Monday’s Musings on Reincarnation

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

[William Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood]

Reincarnation is often thought of as being something which is exclusive to Eastern religious thoughts, having been imported from there into fuzzy New Age thinking, however we don’t have to search far in order to see that it can be found in spiritual philosophies from around the world and from all the many ages of mankind.  We find references to reincarnation in the writings of intelligent men and women, whose work often influenced generations of people, some of whom may not even have been aware of their writings at all.  In fact when you start looking carefully there is a surprising number of distinguished thinkers of probably every period of history who promoted, or at the very least gave credence to the possibility of reincarnation.  Of course just because these people thought reincarnation existed, doesn’t make it a fact, but it does give food for thought when you consider that even nations who were seperated by distance and the great oceans share this idea.  It certainly supports the idea that there is more to it than wishful New Age thinking.  Reincarnation, which admittedly has been hijacked (like so many other things!) by wishy washy new age fluffiness, is most certainly not a new age idea at all.

“As to ourselves, our soul, partaking of the divine nature, remains immortal and eternal in the precincts which are the limit of our world.  Attached to a mortal envelop, it is sent by the gods now into one body, now into another, in view of the universal harmony, in order that the union of the moral and immortal elements in human nature may contribute to the unity of the Whole”

[Gemistus Pletho, 1355-1450]

Reincarnation is also strongly present in the philosophies of Qabalah, where it is better known as the transmigration of souls “gilgul” which means ‘revolving’ or ‘swirling’.  This idea was first published in the Bahir  in the late 13th century.  It teaches that on death the parts of the soul all go to their appointed places, and is a subject David and I explore the concept within the context of qabalah in Appendix 2 of our Practical Qabalah Magick (Avalonia 2009), as well as in our forthcoming book Coming out of Exile (Llewellyn 2010/11).  There are so many variants of this belief, often dependent on the conduct of the soul during life – with the soul which have fulfilled its spiritual destiny no longer requiring reincarnating.  It is said that such a soul, will be stored in the holiness of God until the end of time, when according to qabalistic ideologies, it will be rejoined with its body.  It is said that when this happens God will cause dew, the divine light, to exude from his head that will flow through the Sephiroth on the Tree of Life until it reaches Earth.  This is the very dew which would have caused Adam and Eve to become immortal.

 So, what if anything, can be given as “proof” of reincarnation?  Does it matter?

The Dutch philosopher, Spinoza (1632-1677) wrote that: “It is impossible for us to remember that we had existence prior to the body, since the body can have no vestige of it, and eternity cannot be defined in terms of time or have any relation to time.  but, nevertheless, we have in our experience a perception that we are eternal…”  [Ethics, Book V]

So what is up with all the wonderful accounts of “previous lives” which we hear about?  If you have friends in the magical, new age or pagan communities you will undoubtably have encountered someone who claims to be the current incarnation of “Cleopatra” or “a Priestess of Ancient Atlantis” or an “Ancient Egyptian Priest” or … well any other famous, mystically endowed or spiritually superior person.  In more recent years, it has also become exceedingly trendy to claim to be the reincarnation of a “peasant” or some such, as a balanced response to the tiresome glances and raised eyebrows at “yet another Cleopatra!” …

In the Bhagavad-Gita, a well known text from Hinduism, Krisha speaks saying: “I myself never was not, nor thou, nor all the princes of the earth; nor shall we ever hereafter cease to be.  As the Lord of this mortal frame experienceth therein infancy, youth, and old age, so in future incarnations will it meet the same.  One who is confirmed in this belief is not disturbed by anything that may come to pass.. . As a man throweth away old garments and putteth on new, even so the dweller in the body, having quitted its old mortal frames, entereth into others which are new.”.

Does it matter if we do remember a previous incarnation, or several incarnations – or whether maybe we don’t at all?   What lessons can we learn from our past other than what it has already taught us?   Is it not more important to focus on this life, today and tomorrow so that we may integrate ourselves fully in order to learn and progress as souls on the journey of life?

“I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell;
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore,
You have been mine before – ,
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at the swallow’s soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall, – I knew it all of yore.

[Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) - Sudden Light]