Monday, January 15, 2007

Reincarnation

Introduction

I have been fascinated by the idea of reincarnation for a long time. Those who suggest that reincarnation is real point to a number of phenomena which hint at the possibility.

We connect so well with some people – even people we’ve only just met – that it’s almost as if we can read their thoughts and they ours, yet we have very difficult relationships with others, failing to understand each others’ perspectives again and again. Often, this latter group comprises members of our own family!

Some people are born with natural talents so advanced that we are at a loss as to explain them: how is it possible that a six year old can write a concerto?

There is huge inequality in life. At university, I met many people who were rich, good looking, bright, sporty and attractive. After doing well in their degree, they went on to have successful careers and a comfortable life. Others, such as some of the children I used to teach in England, are born into deprivation, have low IQ, are not attractive or talented and have very little future so far as the material things of the word are concerned. The inequalities in the wider world are much broader than this, of course.

Then there are the many people who claim to remember details from past lives, sometimes while undergoing some kind of hypnosis, but often spontaneously. Numerous such cases have been documented, perhaps Shanti Devi being the most famous.[1]

The idea of reincarnation seems to make sense of all these phenomena, but they hardly constitute proof.



What is reincarnated? What do we mean by ‘soul’?

In the Buddhist view, the individual consist of five ‘aggregates’ or skandhas. These are:

* Material processes (body)
* Feeling
* Perception
* Mental formations (mind)
* Consciousness (sentience)

A central tenet of Buddhism is that of anatta, usually translated as ‘no self.’ A common understanding of this terms is that the five aggregates are constantly shifting and, since the self is composed of the five and nothing else, there is no stable, unchanging ‘self.’ That is to say, ‘self’ is an illusion.

However, Buddhism also has a strong belief in reincarnation, which immediately begs the question, ‘what or who is reincarnated?’ If it is just some kind of impersonal energy disturbance, then it doesn’t make sense to say that ‘I’ am reincarnated, yet Buddhism strongly insists that the individual is indeed reincarnated, and that the Buddhas can recall all their previous lives. It seems that the common understanding of anatta is at fault.

My understanding is that anatta is ‘not-self’ rather than ‘no-self.’ There is nothing that can be pointed to and described that is the self. The self is not the body, not the mind, not the perception, and so on. If we identify these things as self, we are deluded. But, nonetheless, the self is there: it is just not what we think it is.

Matthieu Ricard suggests that the self is a ‘stream of consciousness – awareness of a stream of impermanent states with integral continuity’[2] This stream or vortex of consciousness – which we might call a soul – tends to cling to the aggregates and this explains why ‘those who separate from the body in near death situations report mental imagery, perceptions, sensations, feelings, and thoughts, while separate from the body. It appears the conscious being carries with it the memories (mental formations) and connections (feelings and sensations) of its past existence as well as a sense of continuity of self.’[3]

Clinging to the aggregates tends to propel the soul (as defined) onwards to a new existence, and enlightenment comes when the aggregates are finally shed and only the pure stream of consciousness remains. What is left, then? The Buddha said that the state of nirvana was beyond description, but I have an image of a current or a channel of water, endlessly flowing within the ocean of divinity which is the ground of all being. This state is, as Brooke wrote, ‘a pulse in the eternal mind, no less.’[4]

It is interesting to compare the Buddhist view with the Hindu or Vedic one. There are some differences, but the similarities are more striking.

According to the Hindu understanding, we consist of five bodies (koshas)[5]. They are:

* The physical body (anna maya kosha)
* The body of vital energy (prana maya kosha)
* The body of thought (mano maya kosha)
* The body of higher intelligence (vijnana maya kosha)
* The body of mystical awareness (ananda maya kosha)

These five can be condensed into three:

* The physical body (physical body, plus vital energy body)
* The astral body (mental body)
* The causal body (higher intelligence and mystical awarness)

The physical body dissolves at the time of death. The other two persist after death and, at the moment of rebirth, the astral body dissolves. The causal body reincarnates, so in this sense, although we shed personality and memory, we retain our higher intellectual and spiritual functions.

Underlying all these bodies is the atman, the essence of who you are. This is eternal and is of the same substance as God, the ground of being. This atman seems to be the same as the stream or vortex of consciousness: made of God, not separate from God but, as it were, a ‘disturbance’ in God. In the sense that there is nothing but God, we are all one, we are not separate, we are all ‘disturbances’ in God, though these disturbances have an eternal nature. It is not like a drop of water falling into the ocean, being assimilated and hence losing its identity, but rather a stream or current within the ocean, (a bit like to Gulf stream conveyor!) which is eternal, a movement in the ocean, not separate from it.

So one could give the following definition of soul: an eternal disturbance in the eternal God. This, according to Buddhist and Hindu thought, is the core of what is reincarnated, with other elements (call them what you like – causal body, ananda maya kosha or whatever) clinging to this core.



Christian and Jewish views on reincarnation.

It is clear that the issue of reincarnation was debated in the primitive Christian church. Several prominent early Christians believed in reincarnation: Origen’s scheme[6], based largely upon Plato’s thinking, is the most famous, but others also believed that the soul is reincarnated. Origenism was formally condemned by the church in 553AD at the second Council of Constantinople. [7] Most Christians now do not accept reincarnation, but the idea is gaining popularity.

Perhaps Jesus was what one might call an ‘advanced soul,’ a soul which had been through many reincarnations and had reached a point where he felt almost completely in tune with God. This explains why he was able to perform miracles[8] and why he spoke about God constantly and as if the presence of God was obvious and imminent. It is possible that Jesus ‘was God’ in the sense that he had reached enlightenment (for want of a better term) and had chosen to incarnate in the form of an ‘avatar,’ but the earliest layers of the Gospel[9] suggest that neither Jesus’ followers nor Jesus considered himself to be divine.

Reincarnation has been a persistent feature of Judaism and Kabala. In recent years, Jewish reincarnation has been championed most prominently by Rabbi Gershom[10], who has written a number of scholarly works on the subject.



References

[1] Sture Lonnerstrand, I have lived before: the true story of the reincarnation of Shanti Devi.

[2] Quoted by Greg Stone in http://www.visitunderthetree.com/philosophy/philosophya.html

[3] Ibid

[4] Rupert Brooke, The Soldier, 1915.

[5] The five koshas are described in the Taittiriya Upanishad.

[6] An informative presentation of Origen’s scheme, along with the thinking of some other early Christians, is given at http://www.near-death.com/experiences/origen07.html. See also http://reluctant-messenger.com/origen1.html

[7] See http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html?mainframe=2_council_of_constan.html

[8] I do not regard the Gospels as reliable historical documents, and it seems likely that the accounts of Jesus’ miracles are exaggerated, but I believe there is probably at least a grain of truth here.

[9] The idea of the Gospels having two ‘layers,’ an early layer which is historical and a later layer which is ‘history metaphorised’ by the church is taken from the writing of American theologian Marcus Borg. See, for example, The God we never knew, 1997.

[10] See Gershom’s website, http://www.pinenet.com/~rooster/index.html.