Reincarnation

When I was a child I took it for granted that we would all live forever. Of course I knew about death, but that was just the body wasn't it? Everything around me was so familiar I was sure I had been on the earth thousands if not millions of years and would be here for a few thousand more at least.

Many artists and thinkers through the ages have believed in reincarnation, a knowledge that each of us has a soul, a divine spark that has lived before and will live again in a new body and this will continue until we reach perfection and become part of God.

W. B. Yeats, one of my favourite poets and a member of the mystical society The Order of the Golden Dawn, expresses this belief beautifully in the poem Under Ben Bulben when he writes:

Many times man lives and dies
Between his two eternities,
That of race and that of soul,
And ancient Ireland knew it all.
Whether man die in his bed
Or the rifle knocks him dead,
A brief parting from those dear
Is the worst man has to fear.
Though grave-diggers' toil is long,
Sharp their spades, their muscles strong.
They but thrust their buried men
Back in the human mind again.

Looking at nature and the way it renews itself in a new form every spring it is impossible to believe we will not return again and renew ourselves in the same way. No one can be judged by God on the evidence of just one human lifespan, we are born into such differing circumstances and no one is born equal. It makes sense that there is a bigger picture. As Voltaire said:

"It is not more suprising to be born twice than once, everything in nature is resurrection"

Edgar Cayce (1847-1935) was a famous American psychic who would diagnose and often cure patients illnesses while himself was in a trance-like state. During his sessions he would often regress patients back into their past lives and thereby find the cause of whatever was troubling them in this life. He believed that God is perfect goodness and love and each of us will be reincarnated again and again until we learn to be free from every emotion, every thought and evil action which goes against God and summarised this in the following quote:

"In the beginning all souls were as a unity to the God-Force. As self added or subtracted that which was in keeping with God's purpose, ye added or subtracted from the blessings ye might be conscious of in materiality. Thus karma is builded. And the law is perfect - what ye sow ye reap. There is no law causing man to separate himself from his Maker. There is no cause except man's own indulgence or neglect."

Some Christians incorporate reincarnation as part of Christian doctrine and believe that the Bible originally containned references to reincarnation, but later on the church supressed much of this information. However there are still some references which remain. For example Jewish priests were sent to ask John the Baptist, "Art thou Elijah?" (John, 1:21), which is seen as supporting the conception that Jewish priests believed in the theory of reincarnation. Christ said of John the Baptist "This is Elijah." (Matthew 11:14.) Later on, upon the Mount of Transfiguration, Christ said, "Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed… Then the disciples understood that He spake unto them of John the Baptist." (Matthew 17:12,13).

Psychiatrist Dr Ian Stevenson who died just recently, conducted over 3000 case studies which taken as a whole are highly suggestive of the truth of reincarnation. He is best known for collecting and researching the claims of children who spontaneously remember having lived before. In many of these cases the children have provoded information they could not possibly have known any other way.

Ultimately though, whether we accept this belief or not is a matter of intuition and faith.