life recall experiences give any information about the "sins" one did in his previous life, but only figures out cases when he was a victim or a simple observer of life around him. These kinds of experiences do not attempt to prove the justice of karma, but only that past lives are real. In other words, the "recalled" scenarios do not indicate which facts of the previous life produced the present incarnation, but only try to prove that we lived previous lives, that reincarnation is true and has to be accepted in our belief.

At the time Stevenson was carrying out his studies among Indian children that remembered previous lives, he met an Indian swami of the Ramakrishna order. He commented on these cases: “Yes it is true [meaning reincarnation], but it does not make any difference, because we in India have all believed in reincarnation and have accepted it as a fact, and yet it has made no difference. We have as many rogues and villains in India as you have in the West" (Venture Inward Magazine, September/October, 1995). These stories are appreciated mostly by Westerners, probably as a result of misunderstanding the original doctrine of reincarnation and also because of their pseudo-scientific outlook.

The most important argument for reincarnation is of a moral nature. It says that karma and reincarnation provide the perfect way to realize justice in our world, by rewarding all one’s deeds and thoughts in further lives. They will manifest as good or bad happenings and circumstances, with mathematical exactitude, so that everything one does will be justly punished or rewarded, at both a quantitative and a qualitative level. This would explain all inequalities we see among people, comfort those who cannot understand their present bad situation and also give hope for a further better life.

5. Reference

1. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research by Dr. Ian Stevenson.

2. Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation by Dr. Ian Stevenson.

3. Examples of Past life memories around the world.

4. The New Testament, The Bible.