Reincarnation in the East
The idea of reincarnation is usually associated with India. It is found in most of the forms of Hinduism; there are hundreds, with some variation in the different theologies and schools of thought. Basically, the soul is an immortal entity that has continuity through eternity, but falls into material existence and is trapped in the illusion that this physical world is ultimately real. Through multiple lives the soul becomes subject to karma, or consequences. Good karma leads to noble birth; bad karma to a lower birth, even to rebirth as an animal. The idea of karma and reincarnation was integral to social organization in the caste system and thus had practical application in everyday life. The caste system in turn dictated proper action that was sanctioned by the rewards and punishments of karma.
In the mainstream of Hindu thought—which found truth in the timeless eternal world beyond this world of illusion—while a favorable reincarnation was desirable, the ultimate goal was to escape the wheel of reincarnation totally. The means of such escape was spiritual discipline encased within a renunciation of the world. By withdrawing and concentrating on the spiritual realm, one ceased to create karma and dissolved old karma. Eventually, one could rid oneself of karma entirely and escape.
The essential soul is said to be pure and impersonal, part of a universal soul, but overlaid by illusions of individual egoism relating to desires and fears of the body and senses. The classic statements relating to reincarnation are to be found in the Hindu scripture Bhagavad-Gita, which stresses: "The soul is never born nor dies, nor does it exist on coming into being. For it is unborn, eternal, and primeval. Even although the body is slain, the soul is not" (2:20).
Buddhism emerged as a reform movement in Hinduism. It challenged the traditional Hindu system at a number of points, including its understanding of human life. In particular, Buddhism challenged the idea of a substantial soul that existed in and of itself apart from the body. The rather sophisticated understanding of the self in Buddhism is often likened to a candle flame. Obviously, as the candle burns down the flame will eventually die out. It has no existence apart from its burning. Buddhists suggest that reincarnation is as if, just as the flame is about to go out, it finds a new candle wick—a new body within which to burn.
In the nineteenth century, during the height of British rule in India, Christianity challenged Hinduism, especially as it existed in village temple worship. Christian leaders denounced animal sacrifice and the sexual promiscuity of some tantric groups, while slowly discovering the sophistication of Hindu philosophy. One of the responses to Christianity's invasion of the country, with the backing of colonial authorities, however, was a revival of philosophical Hinduism in light of new nineteenth century Western notions of progress, evolution, and moral striving.
In this new Hinduism of the nineteenth century, the succession of lives of the soul in different bodies is regarded as one indivisible life. The soul uses the experience of each incarnation as an opportunity for expiating sins in former lives, of balancing bad karma with good, and perfecting the soul through a process of evolution so that further incarnations will not be necessary and the individual soul can be absorbed in the divine plan. Until then, the body of the next life (whether human or animal) is shaped by actions in the present life. Moral striving is the means of gaining good karma. Ultimately, all lives may be seen as illusions of consciousness. This form of reincarnationist thought—which called for the good life, rather than the more traditional form calling for withdrawal from life— influenced Western visitors to India and was ultimately imported to the West through Theosophy and the various Indian teachers who successfully established themselves in the United States (notably Swamis Vivekananda and Yogananda).
Some religions, like Hinduism, teach that reincarnation is not always immediate, but that some souls may enjoy a period in a transitional state, either heavenly or purgatorial, before re-birth.
An idea of reincarnation, though not karma, is also found in some early Greek philosophy, including that of both Pythagoras and Plato. It actually emerges in the Mediterranean basin simultaneously with its emergence in India, around 600 B.C.E.
In the fourth century, Plato's Phaedrus presents a reincarnation myth that seems to have been derived from the ophite religion. A preexistent soul falls from the realm of the gods into earthly existence, where it migrates from one body to the next for some ten thousand years before it returns upward to a place of judgment. Plato also introduced into Greek thought the possibility of a transmigration of the soul into an animal.
In Roman literature, the idea of reincarnation is found in the writings of Ennius, probably deriving from Greek thought. There is no trace of it in Jewish literature, although it later entered into some Kabalistic teaching. From Greek philosophy, it came into the Gnostic tradition, and from second-and third-century Gnosticism it passed to the Manichaeans and Cathari.
The theory underlying the concept of reincarnation differs from the eschatology of rewards and punishments in Christianity. Each individual soul will eventually attain perfection, although some will take more reincarnations than others, learning by painful experience, in one life after another, the inexorable laws of karma—of cause and effect. All actions involve consequences, some immediate, others delayed, others in future lives. We punish ourselves by our actions, and the very defects and difficulties under which we suffer offer scope for expiation and perfection.
The Jewish and Christian traditions were (and largely remain) inimical to reincarnation. All of the Christian theologians who spoke of reincarnation denounced it in no uncertain terms. The only break in the antireincarnationist view appears in the early writings of Origen, the third-century theologian who as a young man had converted to Christianity. Before his conversion he was an accomplished Platonist, and he attempted to integrate Platonic philosophy and Christian thinking in his earliest writings, which, if not affirming reincarnation, do speak of the preexistence of the soul and its possible transmigration. Origen later dropped his beliefs and in his biblical commentaries emerged as hostile to reincarnationist thought.
A major controversy involving Origen's early thought emerged in the sixth century surrounding a group of people who adopted Origen's early writings as part of their larger challenge to the Roman Empire. Thus it was that several councils reaffirmed the church's opinion on reincarnationist ideas and, in the style of the times, pronounced them anathema. In the early twentieth century, several proponents of reincarnation, primarily Theosophists working against the opposition of Christian leaders, countered with the story of a sixth-century plot. According to the idea, Christianity had taught reincarnation until the Roman empress Theodosia forced the church to edit the Bible and remove any reference to it. This theory shows a great ignorance of the history of the period and has no foundation in fact. In recent decades the primary presentation of this idea appeared in a book by Noel Langley, Edgar Cayce and Reincarnation, and has passed into New Age literature.
Theosophical Teachings on Reincarnation
The major conduit of reincarnationist teachings in the West during the twentieth century has been the Theosophical Society. According to Theosophy, the various manifestations in the flesh are merely small portions of one whole. The monad, the divine spark, or individuality, remains the same throughout the whole course of reincarnation and is truly a denizen of the three higher worlds—the spiritual, the intuitional, and the higher mental. In order to further its growth and the widening of its experience and knowledge, however, it is necessary for the monad to descend into the worlds of denser matter—the lower mental, the astral, and the physical—and take back with it to the higher worlds what it learns there. Since it is impossible to progress far during one manifestation, the monad must return again and again to the lower worlds.
The laws of progress, the laws that govern reincarnation, are those of evolution and of karma. The scheme of the evolution of life decrees that all shall sooner or later attain perfection by developing to the utmost their latent powers and qualities, and each manifestation in the lower worlds is but one short journey nearer to the goal. Those who realize this law shorten the journey by their own efforts while those who do not realize it, of course, lengthen the journey.
Karma decrees that both good and bad effects follow whoever caused them. Hence, what an individual has done in one manifestation he will benefit by or suffer for in another. It may be impossible that actions should be immediately effective, but each is stored up and sooner or later will bear fruit.
It may be asked why one long life in the lower worlds should not suffice in place of a multitude of manifestations, but this is explained by the fact that the dense matter that is the vehicle of these bodies becomes, after a time of progress, incapable of further alteration to suit the developing monad's needs and must accordingly be laid aside for a new body.
After physical death, the individual passes first to the astral world, then to the heavenly portion of the mental world. Most time is spent in the latter, except when descending into the denser worlds to garner fresh experience and knowledge for further development in preparation for passage into a higher sphere.
In the heaven world these experiences and this knowledge are woven together into the texture of the individual's nature. In those who have not progressed far on the journey of evolution, the manifestations in the lower worlds are comparatively frequent, but with passage of time and development, these manifestations become rarer and more time is spent in the heaven world, until at last, the great process of reincarnation draws to an end, and the pilgrims enter the path that leads to perfection.